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The God-Emperor of Mankind

2017-01-19T22:16:21Z

2001:41D0:FE0D:E500:C996:ADB2:BEB9:76E6:

[[File:Lord of Mankind.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Liberating the galaxy is one thing, but he was so powerful he never once stopped looking ''fabulous'' while doing it.]]
<div style="text-align:center;font-size:1.10em;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"><span style='color:gold;font-size:100%'> I have come to eradicate Religion as it is the bane of Man, warped in superstition, ignorance and fear! - The Emperor before the Treason of Horus'''</span> </div>

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

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy. We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos. We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
<br>++ Ayhmen ++</i><br>
-- the [[Imperial Cult|Creed]] of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra</blockquote>

''"Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please."''<br>
— Niccoló Machiavelli

''Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.''<br>
- Proverbs 16:18

The '''God-Emperor of Mankind''', also known as '''The Emprah''', '''Jimmy Zeng''', '''Emps''', '''Big E''', '''E-Money''', '''Augustus Imperator''', '''Master of Mankind''', '''Space Jesus,''' and also sometimes called '''The Anathema''', '''The Carrion Lord''', '''The False Emperor''', '''The Immortal Emperor''' or '''The Corpse on the Throne''' is the figurehead ruler of the [[Imperium of Man]] in the [[Warhammer 40k]] universe and is the only sustaining [[Tzeentch|Hope]] for Humanity as Faster than Light Travel is [[Astronomican|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 [[/b/|hellish mess]] that it is. In the [[Imperium]], questioning whatever your superior yells at you, is "moronic" and [[heresy|heretical]], and is typically punished by [[blam|peace]] (at least in the material realm). He created the 20 primarchs, who viewed him as their "father". However, he saw them more as tools, and instead of names, referred to them by numbers. *Dick*. It goes without saying that would The Emperor be up and about in the 41st millennium He would be very disappointed. Most fa/tg/uys expect Him to [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191520/bio speak in a generic deep, stentorian voice].

Also wrote Pinocchio, which would make Carlo Collodi one of his aliases, He also began life as a two-bit undertaker in an obscure Middle-Eastern village.

==The Entire History of the Emprah==
===Early life===
[[File:Majestica.jpg|250px|left|thumb|Big E gets all the bitches.]]
The Emperor is a [[Perpetual]]; an immortal psyker with countless lifetimes' worth of knowledge and power and the ambition to use it. According to the fluff, the being that would eventually become known as The Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) on the banks of the Sakarya river to a tribe of proto-[[Wikipedia:Hittites|Hittites]]. From his own account, his path towards greatness was spurred on when his uncle murdered his father; so kid-Emps did the responsible thing and gave his uncle a myocardial infarction. Kid-Emps then realised that humans needed laws, and good laws needed to be given by good leaders: setting him on the (xeno/geno)cidal path of self-righteousness and conquest that would continue for the next 38,000 years.

Allegedly, ''(according to 1st & 2nd edition fluff)'', his birth was the result of hundreds of human shamans committing ritual suicide to be reborn as a single individual capable of protecting humanity from the [[Chaos Gods]]. However, [[Skub|the validity of this fluff is frequently questioned]], given it hasn't been "official" since second edition. However, this theory seems unlikely, especially given that other Perpetuals are known to exist, [[Ollanius Pius|some of which]] may be even older than the Emperor, and they don't have godlike powers. The Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival due to his acquisition of powers at a later point ''(see below)''. Yet other fluff tidbits imply that he is some sort of flesh-construct from the Dark Age of Technology run amok and aping human affectation. This one seems to have some level of truth to it, as Constantin Valdor neither confirmed nor denied it when a shit-kicking Nord Afrikan minister mentioned it to him.

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

Sometime around the 11th or 12th century, He battled a shard of the [[Void Dragon]] in modern-day Libya. He eventually defeated it and locked it on [[Mars]], allowing the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] to control machines... eventually. Of course, it's not entirely clear whether this is true or not -- it's entirely possible that ALL of the Emperor's history is a lazily-crafted lie He throws around because no one can debunk it. Although given how [[Awesome]] it sounds, we're going to say it is. Either that, or it's just another example of how [[Games Workshop|Geedubs]] can't be bothered to keep their stories consistent even about the most important parts of the setting.

Whatever his actual origins might have been, for the most part He more or less stayed out of the way of humanity's progress during the next 30,000 years of history, including the [[Dark Age of Technology]], though hot-off-the-press fluff indicates He might have been traversing outer space in old-style NASA rockets with the other Perpetuals, to eventually coming to find the planet '''Molech''', where He passed through a gateway that led ''directly'' to the fortresses of the four [[Chaos Gods]]. Here He either challenged, bargained, or stole portions of power from a source claimed by the gods as their own. This would earn Him the ire of the duped/defeated Ruinous Powers, who consider him as some sort of usurper or that he reneged on some kind of undisclosed deal we haven't been made aware of yet.

===Unification Wars===
He returned to Terra at the closing years of the [[Age of Strife]]. With Terra cut off from the rest of the Human empire and the Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians", in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the E-money decided to reveal Himself, using His mastery of genetic engineering to create the [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]] and cheaper, easier to make [[Thunder Warriors]] ''(the predecessors of the Space Marines)''. Using "join-me-or-die" tactics, He managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the event called Unification Wars. Then, He made contact with the Mechanicum of Mars and calling Himself the [[Omnissiah]], convinced them to build Him weapons and space-ships. Around this time, He also created a doctrine, the [[Imperial Truth]], which states that religion, faith, and superstition must be all banned, because they have never succeeded in unifying the human race during all of Emp's lifetime. Simply put: the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" mumbo-jumbo has never worked and now must be eradicated.

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

===Great Crusade===
But, before He set out to conquer the stars with the newly-formed Imperial Army (which contained both [[Imperial Guard|ground forces]] and [[Imperial Navy|space-borne fleets]]), He decided to create the twenty [[Primarch]]s, using Himself as the genetic template, while splitting the additional power He ''stole'' from the Gods into 20 portions, infusing each piece with a fragment of His own personality, to allow them, in turn, to congeal and gestate (just like how daemons are born!) into the indomitable souls of His future Primarchs. Then, He bound each such vessel/soul to their godlike bodies/shells as they formed in their gestation capsules. Let this sink in: each primarch is basically a unique daemonic soul, bound to a super awesomely tough material body. Though with this power ''apparently'' stolen, The Big Four will inevitably and continually be pissed at Him for using their power for His own ends. So the Chaos Gods snatched the primarchs away (via time-travel-as-a-vision shenanigans, don't even try to explain it here, just read ''The First Heretic''), inside their incubator pods and all, from the secret lab underneath the Himalayas, to scatter them away across the galaxy. Luckily for the Emperor, some genetic code was left over from each primarch, so from that He created 20 Legions to serve as the elites of His army: The [[Space Marine|SPEHSS MEHREENS]]. So, with His armies and space-ships complete (minus the Primarchs, which He hoped to find), He embarked upon the [[Great Crusade]], to once again make humanity great again.

However, the Emperor himself states to Arkhan Land ''(the guy who discovered Land Speeders/Raiders)'' that he never considered the Primarchs to be his literal sons and saw them as well-crafted tools so he could get his work done. Likening himself to Geppetto ''(from 'Pinocchio')'' in that it is only natural for 20 wooden boys to think of their creator as "Father". Whether He felt any kinship between all of them or only some of them is not entirely known. But it seems like He was all like, "Yall think I'm a bad dad, but look, shit I just made these kids in a lab! I'm not really their dad!". Then again He puts on personas for every occasion (during the meeting, Land saw him as not as a gold armoured god, but as an utterly logical scientist and the Emperor had the whole shtick of people interpreting his words in the manner that made the most sense to them personally) who really knows when He's being genuine or not or how He feels.

As He found each Primarch, He assigned them command of their respective Legions and to act as His generals, warlords and pantheon of heroes that humanity were meant to emulate, in the quest to unify humanity in the Great Crusade ''(although, at some point, one of them was executed and the other disappeared, leaving only 18 Primarchs and Legions after 100 years of the Great Crusade).''

A military campaign of a grand scale, this is also when the SPESS MEHREENS were most awesome and at their peak. [[just as planned|Just when things seemed to be going well]], the [[Horus Heresy]] took place, where 8.5 of the Primarchs and their respective legions rebel against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew [[Horus]] (who was daddy's favorite) but at a great cost. The Emperor was mortally wounded to the point that He had to be put permanently on a life support system known as the [[Golden Throne]]. On that day, an untold amount of manly tears was shed.

==="Modern" Day===
Subsequently, 10 thousand years later, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic, [[grimdark]] empire we all know and love today, in the 41st millennium. In the 500th year of the 41st Millennium (the exact middle of the millennium), which is a few centuries before the Time of Ending began, visions and signs reach out to all walks of life and social status to the Imperium of the Emperor crying, whether it's to lowly denizens of an underhive having dreams about it, to respected sanctioned psykers reading it from the Imperial Tarot, to shamans on feral planets instinctively knowing that the extra rain pouring down lately are tears of sadness from their "sky god".

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents [[daemon|daemon kind]] from directly assailing [[Terra]], while additionally sustaining the psychic-beacon known as the [[Astronomican]], that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.

It is common knowledge, that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker alive, humbling even the [[Eldar]]. It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, [[Conan the Barbarian]], [[meme|Chuck Norris]], Christopher Lee and Jesus. It is uncertain as to whether or not His internment on the Golden Throne is a good thing. Some believe that if He were to die, the [[Imperium]] would be truly fall into darkness, whereas others believe that if allowed to finally die, He would reincarnate and return to unify the galaxy once more, stronger than ever. Whatever the truth, [[Games Workshop]] are probably never going to advance the story, so speculation has little worth. Unless you take Warhammer Fantasy as an example, where the time-line ended. Badly.

==The Emprah Himself==
[[File:Climax.jpg|250px|right|thumb|A typical father-and-son chat between Empy and Horus.]]
:''"The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible [[Venus' Burn|father...]]"
:- [[Roboute Guilliman]], giving a short, yet accurate biography of the Emperor. Though on the other hand, he was actually a terrible father because he never actually saw himself as their father.
.

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

The Emperor is said to be so powerful that He could [[C'tan|destroy suns with ease]], though He has never actually done so (he however, ''made'' a golden sun which he put in the middle of his broken Webway gate to prevent daemons from spilling through, albeit needing to concentrate on powering it for the next ten thousand years. This would indicate that the Emperor does indeed have the power to destroy stars.). The [[Chaos Gods]] are scared as fuck of the guy, calling him respectively "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to [[Chaos]]. The [[Eldar]] fear that if the Emperor were to die, a new [[Eye of Terror]] would pop out with Terra at its center and possibly a new Chaos God would be born.

He was also capable of summoning what can only be called an army of human souls (including every soldier who had died for him, Ferrus Manus included) to fight for him; an ability utterly unseen in the 40k universe and suggesting that he has some fundamental connection to human souls in the afterlife - a comforting thought compared to dissolving into the Warp to be eaten by daemons and giving some credence to the 40k era theory that when the Time of Ending...ends..the Emperor and all loyal human souls will join in one final battle against Chaos.

After He was nearly killed by His son, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia. Most of the fluff maintains that His existence on a day-to-day basis since then is a living hell (by comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one, would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter) and yet He carries on. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that He will just take a sit and die. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. It gives Him a fuckton of work to do, and along with being THE lighthouse in the Warp, guiding the Imperial Navy, He also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the [[daemon|nasties]] of the Warp where they're supposed to be (i.e. not invading realspace to make the lives of all living things miserable). He also does it for the good of humanity (sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?). In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and the Emperor is dying. There is a chance of the Emperor returning to life, as well as the risk that He will die forever. If the latter would be the case, then everyone in the galaxy will become a Chaos sex toy/punching bag/plague vector/science experiment. Note that if the Emperor recovers, He'd be several hundred times more powerful. Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act. Maybe. Since then, Empy has probably gained about 365 gigafucktrillion souls since he got put on that Throne (see: leveling in Dark Souls), as he ''is'' the afterlife now, provided one excludes the veritable Hell that is the Warp. And all that stuff the Eldar get up to.

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

His desire to guide and protect humanity, in addition to His power, made the Emperor as close to a farseer as humanity was ever going to get. He declared humanity to be superior to all Xenos which was fair enough considering the collapse of the Eldar, planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed in order to protect them from the whispers of Chaos (fantastic idea anyway), planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), cared little for the Primarchs being His actual sons (thinking of them as generals and tools rather than biological offspring, and screwing over several of them in His efforts to recruit them / making them follow orders (hence causing some of their later betrayals)), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... All because this was the only way He could foresee humanity surviving the threats to come. Also known as the "Golden Path". Any other action He ever partook in, no matter how unorthodox or morally questionable or just outright horrific was secondary to the one and only goal: survival. For a being that's lived millennia, having foreseen as much as is possible to do so whilst not being an actual god, His way was the only way lest we all face extinction. Those were the options with the context of the universe He found Himself in. Time was against Him, and expediency was the order of the day; secure the physical safety of Mankind in the galaxy then safeguard their minds and souls. Everything else was a tool to be utilized in pursuit of that single purpose. It didn't matter how the godlike princelings felt, or how they were raised; it only mattered that they performed their allocated tasks as swiftly and efficiently as possible so that He could move on to the next phase of His Great Work.

His reign eventually [[Inquisition|killed more humans]] (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of humanity's dictators in history. Even during the Unification Wars, several Terran cultures were wiped out completely (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, just to make a point, even after its forces were defeated and its people ready to surrender), while simultaneously being pretty terrible at incorporating non-Terran elements. Because THAT is just how damn important and dire the circumstances were. An entire galaxy spanning empire needed to be constructed in little under two centuries when the cataclysm was foreseen to occur and ain't no one got time to fart arse about with treating people the way they deserve if the species won't survive.

Contrary to popular belief, he really did think the post-Ullanor phase through to some degree, Horus was the right choice as Warmaster for no other could command the respect of nearly all his brother better than Lupercal the First. And Dorn as Praetorian was as correct a decision as was possible to make considering that his talents were put to good use throughout the Heresy that followed. There was no need to put a Primarch in charge of the Council of Terra for the Primarchs were not made to rule, but to serve as generals in retaking the galaxy. Humanity was to be governed by humanity. Primarchs like say, Guilliman, though perfect as an administrator, was better suited and needed as a general for the Great Crusade. Honestly, it's bewildering that no one in the military saw the need for human administration. Having godlike Primarchs in charge at the top only serves to increase superstition in a secular galaxy when the idea was to rid humanity of religion and superstition in order to better protect it from warp predation.

To be fair, the whole reason humanity (and the Emperor) hates aliens is because during the Age of Strife numerous Xenos races exploited humanity's trust and either raided, lollygagged, looted or all of the above and were generally a nuisance the entire time. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop all that from happening again is to wipe out all Xenos that might even think to pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few Xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all, or were intelligent at all, in which case [[Exterminatus|the results]] were predictable). Ever since His ascension, the Imperium forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated. But on the other hand, [[Orks|the]] [[Necron|most]] [[Tyranids|common]] [[Tau|xenos]] [[Dark Eldar|are]] [[Eldrad|dicks]] and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to ''Horus Rising'', the idea of letting Xenos exist and then eventually grow stronger is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the Interex/Diasporex).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. Graham McNeill generally portrays Him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), Dan Abnett portrays Him as competent but bloodthirsty, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays Him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile (and even this is counterbalanced by his portrayal in Master of Mankind, where he's interestingly a mixture of all the previous portrayals at once - which is kinda of appropriate really). Chris Wraight, as far as he has portrayed Him, has done so through the eyes of Jaghatai Khan, showing Him as deeply flawed and distant from His own sons, but also countering that He was working towards goals even the Primarchs couldn't fully grasp. Even in Path of Heaven, where the Khan gets close to learning the secrets of the Webway project, he's shown to not have all the cards (the Emperor's knowledge that humanity is evolving into a psychic race, for example).

===His Goals and Flaws===
*Lead and shape Mankind into a psychic race and surpass the Eldar by learning from their mistakes.
*Unite Humanity under one aegis and allow for instant communication and travel across all human inhabited worlds, thereby uniting the species in a way that it had never been before.

In order to achieve this He had to:
*Reclaim every single human inhabited world, spacecraft or station;
*Purge all humans that had deviated from the normal strain of humanity (because they would not evolve into the predicted psychic species and threatened the Plan with their deviancy);
*Remove alien influence or control from human worlds;
*Eliminate external Xenos threats throughout the galaxy that might challenge or become a threat to Mankind's supremacy.
*Shelter and protect Humanity from the fell hand of [[Chaos]].

To achieve those secondary goals He had to:
*Create [[Primarchs|superhuman generals]] to bestride the galaxy and lead men to innumerable victories;
*Create [[Space Marines|superhuman soldiers]] powerful enough to retake the galaxy beneath the banners of said generals from any enemy;
*Remove the influence of religion from the collective psyche of the human species in order to protect them from the insidious whispers of Chaos (often mistaken for something supernatural and hence a gateway to disaster).

So in the pursuit of those tertiary goals, the Emperor undertook the Great Crusade. Once it was over, all the Primarchs were to have their place Lorgar was to be the Emperor's Herald and shelter mankind from superstition through enlightenment so that if ever they heard whispers in the dark; they knew it was not natural and to be feared by it, thus denying its embrace. Magnus was to assist the Emperor in sitting on the Golden Throne of earth, thus powering the human Webway (somehow), becoming a key figure in Humanity's ascension. Horus was to protect Mankind from [[Tyranids|external]] [[Necrons|physical]] [[Orks|threats]] throughout the Galaxy as Humanity's general. Konrad was to be the enforcer of the Emperor's Laws. Mortarion, His watchguard of wayward deviancy etc.

But the Imperium was only one half of the Plan. The other was the Webway, allowing nigh-instantaneous travel and communication, limiting Mankind's reliance on the warp to almost nothing in the form of Warp travel and thus protecting them against the influence of Chaos. Therefore allowing Mankind to evolve in relative safety and security under the direct guidance and control of the Emperor. When Mankind would be ready, we'd be protected from the warp naturally. That was the final crowning achievement that would bring all the Emperor's plans to fruition and pull all the wayward goals into one singular perfect Great Work. All the sacrifice, all the death, all the heartache, the glory, the battles, the trials and tribulation, 48,000 years of history was culminating into that one Plan. And it all would've been worth it because Mankind would've been saved for all time. Worth any price, where the ends justified the means, or so he claimed.

And yet at the same time, it was this very same pragmatism that ultimately led to his downfall:

*Though his pragmatism made him a superb ruler in wartime, the ultra-militarized society He had [[First Founding|created]] was entirely dependent on war to function properly. Even if the Great Crusade had proceeded exactly as the Emperor expected, it would have run out of enemies eventually. And when you have a whole lot of newly unemployed soldiers with no other skills beyond killing on your hands...well, they tend to get rowdy.
*The Emperor's concern for humanity belied the fact that humanity was little more than an abstraction in his eyes, and one which could only exist if ''he'' was ruling it all. The fact that other human civilizations such as the Interex had already found ways to fight against Chaos on their own and were just as advanced as the Imperium (if not more so) meant very little to him (or at least, to his Plan). In his mind, he alone knew what was good for humanity and anything short of total submission to the Imperium was grounds for destruction. Any sign that his Plan might have been flawed was either explained away or destroyed outright, lest it seem like He might have made a mistake.
*He not only made a critical mistake in thinking the Chaos Gods were empowered by religious worship, but also failed to understand that trying to erase religion was actively counterproductive to his goals. Lacking the immortality and inhumanly grand perspective of the Emperor, it's a basic part of human nature to look for meaning and purpose in a cause greater than oneself, especially in the harsh and grimdark universe that was [[Age of Strife|Old Night]]. The Imperial Truth tried to do this, but it didn't take into account that "reason", "logic", and "humanism" were by definition too mundane to be suited for the replacement of the old religions. The fact that the Imperial Cult took off so quickly after the Emperor's internment on the Golden Throne (and is arguably the only thing keeping the Imperium a remotely unified entity in the present) is proof that the Emperor was once again either too stubborn for his own good or too divorced from the "normal" human condition to understand the value of faith. In either case, all it accomplished was giving all four of the Ruinous Powers a reason to get rid of him, while also giving them an invaluable tool to do so in the form of Lorgar. And all while he was telling the Primarchs that daemons were just another xenos race, ensuring that none of them would be on the lookout for Chaotic corruption among themselves or their legions.
*For a guy who says he's trying to avoid the same mistakes the Eldar made, his obsession with human supremacy and the supposed "purity" of the human form (as defined by what, his own opinion?) are almost indistinguishable from the pre-Fall Eldar's certainty that they were the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Even if humanity did become a purely psychic race, nothing would stop it from making ''another'' Chaos God by accident. (It's not a stretch to hypothesize that this was itself a ploy for him to use the collective psychic power of humanity to elevate himself to the status of godhood, where he could truly rule with infinite power.)
**The only beings who knew how to create new parts of the Webway were the Old Ones, and they're all dead. At best, the Webway project would've delayed the inevitable before the fact that nobody can figure out how to keep it working became obvious. And since the Warp already bleeds into the Webway at the best of times...well, the whole thing would've been rendered pointless.
*Most damningly of all, his total disregard for the possibility that the Primarchs might actually have their own thoughts and feelings ended up being one of the key reasons why so many of the Legions ended up falling to Chaos:
**Lorgar's case (and the entirety of the Horus Heresy for that matter) would have been entirely avoidable if the Emperor acted like a genuine father figure for once in his lifetime and explained to Lorgar why his Emperor worship had to stop (which the Emperor, with all his undeniable charisma could have achieved). Instead, he had to act like a total dick and utterly humiliate his son by having his grandest city utterly ransacked and ruined, all to prove a point (and just to be an even bigger dick; he had one of Lorgar's own [[Roboute Guilliman|brothers]] do his dirty work.).
**Angron's case is self-explanatory; honestly, if it weren't for Emps sending him into battle so often he would have rebelled sooner. Sure, he couldn't just let one of his Primarchs get himself killed in a slave revolt, but you'd think he'd send down some of the War Hounds or something instead of warping him away and earning Angron's undying hatred.
**[[Fulgrim]]'s road to damnation started because he decided to loot a Slaaneshi-possesed sword. Knowing nothing about Chaos, Fulgrim had no idea he was using an incredibly dangerous warp artifact that that would lead to untold consequences. It didn't help that his strict xenophobic teachings prevented Fulgrim from taking [[Eldrad]]'s advice about the Laer Blade into account.
**Even with the Webway fuckup (which itself could have been prevented had the Emperor not kept it a secret from the most important people in his plans) Magnus might have remained a loyalist if the Emperor had been more concerned with the news of Horus's betrayal and fall to Chaos than with Magnus breaking his edicts. Of course, Magnus being nigh-possessed by [[Tzeentch|that one cuttlefish]] at the time means no one could really blame the Emperor for maybe thinking Tzeentch was pulling something.
**Similarly to Angron, [[Mortarion]] always resented the Emperor for not letting him get to kill his adoptive father, and when the Emperor refused to give him an answer about the obvious piece of Warp-tech that was the Golden Throne he concluded that the Emperor was a hypocrite and the Imperial Truth was bullshit.
**The Emperor, being the wisest and most powerful human Psyker in the galaxy of all people, should have been able to see that [[Konrad Curze]] was an unstable psyker who was on the fast road to devolving into insanity due to his uncontrolled talents.
**Completely ignoring that [[Perturabo]] needlessly had one in ten men in his legion killed by Decimation. Coupled with the fact that Perturabo was originally a peaceful, diplomatic soul; these two should have triggered some alarm bells about his mental stability.
**Horus himself was only pushed to fall because the Chaos Gods played on his worries that he wasn't fit to be Warmaster combined with the unrealised, greater fear that the Emperor never cared for him as a person and that he and the other Primarchs would have no place in the Imperium after the Great Crusade's conclusion. You'd have thought the Emperor's most beloved son would at least have been shown the special rooms in the Imperial Palace the Emperor made specifically for the Primarchs to live in after the Great Crusade ended, or at least discussed what he had planned for them when they weren't needed as generals any longer.
**Perhaps the biggest kicker to this is that if we're going to take all of Black Library into account, the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further his ambitions. What fatherly image he's been projecting to them has been nothing more than a facade to placate his sons. Hence, even if the Horus Heresy either never happened or had a better outcome; its likely that his indifference to his own superhuman children's well-being would have spelled even more problems for him down the line, as it would've been only a matter of time for them to realize how little their "father" cared about them. Although one can always argue that the remaining Primarchs stayed loyal either because they believed in his vision for humanity or were too loyal to be turned, there's no telling exactly how long that might have gone on after the Great Crusade's end - some of them showed signs of disloyalty to the Emperor even during the Heresy, only staying on his side either out of loyalty to Mankind as a whole (like Guilliman), by recognizing the other side as an even greater evil (like Jagatai), or only because the Imperium is on the winning side (if Curze's trolling was true; The Lion).

==Worship of the Emperor==
[[File:646545.jpg|thumb|300px|What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to [[Rip and tear|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 armor is a mech and that that's a regular-sized skull) Anyway, back to the topic. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often.]]

The Imperium advocates worship the Emperor as the one true God through the [[Imperial Creed]]. This creed is propagated and its adherence is enforced by the [[Ecclesiarchy|Adeptus Ministorum]] and the [[Inquisition]]. All citizens and fighters of the Imperium have little-to-no say about their choice in faith (or lack thereof); they ''must'' worship the Emperor through the various Ministorum-approved faiths throughout the galaxy (due to varying cultures, many planets have their own way of worshiping the Emperor. Although these are heavily regulated by the Ministorum to weed out any heretical influences.), there is no middle road or compromise that doesn't involve the apostate being on the receiving end of a state-sponsored public lynching. Anyone who defies or deviates from the teachings of the Imperial Creed, whether willingly or unwillingly (after all, incompetence is inexcusable in the eyes of the Emperor), is condemned as a heretic and is executed (whether its going to be fast or excruciatingly slow is dependent on the person judging the condemned). Forgiveness for one's sins is possible, although these cases are exorbitantly rare (atleast the ones that doesn't end with the accused being condemned to a glorious death.).

Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, they pretty much forgot what the Emperor taught them when He preached the Imperial Truth. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption by hoping that ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place. Some saw that the Emperor [[Mortarion|lied to them by holding the truth hidden]], some did [[Magnus|not know how to handle the temptation]] the Gods conveyed, some did [[Fulgrim|not even know that they were manipulated]] all this time and by whom, some would [[Lorgar|try to seek out something to place their faith upon]], not realizing what would needed to be done to become chosen in the eyes of the Gods. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the [[Interex]], another atheist empire who understood that threat of Chaos, but treated that information secularly and scientifically: they told every citizen everything that was known about "Kaos", and thus resisted the taint altogether.

In the Emperor's long game, he knew that humanity was evolving into a psychic species with even more potential than the Eldar, and look what happened to them? E-money wanted mankind to be [[Star Trek|a utopia of science and reason]], by eliminating religion (and thus preventing the temptations of daemons), controlling psykers (and thus preventing random daemonic possessions), and eliminating warp travel by creating the Human Webway (and thus eliminating all human contact with Chaos when traveling through the Warp). He wanted to isolate humanity from the Chaos Gods, cause who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp with no way of getting out?

Regarding the religion angle: the Emperor very much realized that Chaos runs off emotion, all everyday emotion, and not ''just'' worship; the stronger the emotions, the stronger the Gods get. The problem with religion is that it allows too many avenues for Daemons to exploit: a whisper here and a miracle there, then you get people praying to them, then shortly afterwards you get a planet turned inside out. His plan was not to starve the chaos gods of sustenance and ultimately defeat them, he knew it was impossible, his plan was just to prevent them from touching humanity ever again.

However, He made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite His best efforts, nothing was enough to fill the place of religion in human society. Ironically, the best solution would be not to suppress faith but to redirect it towards something else, but because of his natural awesomeness, unmatched psychic powers and enigmatic nature, that "something else" ended up being the Emperor himself. After He went off being the most powerful psychic cucumber in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium, belief in Him sort of helped the Imperium stand together against all odds, even if it basically dropped 99.9% of humanity's IQ in the process. With the Warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged His power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while His body is still stuck in it's current physical state of near-death. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

*[[Tyranids|Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locust who exist only to feed and multiply it's biomass]]...
*[[Necron|Older-than-Chaos-itself zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy]]...
*[[C'Tan|Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars, whose single desire is harvesting all living souls]]...
*[[Orks|A race of nigh-unkillable barbarians, genetically engineered to have pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams only be about rip and tear]]...
*[[Tau|Technologically superior space communists wanting to assimilate everyone in their quasi heirarchical-Communist empire and who take after Billy Mays]]...
*[[Eldar|Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and to have Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position in planet-sized battle cruisers]]...
*[[Dark Eldar|Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine]]...
*[[Chaos|Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane]]...
*[[Daemon|Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on]]...
*[[Chaos Space Marines|Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived]]...
*[[Rak'gol|Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun]]...
*[[Slaugth|Giant Swarms of Worms in cloaks who might be older than The Old Ones who are more sadistic that the Dark Eldar and More Manipulative than regular Eldar and Feed on Humans in the Most Disgusting and Painful way imaginable (Hint it Involves Maggots.)]]...
*[[Q'Orl|Massive insectoid hive mind filled to the brim with heavy firepower and has a slow but growing empire that is one of the largest in the galaxy, dwarfing the Tau several hundred times over and is seen as the next successor of galactic domination after humanities potential fall]]...
*[[Games Workshop|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]]...
*[[Sly Marbo|And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is]]...

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

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

That said, to Games Workshop's credit His being [[Ultramarines|buttfucked by His own hubris and disregard for the humanity He claimed to be guiding]] in this manner was probably [[Grimdark|intentional as a classic tale of Greek Tragedy]].

==The possible death of the Emperor==
[[File:Emperor of mankind flaming sword armor.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Badass and glorious.]]
With the Golden Throne being consistently worn out, and the Tech-priests too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it, it is certainly possible that the Emperor may die one day, which will obviously result in all of the Imperial worlds and factions to cry tears of disappointment and subsequently devolve into chaos (maybe even with a capital "C"). There are however, 3 possible outcomes of what can happen if the Emperor eventually dies:

===The new Eye of Terror===
Conventional wisdom and the [[Eldar]], says that in the event that the Emperor dies, a new Eye of Terror will be created with Terra at it's center, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets/systems(?) into the Warp. The current main rulebook says that all of reality will be plunged into the warp if the Emperor dies. Even the [[Ecclesiarchy]] agrees that if the Emperor were ever to die, humanity would be FUCKED at the barest minimum.

This is supported by the fact that the '''Golden Throne''' ''(itself a portal to the Webway)'' was broken by [[Magnus]], causing a warp tear to open on Terra, which the Emperor has had to spend every second for the last 10,000 years concentrating on to keep from getting any bigger (while the [[Adeptus Custodes]] have spent the same amount of time chopping up daemons that slip through the crack). They will not be able to stop a full daemonic invasion if the rift would open fully.

Additionally, a new Chaos God could be created (just like with the Eye of Terror and the Eldar), which will most certainly be a God of all the Grimdarkness in the galaxy, ensuring that it would eclipse all of the powers of the other Gods, as the Emperor would finally be the God of all. This is especially true, since nearly everything that is grimdark stems from Chaos and the entire WH40K setting is itself a massive pile of it... That or Malal would burst back into existence, which does have some possibility of happening, since Malal was/is the Chaos god of Atheism, which was the "truth"-part of the Emperor's "Imperial Truth" doctrine.

Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality by merging the Materium (reality) and the Warp into a singular dimension. But that's unlikely, since the birth of the latest Chaos God, Slaanesh, did not destroy reality and he/she/it/xe was fueled by the near extinction of a race far more psychically powerful than humanity. On the other hand, Slaanesh was forced to battle Khorne and most of the Eldar Gods during it's first birth moments. That would not be the case if the 5th Chaos God would be born.

===Regeneration===
No, not the [[Doctor Who]] kind. The Horus Heresy novel 'Vulkan Lives', heavily implies that the Emperor is a [[Perpetual]], just like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson and [[Anval Thawn]], all of who were able to survive multiple deaths that completely obliterated their bodies in the process. So all He simply needs to do is for his current material body to die normally, and wait a couple of hours/days and He'd be reborn again (in the "get up off the ground and dust Himself off" sense (Though one has to wonder why the Emperor would have had Himself interred in the Golden Throne in the first place if He thought He'd heal. Probably to power the Astronomican?)). All of this is still speculation (duh). Vulkan, for instance, was driven mad by the torturous experiences he had endured thanks to Night Haunter, and they were child's play, compared to sitting in unthinkable agony, unable to move or speak for ten thousand years while feeling Himself rotting away. And don't you forget [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|that nose itch]]. However, a more commonly held belief is that He will get up, re-establish the [[Imperial Truth]], and [[Great Crusade|just be]] [[Commissar|a cool guy]].

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

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

But think about it: when Malcador took up the Throne so that the Emperor could fight Horus, the device consumed his vitality; and Malcador was not as blessed as the Emps with regen abilities to recover. Now imagine a weakened, crippled being, who's top priority immediately after killing His son is to stop the Webway gate from spilling forth. You don't have time (and nor does the galaxy) to recover from your wounds. So you sit upon the Throne and it consumes you slowly from that point onwards. The chair is stopping any sort of healing factor.

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

This theory is tied closely to the Illuminati, a group of either supremely enlightened individuals or dangerous mutant heretics (depending on which side of the [[Inquisition]] you're on). The Illuminati plan to catch all of the Sensei and sacrifice them upon the Golden Throne at the moment of Emperor's death.

In a bizarre fusion of new and old fluff, it has been revealed that the Illuminati were a minor Tzeentch cult and the Sensei were effectively brainwashed soon-to-be sacrifices in an attempt to bring Tzeentch to the materium. Needless to say, they have been purged by the Inquisition. The fluff in the Jac Draco books revealed that the Ordo Hydra (a small splinter faction of the Illuminati who seek to turn humanity into a psychic hive-mind) is a Tzeentch cult, but that the general Illuminati population - including many Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and the Exorcists [[Chapter]] (as well as their unknown successor chapters) are genuinely incorruptible by Chaos and are freely permitted to access the Black Library along with Harlequin Solitaires. The Inquisition Trilogy was retconned away.
It's just like that frustrating moment you experience when you don't know if the Squats have been nommed by Tyranids or have never existed in the first place.

== Gallery ==
<center><gallery>
File:Golden Throne-Imperial Webway.jpg|The Big E upon the Golden Throne (before the decay set in)
File:Emperor of Mankind Classic Portrait face.jpg|The guiding light in the Imperium of Man shines forever bright. He's also Arnold Schwarzenegger. Try unseeing that now.
Image:1220179589932.jpg|The Emperor protects man from all.
Image:Horus and the Emperor.jpg|<s>Son, I am disappoint.</s> Empy's disappointment occurred well before this moment.
Image:Wh40k-emperor.jpg| Yearbook photo.
Image:When you ruin his groove by Lutherniel.jpg| His groove, do not ruin it.
File:Emperor_Decree.jpg| Emps laying down some rules, mid combat from the looks of it
File:Go Ahead Make My day Emperor.jpg|That is EXACTLY the same look that's on Batman's face when he's about to put the beatdown on someone!
File:Emperor of Mankind model action figure.jpg|He makes for one helluva action figure
Image:8.jpg|The Em-purr-or of all Catkind! Nyah!
Image:God-Emperor_Goldlich.jpg|Death is no excuse to stop bein' pimp.
File:God_Emperor_Interred_On_Golden_Throne.jpg|Thinking to himself, "I really, REALLY hate Horus!"
Image:The Immortal Emprah.jpg
Image:Emperor_miniature.jpg|Roll d6; stays on the field on seven or less
Image:emperor_old.jpg|A real man never dies, even when he's killed.
Image:emperor.png|Down but not out.
Image:Emperormini.jpg|In all His miniature glory
Image:Carrionlord.jpg|<strike>The Carrion Lord with his two left arms.</strike> {{BLAM}} how the fuck did that heretic get past the custodes?
File:Painting.jpg|This painting sold for $900, that lucky ca/tg/url...
Image:Emperor_model.jpg|Probably the best model of him yet
Image:slowemperor.jpg|Oh God-emperor, how did this get here? I am not good with computers.
Image:Emperor_Sagan.jpg|Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Image:EmpsVSigmar.jpg| You all know you wanna see how this pans out!
Image:Emprasque3.jpg|How do you kill what can not die?
Image:Slavegirl Emperor.jpg|Emperor [[Rule 63]]! NO EXCEPTIONS!
Image:Femprah.jpg|Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher.
Image:Femprah_by_Mr-Culexus.jpg|Oh, give it a fucking rest...
Image:GodEmpress.jpg|On second though... this one is... nice.
Image:Emperor_upon_his_other_throne.jpg|Yeah. We get it. The Emperor sits upon the Golden 'Throne'.
Image:1377291976783.jpg|Unbeknownst to many 40k fans, ol'Emps is fairly amicable when he meets an elf/eldar who isn't a complete failure.
Image:First_Founding_Problems.jpg|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.
File:Rainbow Emperor.gif| The Emperor in Rainbow Form
Image:Konya.jpg|The symbol of the town Konya in Turkey. In Central Anatolia. Emprah's birthplace. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Hittite eagle large.jpg|The symbol of ancient (1600BC) Hittite Empire from Anatolia, which, unknown to many, is Emperor's first try at conquering the world. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Emperor mao.jpg|In alternate universe 32-B, Mao Zedong rules the People's Republic of Mankind
Image:NotSureIfWant.jpg|The Emperor has just discovered [[Rule 34]].
Image:Emperuh.jpg|The Emprah is watching you Masturbate!
Image:Emperor blackwhite.jpg|He might be the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe but the Custodes can't give him a decent hygiene program.
Image:1271118030729.jpg|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)
File:Emperor of Mankind Contemplation.jpg|"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!"
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* The [[Imperium]], for the empire he founded.
* [[Sigmar]] Unbroken, his [[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]] counterpart.
* [[Emperor's To-Do List]]
* [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/25959559/ This thread] which makes the Emperor even cooler.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_2nM1GEllg/ 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.
* [[Heresy from the Emprah’s point of view]]
{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Gods]]

The God-Emperor of Mankind

2017-01-19T22:16:01Z

2001:41D0:FE0D:E500:C996:ADB2:BEB9:76E6:

[[File:Lord of Mankind.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Liberating the galaxy is one thing, but he was so powerful he never once stopped looking ''fabulous'' while doing it.]]
<div style="text-align:center;font-size:1.10em;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"><span style='color:gold;font-size:100%'> I have come to eradicate Religion as it is the bane of Man, warped in superstition, ignorance and fear! - The Emperor before the Treason of Horus'''</span> </div>

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

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy. We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos. We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
<br>++ Ayhmen ++</i><br>
-- the [[Imperial Cult|Creed]] of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra</blockquote>

''"Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please."''<br>
— Niccoló Machiavelli

''Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.''<br>
- Proverbs 16:18

The '''God-Emperor of Mankind''', also known as '''The Emprah''', '''Jimmy Zeng''','''Emps''', '''Big E''', '''E-Money''', '''Augustus Imperator''', '''Master of Mankind''', '''Space Jesus,''' and also sometimes called '''The Anathema''', '''The Carrion Lord''', '''The False Emperor''', '''The Immortal Emperor''' or '''The Corpse on the Throne''' is the figurehead ruler of the [[Imperium of Man]] in the [[Warhammer 40k]] universe and is the only sustaining [[Tzeentch|Hope]] for Humanity as Faster than Light Travel is [[Astronomican|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 [[/b/|hellish mess]] that it is. In the [[Imperium]], questioning whatever your superior yells at you, is "moronic" and [[heresy|heretical]], and is typically punished by [[blam|peace]] (at least in the material realm). He created the 20 primarchs, who viewed him as their "father". However, he saw them more as tools, and instead of names, referred to them by numbers. *Dick*. It goes without saying that would The Emperor be up and about in the 41st millennium He would be very disappointed. Most fa/tg/uys expect Him to [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191520/bio speak in a generic deep, stentorian voice].

Also wrote Pinocchio, which would make Carlo Collodi one of his aliases, He also began life as a two-bit undertaker in an obscure Middle-Eastern village.

==The Entire History of the Emprah==
===Early life===
[[File:Majestica.jpg|250px|left|thumb|Big E gets all the bitches.]]
The Emperor is a [[Perpetual]]; an immortal psyker with countless lifetimes' worth of knowledge and power and the ambition to use it. According to the fluff, the being that would eventually become known as The Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) on the banks of the Sakarya river to a tribe of proto-[[Wikipedia:Hittites|Hittites]]. From his own account, his path towards greatness was spurred on when his uncle murdered his father; so kid-Emps did the responsible thing and gave his uncle a myocardial infarction. Kid-Emps then realised that humans needed laws, and good laws needed to be given by good leaders: setting him on the (xeno/geno)cidal path of self-righteousness and conquest that would continue for the next 38,000 years.

Allegedly, ''(according to 1st & 2nd edition fluff)'', his birth was the result of hundreds of human shamans committing ritual suicide to be reborn as a single individual capable of protecting humanity from the [[Chaos Gods]]. However, [[Skub|the validity of this fluff is frequently questioned]], given it hasn't been "official" since second edition. However, this theory seems unlikely, especially given that other Perpetuals are known to exist, [[Ollanius Pius|some of which]] may be even older than the Emperor, and they don't have godlike powers. The Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival due to his acquisition of powers at a later point ''(see below)''. Yet other fluff tidbits imply that he is some sort of flesh-construct from the Dark Age of Technology run amok and aping human affectation. This one seems to have some level of truth to it, as Constantin Valdor neither confirmed nor denied it when a shit-kicking Nord Afrikan minister mentioned it to him.

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

Sometime around the 11th or 12th century, He battled a shard of the [[Void Dragon]] in modern-day Libya. He eventually defeated it and locked it on [[Mars]], allowing the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] to control machines... eventually. Of course, it's not entirely clear whether this is true or not -- it's entirely possible that ALL of the Emperor's history is a lazily-crafted lie He throws around because no one can debunk it. Although given how [[Awesome]] it sounds, we're going to say it is. Either that, or it's just another example of how [[Games Workshop|Geedubs]] can't be bothered to keep their stories consistent even about the most important parts of the setting.

Whatever his actual origins might have been, for the most part He more or less stayed out of the way of humanity's progress during the next 30,000 years of history, including the [[Dark Age of Technology]], though hot-off-the-press fluff indicates He might have been traversing outer space in old-style NASA rockets with the other Perpetuals, to eventually coming to find the planet '''Molech''', where He passed through a gateway that led ''directly'' to the fortresses of the four [[Chaos Gods]]. Here He either challenged, bargained, or stole portions of power from a source claimed by the gods as their own. This would earn Him the ire of the duped/defeated Ruinous Powers, who consider him as some sort of usurper or that he reneged on some kind of undisclosed deal we haven't been made aware of yet.

===Unification Wars===
He returned to Terra at the closing years of the [[Age of Strife]]. With Terra cut off from the rest of the Human empire and the Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians", in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the E-money decided to reveal Himself, using His mastery of genetic engineering to create the [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]] and cheaper, easier to make [[Thunder Warriors]] ''(the predecessors of the Space Marines)''. Using "join-me-or-die" tactics, He managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the event called Unification Wars. Then, He made contact with the Mechanicum of Mars and calling Himself the [[Omnissiah]], convinced them to build Him weapons and space-ships. Around this time, He also created a doctrine, the [[Imperial Truth]], which states that religion, faith, and superstition must be all banned, because they have never succeeded in unifying the human race during all of Emp's lifetime. Simply put: the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" mumbo-jumbo has never worked and now must be eradicated.

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

===Great Crusade===
But, before He set out to conquer the stars with the newly-formed Imperial Army (which contained both [[Imperial Guard|ground forces]] and [[Imperial Navy|space-borne fleets]]), He decided to create the twenty [[Primarch]]s, using Himself as the genetic template, while splitting the additional power He ''stole'' from the Gods into 20 portions, infusing each piece with a fragment of His own personality, to allow them, in turn, to congeal and gestate (just like how daemons are born!) into the indomitable souls of His future Primarchs. Then, He bound each such vessel/soul to their godlike bodies/shells as they formed in their gestation capsules. Let this sink in: each primarch is basically a unique daemonic soul, bound to a super awesomely tough material body. Though with this power ''apparently'' stolen, The Big Four will inevitably and continually be pissed at Him for using their power for His own ends. So the Chaos Gods snatched the primarchs away (via time-travel-as-a-vision shenanigans, don't even try to explain it here, just read ''The First Heretic''), inside their incubator pods and all, from the secret lab underneath the Himalayas, to scatter them away across the galaxy. Luckily for the Emperor, some genetic code was left over from each primarch, so from that He created 20 Legions to serve as the elites of His army: The [[Space Marine|SPEHSS MEHREENS]]. So, with His armies and space-ships complete (minus the Primarchs, which He hoped to find), He embarked upon the [[Great Crusade]], to once again make humanity great again.

However, the Emperor himself states to Arkhan Land ''(the guy who discovered Land Speeders/Raiders)'' that he never considered the Primarchs to be his literal sons and saw them as well-crafted tools so he could get his work done. Likening himself to Geppetto ''(from 'Pinocchio')'' in that it is only natural for 20 wooden boys to think of their creator as "Father". Whether He felt any kinship between all of them or only some of them is not entirely known. But it seems like He was all like, "Yall think I'm a bad dad, but look, shit I just made these kids in a lab! I'm not really their dad!". Then again He puts on personas for every occasion (during the meeting, Land saw him as not as a gold armoured god, but as an utterly logical scientist and the Emperor had the whole shtick of people interpreting his words in the manner that made the most sense to them personally) who really knows when He's being genuine or not or how He feels.

As He found each Primarch, He assigned them command of their respective Legions and to act as His generals, warlords and pantheon of heroes that humanity were meant to emulate, in the quest to unify humanity in the Great Crusade ''(although, at some point, one of them was executed and the other disappeared, leaving only 18 Primarchs and Legions after 100 years of the Great Crusade).''

A military campaign of a grand scale, this is also when the SPESS MEHREENS were most awesome and at their peak. [[just as planned|Just when things seemed to be going well]], the [[Horus Heresy]] took place, where 8.5 of the Primarchs and their respective legions rebel against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew [[Horus]] (who was daddy's favorite) but at a great cost. The Emperor was mortally wounded to the point that He had to be put permanently on a life support system known as the [[Golden Throne]]. On that day, an untold amount of manly tears was shed.

==="Modern" Day===
Subsequently, 10 thousand years later, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic, [[grimdark]] empire we all know and love today, in the 41st millennium. In the 500th year of the 41st Millennium (the exact middle of the millennium), which is a few centuries before the Time of Ending began, visions and signs reach out to all walks of life and social status to the Imperium of the Emperor crying, whether it's to lowly denizens of an underhive having dreams about it, to respected sanctioned psykers reading it from the Imperial Tarot, to shamans on feral planets instinctively knowing that the extra rain pouring down lately are tears of sadness from their "sky god".

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents [[daemon|daemon kind]] from directly assailing [[Terra]], while additionally sustaining the psychic-beacon known as the [[Astronomican]], that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.

It is common knowledge, that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker alive, humbling even the [[Eldar]]. It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, [[Conan the Barbarian]], [[meme|Chuck Norris]], Christopher Lee and Jesus. It is uncertain as to whether or not His internment on the Golden Throne is a good thing. Some believe that if He were to die, the [[Imperium]] would be truly fall into darkness, whereas others believe that if allowed to finally die, He would reincarnate and return to unify the galaxy once more, stronger than ever. Whatever the truth, [[Games Workshop]] are probably never going to advance the story, so speculation has little worth. Unless you take Warhammer Fantasy as an example, where the time-line ended. Badly.

==The Emprah Himself==
[[File:Climax.jpg|250px|right|thumb|A typical father-and-son chat between Empy and Horus.]]
:''"The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible [[Venus' Burn|father...]]"
:- [[Roboute Guilliman]], giving a short, yet accurate biography of the Emperor. Though on the other hand, he was actually a terrible father because he never actually saw himself as their father.
.

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

The Emperor is said to be so powerful that He could [[C'tan|destroy suns with ease]], though He has never actually done so (he however, ''made'' a golden sun which he put in the middle of his broken Webway gate to prevent daemons from spilling through, albeit needing to concentrate on powering it for the next ten thousand years. This would indicate that the Emperor does indeed have the power to destroy stars.). The [[Chaos Gods]] are scared as fuck of the guy, calling him respectively "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to [[Chaos]]. The [[Eldar]] fear that if the Emperor were to die, a new [[Eye of Terror]] would pop out with Terra at its center and possibly a new Chaos God would be born.

He was also capable of summoning what can only be called an army of human souls (including every soldier who had died for him, Ferrus Manus included) to fight for him; an ability utterly unseen in the 40k universe and suggesting that he has some fundamental connection to human souls in the afterlife - a comforting thought compared to dissolving into the Warp to be eaten by daemons and giving some credence to the 40k era theory that when the Time of Ending...ends..the Emperor and all loyal human souls will join in one final battle against Chaos.

After He was nearly killed by His son, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia. Most of the fluff maintains that His existence on a day-to-day basis since then is a living hell (by comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one, would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter) and yet He carries on. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that He will just take a sit and die. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. It gives Him a fuckton of work to do, and along with being THE lighthouse in the Warp, guiding the Imperial Navy, He also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the [[daemon|nasties]] of the Warp where they're supposed to be (i.e. not invading realspace to make the lives of all living things miserable). He also does it for the good of humanity (sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?). In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and the Emperor is dying. There is a chance of the Emperor returning to life, as well as the risk that He will die forever. If the latter would be the case, then everyone in the galaxy will become a Chaos sex toy/punching bag/plague vector/science experiment. Note that if the Emperor recovers, He'd be several hundred times more powerful. Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act. Maybe. Since then, Empy has probably gained about 365 gigafucktrillion souls since he got put on that Throne (see: leveling in Dark Souls), as he ''is'' the afterlife now, provided one excludes the veritable Hell that is the Warp. And all that stuff the Eldar get up to.

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

His desire to guide and protect humanity, in addition to His power, made the Emperor as close to a farseer as humanity was ever going to get. He declared humanity to be superior to all Xenos which was fair enough considering the collapse of the Eldar, planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed in order to protect them from the whispers of Chaos (fantastic idea anyway), planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), cared little for the Primarchs being His actual sons (thinking of them as generals and tools rather than biological offspring, and screwing over several of them in His efforts to recruit them / making them follow orders (hence causing some of their later betrayals)), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... All because this was the only way He could foresee humanity surviving the threats to come. Also known as the "Golden Path". Any other action He ever partook in, no matter how unorthodox or morally questionable or just outright horrific was secondary to the one and only goal: survival. For a being that's lived millennia, having foreseen as much as is possible to do so whilst not being an actual god, His way was the only way lest we all face extinction. Those were the options with the context of the universe He found Himself in. Time was against Him, and expediency was the order of the day; secure the physical safety of Mankind in the galaxy then safeguard their minds and souls. Everything else was a tool to be utilized in pursuit of that single purpose. It didn't matter how the godlike princelings felt, or how they were raised; it only mattered that they performed their allocated tasks as swiftly and efficiently as possible so that He could move on to the next phase of His Great Work.

His reign eventually [[Inquisition|killed more humans]] (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of humanity's dictators in history. Even during the Unification Wars, several Terran cultures were wiped out completely (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, just to make a point, even after its forces were defeated and its people ready to surrender), while simultaneously being pretty terrible at incorporating non-Terran elements. Because THAT is just how damn important and dire the circumstances were. An entire galaxy spanning empire needed to be constructed in little under two centuries when the cataclysm was foreseen to occur and ain't no one got time to fart arse about with treating people the way they deserve if the species won't survive.

Contrary to popular belief, he really did think the post-Ullanor phase through to some degree, Horus was the right choice as Warmaster for no other could command the respect of nearly all his brother better than Lupercal the First. And Dorn as Praetorian was as correct a decision as was possible to make considering that his talents were put to good use throughout the Heresy that followed. There was no need to put a Primarch in charge of the Council of Terra for the Primarchs were not made to rule, but to serve as generals in retaking the galaxy. Humanity was to be governed by humanity. Primarchs like say, Guilliman, though perfect as an administrator, was better suited and needed as a general for the Great Crusade. Honestly, it's bewildering that no one in the military saw the need for human administration. Having godlike Primarchs in charge at the top only serves to increase superstition in a secular galaxy when the idea was to rid humanity of religion and superstition in order to better protect it from warp predation.

To be fair, the whole reason humanity (and the Emperor) hates aliens is because during the Age of Strife numerous Xenos races exploited humanity's trust and either raided, lollygagged, looted or all of the above and were generally a nuisance the entire time. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop all that from happening again is to wipe out all Xenos that might even think to pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few Xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all, or were intelligent at all, in which case [[Exterminatus|the results]] were predictable). Ever since His ascension, the Imperium forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated. But on the other hand, [[Orks|the]] [[Necron|most]] [[Tyranids|common]] [[Tau|xenos]] [[Dark Eldar|are]] [[Eldrad|dicks]] and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to ''Horus Rising'', the idea of letting Xenos exist and then eventually grow stronger is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the Interex/Diasporex).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. Graham McNeill generally portrays Him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), Dan Abnett portrays Him as competent but bloodthirsty, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays Him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile (and even this is counterbalanced by his portrayal in Master of Mankind, where he's interestingly a mixture of all the previous portrayals at once - which is kinda of appropriate really). Chris Wraight, as far as he has portrayed Him, has done so through the eyes of Jaghatai Khan, showing Him as deeply flawed and distant from His own sons, but also countering that He was working towards goals even the Primarchs couldn't fully grasp. Even in Path of Heaven, where the Khan gets close to learning the secrets of the Webway project, he's shown to not have all the cards (the Emperor's knowledge that humanity is evolving into a psychic race, for example).

===His Goals and Flaws===
*Lead and shape Mankind into a psychic race and surpass the Eldar by learning from their mistakes.
*Unite Humanity under one aegis and allow for instant communication and travel across all human inhabited worlds, thereby uniting the species in a way that it had never been before.

In order to achieve this He had to:
*Reclaim every single human inhabited world, spacecraft or station;
*Purge all humans that had deviated from the normal strain of humanity (because they would not evolve into the predicted psychic species and threatened the Plan with their deviancy);
*Remove alien influence or control from human worlds;
*Eliminate external Xenos threats throughout the galaxy that might challenge or become a threat to Mankind's supremacy.
*Shelter and protect Humanity from the fell hand of [[Chaos]].

To achieve those secondary goals He had to:
*Create [[Primarchs|superhuman generals]] to bestride the galaxy and lead men to innumerable victories;
*Create [[Space Marines|superhuman soldiers]] powerful enough to retake the galaxy beneath the banners of said generals from any enemy;
*Remove the influence of religion from the collective psyche of the human species in order to protect them from the insidious whispers of Chaos (often mistaken for something supernatural and hence a gateway to disaster).

So in the pursuit of those tertiary goals, the Emperor undertook the Great Crusade. Once it was over, all the Primarchs were to have their place Lorgar was to be the Emperor's Herald and shelter mankind from superstition through enlightenment so that if ever they heard whispers in the dark; they knew it was not natural and to be feared by it, thus denying its embrace. Magnus was to assist the Emperor in sitting on the Golden Throne of earth, thus powering the human Webway (somehow), becoming a key figure in Humanity's ascension. Horus was to protect Mankind from [[Tyranids|external]] [[Necrons|physical]] [[Orks|threats]] throughout the Galaxy as Humanity's general. Konrad was to be the enforcer of the Emperor's Laws. Mortarion, His watchguard of wayward deviancy etc.

But the Imperium was only one half of the Plan. The other was the Webway, allowing nigh-instantaneous travel and communication, limiting Mankind's reliance on the warp to almost nothing in the form of Warp travel and thus protecting them against the influence of Chaos. Therefore allowing Mankind to evolve in relative safety and security under the direct guidance and control of the Emperor. When Mankind would be ready, we'd be protected from the warp naturally. That was the final crowning achievement that would bring all the Emperor's plans to fruition and pull all the wayward goals into one singular perfect Great Work. All the sacrifice, all the death, all the heartache, the glory, the battles, the trials and tribulation, 48,000 years of history was culminating into that one Plan. And it all would've been worth it because Mankind would've been saved for all time. Worth any price, where the ends justified the means, or so he claimed.

And yet at the same time, it was this very same pragmatism that ultimately led to his downfall:

*Though his pragmatism made him a superb ruler in wartime, the ultra-militarized society He had [[First Founding|created]] was entirely dependent on war to function properly. Even if the Great Crusade had proceeded exactly as the Emperor expected, it would have run out of enemies eventually. And when you have a whole lot of newly unemployed soldiers with no other skills beyond killing on your hands...well, they tend to get rowdy.
*The Emperor's concern for humanity belied the fact that humanity was little more than an abstraction in his eyes, and one which could only exist if ''he'' was ruling it all. The fact that other human civilizations such as the Interex had already found ways to fight against Chaos on their own and were just as advanced as the Imperium (if not more so) meant very little to him (or at least, to his Plan). In his mind, he alone knew what was good for humanity and anything short of total submission to the Imperium was grounds for destruction. Any sign that his Plan might have been flawed was either explained away or destroyed outright, lest it seem like He might have made a mistake.
*He not only made a critical mistake in thinking the Chaos Gods were empowered by religious worship, but also failed to understand that trying to erase religion was actively counterproductive to his goals. Lacking the immortality and inhumanly grand perspective of the Emperor, it's a basic part of human nature to look for meaning and purpose in a cause greater than oneself, especially in the harsh and grimdark universe that was [[Age of Strife|Old Night]]. The Imperial Truth tried to do this, but it didn't take into account that "reason", "logic", and "humanism" were by definition too mundane to be suited for the replacement of the old religions. The fact that the Imperial Cult took off so quickly after the Emperor's internment on the Golden Throne (and is arguably the only thing keeping the Imperium a remotely unified entity in the present) is proof that the Emperor was once again either too stubborn for his own good or too divorced from the "normal" human condition to understand the value of faith. In either case, all it accomplished was giving all four of the Ruinous Powers a reason to get rid of him, while also giving them an invaluable tool to do so in the form of Lorgar. And all while he was telling the Primarchs that daemons were just another xenos race, ensuring that none of them would be on the lookout for Chaotic corruption among themselves or their legions.
*For a guy who says he's trying to avoid the same mistakes the Eldar made, his obsession with human supremacy and the supposed "purity" of the human form (as defined by what, his own opinion?) are almost indistinguishable from the pre-Fall Eldar's certainty that they were the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Even if humanity did become a purely psychic race, nothing would stop it from making ''another'' Chaos God by accident. (It's not a stretch to hypothesize that this was itself a ploy for him to use the collective psychic power of humanity to elevate himself to the status of godhood, where he could truly rule with infinite power.)
**The only beings who knew how to create new parts of the Webway were the Old Ones, and they're all dead. At best, the Webway project would've delayed the inevitable before the fact that nobody can figure out how to keep it working became obvious. And since the Warp already bleeds into the Webway at the best of times...well, the whole thing would've been rendered pointless.
*Most damningly of all, his total disregard for the possibility that the Primarchs might actually have their own thoughts and feelings ended up being one of the key reasons why so many of the Legions ended up falling to Chaos:
**Lorgar's case (and the entirety of the Horus Heresy for that matter) would have been entirely avoidable if the Emperor acted like a genuine father figure for once in his lifetime and explained to Lorgar why his Emperor worship had to stop (which the Emperor, with all his undeniable charisma could have achieved). Instead, he had to act like a total dick and utterly humiliate his son by having his grandest city utterly ransacked and ruined, all to prove a point (and just to be an even bigger dick; he had one of Lorgar's own [[Roboute Guilliman|brothers]] do his dirty work.).
**Angron's case is self-explanatory; honestly, if it weren't for Emps sending him into battle so often he would have rebelled sooner. Sure, he couldn't just let one of his Primarchs get himself killed in a slave revolt, but you'd think he'd send down some of the War Hounds or something instead of warping him away and earning Angron's undying hatred.
**[[Fulgrim]]'s road to damnation started because he decided to loot a Slaaneshi-possesed sword. Knowing nothing about Chaos, Fulgrim had no idea he was using an incredibly dangerous warp artifact that that would lead to untold consequences. It didn't help that his strict xenophobic teachings prevented Fulgrim from taking [[Eldrad]]'s advice about the Laer Blade into account.
**Even with the Webway fuckup (which itself could have been prevented had the Emperor not kept it a secret from the most important people in his plans) Magnus might have remained a loyalist if the Emperor had been more concerned with the news of Horus's betrayal and fall to Chaos than with Magnus breaking his edicts. Of course, Magnus being nigh-possessed by [[Tzeentch|that one cuttlefish]] at the time means no one could really blame the Emperor for maybe thinking Tzeentch was pulling something.
**Similarly to Angron, [[Mortarion]] always resented the Emperor for not letting him get to kill his adoptive father, and when the Emperor refused to give him an answer about the obvious piece of Warp-tech that was the Golden Throne he concluded that the Emperor was a hypocrite and the Imperial Truth was bullshit.
**The Emperor, being the wisest and most powerful human Psyker in the galaxy of all people, should have been able to see that [[Konrad Curze]] was an unstable psyker who was on the fast road to devolving into insanity due to his uncontrolled talents.
**Completely ignoring that [[Perturabo]] needlessly had one in ten men in his legion killed by Decimation. Coupled with the fact that Perturabo was originally a peaceful, diplomatic soul; these two should have triggered some alarm bells about his mental stability.
**Horus himself was only pushed to fall because the Chaos Gods played on his worries that he wasn't fit to be Warmaster combined with the unrealised, greater fear that the Emperor never cared for him as a person and that he and the other Primarchs would have no place in the Imperium after the Great Crusade's conclusion. You'd have thought the Emperor's most beloved son would at least have been shown the special rooms in the Imperial Palace the Emperor made specifically for the Primarchs to live in after the Great Crusade ended, or at least discussed what he had planned for them when they weren't needed as generals any longer.
**Perhaps the biggest kicker to this is that if we're going to take all of Black Library into account, the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further his ambitions. What fatherly image he's been projecting to them has been nothing more than a facade to placate his sons. Hence, even if the Horus Heresy either never happened or had a better outcome; its likely that his indifference to his own superhuman children's well-being would have spelled even more problems for him down the line, as it would've been only a matter of time for them to realize how little their "father" cared about them. Although one can always argue that the remaining Primarchs stayed loyal either because they believed in his vision for humanity or were too loyal to be turned, there's no telling exactly how long that might have gone on after the Great Crusade's end - some of them showed signs of disloyalty to the Emperor even during the Heresy, only staying on his side either out of loyalty to Mankind as a whole (like Guilliman), by recognizing the other side as an even greater evil (like Jagatai), or only because the Imperium is on the winning side (if Curze's trolling was true; The Lion).

==Worship of the Emperor==
[[File:646545.jpg|thumb|300px|What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to [[Rip and tear|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 armor is a mech and that that's a regular-sized skull) Anyway, back to the topic. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often.]]

The Imperium advocates worship the Emperor as the one true God through the [[Imperial Creed]]. This creed is propagated and its adherence is enforced by the [[Ecclesiarchy|Adeptus Ministorum]] and the [[Inquisition]]. All citizens and fighters of the Imperium have little-to-no say about their choice in faith (or lack thereof); they ''must'' worship the Emperor through the various Ministorum-approved faiths throughout the galaxy (due to varying cultures, many planets have their own way of worshiping the Emperor. Although these are heavily regulated by the Ministorum to weed out any heretical influences.), there is no middle road or compromise that doesn't involve the apostate being on the receiving end of a state-sponsored public lynching. Anyone who defies or deviates from the teachings of the Imperial Creed, whether willingly or unwillingly (after all, incompetence is inexcusable in the eyes of the Emperor), is condemned as a heretic and is executed (whether its going to be fast or excruciatingly slow is dependent on the person judging the condemned). Forgiveness for one's sins is possible, although these cases are exorbitantly rare (atleast the ones that doesn't end with the accused being condemned to a glorious death.).

Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, they pretty much forgot what the Emperor taught them when He preached the Imperial Truth. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption by hoping that ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place. Some saw that the Emperor [[Mortarion|lied to them by holding the truth hidden]], some did [[Magnus|not know how to handle the temptation]] the Gods conveyed, some did [[Fulgrim|not even know that they were manipulated]] all this time and by whom, some would [[Lorgar|try to seek out something to place their faith upon]], not realizing what would needed to be done to become chosen in the eyes of the Gods. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the [[Interex]], another atheist empire who understood that threat of Chaos, but treated that information secularly and scientifically: they told every citizen everything that was known about "Kaos", and thus resisted the taint altogether.

In the Emperor's long game, he knew that humanity was evolving into a psychic species with even more potential than the Eldar, and look what happened to them? E-money wanted mankind to be [[Star Trek|a utopia of science and reason]], by eliminating religion (and thus preventing the temptations of daemons), controlling psykers (and thus preventing random daemonic possessions), and eliminating warp travel by creating the Human Webway (and thus eliminating all human contact with Chaos when traveling through the Warp). He wanted to isolate humanity from the Chaos Gods, cause who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp with no way of getting out?

Regarding the religion angle: the Emperor very much realized that Chaos runs off emotion, all everyday emotion, and not ''just'' worship; the stronger the emotions, the stronger the Gods get. The problem with religion is that it allows too many avenues for Daemons to exploit: a whisper here and a miracle there, then you get people praying to them, then shortly afterwards you get a planet turned inside out. His plan was not to starve the chaos gods of sustenance and ultimately defeat them, he knew it was impossible, his plan was just to prevent them from touching humanity ever again.

However, He made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite His best efforts, nothing was enough to fill the place of religion in human society. Ironically, the best solution would be not to suppress faith but to redirect it towards something else, but because of his natural awesomeness, unmatched psychic powers and enigmatic nature, that "something else" ended up being the Emperor himself. After He went off being the most powerful psychic cucumber in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium, belief in Him sort of helped the Imperium stand together against all odds, even if it basically dropped 99.9% of humanity's IQ in the process. With the Warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged His power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while His body is still stuck in it's current physical state of near-death. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

*[[Tyranids|Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locust who exist only to feed and multiply it's biomass]]...
*[[Necron|Older-than-Chaos-itself zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy]]...
*[[C'Tan|Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars, whose single desire is harvesting all living souls]]...
*[[Orks|A race of nigh-unkillable barbarians, genetically engineered to have pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams only be about rip and tear]]...
*[[Tau|Technologically superior space communists wanting to assimilate everyone in their quasi heirarchical-Communist empire and who take after Billy Mays]]...
*[[Eldar|Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and to have Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position in planet-sized battle cruisers]]...
*[[Dark Eldar|Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine]]...
*[[Chaos|Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane]]...
*[[Daemon|Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on]]...
*[[Chaos Space Marines|Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived]]...
*[[Rak'gol|Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun]]...
*[[Slaugth|Giant Swarms of Worms in cloaks who might be older than The Old Ones who are more sadistic that the Dark Eldar and More Manipulative than regular Eldar and Feed on Humans in the Most Disgusting and Painful way imaginable (Hint it Involves Maggots.)]]...
*[[Q'Orl|Massive insectoid hive mind filled to the brim with heavy firepower and has a slow but growing empire that is one of the largest in the galaxy, dwarfing the Tau several hundred times over and is seen as the next successor of galactic domination after humanities potential fall]]...
*[[Games Workshop|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]]...
*[[Sly Marbo|And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is]]...

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

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

That said, to Games Workshop's credit His being [[Ultramarines|buttfucked by His own hubris and disregard for the humanity He claimed to be guiding]] in this manner was probably [[Grimdark|intentional as a classic tale of Greek Tragedy]].

==The possible death of the Emperor==
[[File:Emperor of mankind flaming sword armor.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Badass and glorious.]]
With the Golden Throne being consistently worn out, and the Tech-priests too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it, it is certainly possible that the Emperor may die one day, which will obviously result in all of the Imperial worlds and factions to cry tears of disappointment and subsequently devolve into chaos (maybe even with a capital "C"). There are however, 3 possible outcomes of what can happen if the Emperor eventually dies:

===The new Eye of Terror===
Conventional wisdom and the [[Eldar]], says that in the event that the Emperor dies, a new Eye of Terror will be created with Terra at it's center, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets/systems(?) into the Warp. The current main rulebook says that all of reality will be plunged into the warp if the Emperor dies. Even the [[Ecclesiarchy]] agrees that if the Emperor were ever to die, humanity would be FUCKED at the barest minimum.

This is supported by the fact that the '''Golden Throne''' ''(itself a portal to the Webway)'' was broken by [[Magnus]], causing a warp tear to open on Terra, which the Emperor has had to spend every second for the last 10,000 years concentrating on to keep from getting any bigger (while the [[Adeptus Custodes]] have spent the same amount of time chopping up daemons that slip through the crack). They will not be able to stop a full daemonic invasion if the rift would open fully.

Additionally, a new Chaos God could be created (just like with the Eye of Terror and the Eldar), which will most certainly be a God of all the Grimdarkness in the galaxy, ensuring that it would eclipse all of the powers of the other Gods, as the Emperor would finally be the God of all. This is especially true, since nearly everything that is grimdark stems from Chaos and the entire WH40K setting is itself a massive pile of it... That or Malal would burst back into existence, which does have some possibility of happening, since Malal was/is the Chaos god of Atheism, which was the "truth"-part of the Emperor's "Imperial Truth" doctrine.

Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality by merging the Materium (reality) and the Warp into a singular dimension. But that's unlikely, since the birth of the latest Chaos God, Slaanesh, did not destroy reality and he/she/it/xe was fueled by the near extinction of a race far more psychically powerful than humanity. On the other hand, Slaanesh was forced to battle Khorne and most of the Eldar Gods during it's first birth moments. That would not be the case if the 5th Chaos God would be born.

===Regeneration===
No, not the [[Doctor Who]] kind. The Horus Heresy novel 'Vulkan Lives', heavily implies that the Emperor is a [[Perpetual]], just like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson and [[Anval Thawn]], all of who were able to survive multiple deaths that completely obliterated their bodies in the process. So all He simply needs to do is for his current material body to die normally, and wait a couple of hours/days and He'd be reborn again (in the "get up off the ground and dust Himself off" sense (Though one has to wonder why the Emperor would have had Himself interred in the Golden Throne in the first place if He thought He'd heal. Probably to power the Astronomican?)). All of this is still speculation (duh). Vulkan, for instance, was driven mad by the torturous experiences he had endured thanks to Night Haunter, and they were child's play, compared to sitting in unthinkable agony, unable to move or speak for ten thousand years while feeling Himself rotting away. And don't you forget [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|that nose itch]]. However, a more commonly held belief is that He will get up, re-establish the [[Imperial Truth]], and [[Great Crusade|just be]] [[Commissar|a cool guy]].

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

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

But think about it: when Malcador took up the Throne so that the Emperor could fight Horus, the device consumed his vitality; and Malcador was not as blessed as the Emps with regen abilities to recover. Now imagine a weakened, crippled being, who's top priority immediately after killing His son is to stop the Webway gate from spilling forth. You don't have time (and nor does the galaxy) to recover from your wounds. So you sit upon the Throne and it consumes you slowly from that point onwards. The chair is stopping any sort of healing factor.

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

This theory is tied closely to the Illuminati, a group of either supremely enlightened individuals or dangerous mutant heretics (depending on which side of the [[Inquisition]] you're on). The Illuminati plan to catch all of the Sensei and sacrifice them upon the Golden Throne at the moment of Emperor's death.

In a bizarre fusion of new and old fluff, it has been revealed that the Illuminati were a minor Tzeentch cult and the Sensei were effectively brainwashed soon-to-be sacrifices in an attempt to bring Tzeentch to the materium. Needless to say, they have been purged by the Inquisition. The fluff in the Jac Draco books revealed that the Ordo Hydra (a small splinter faction of the Illuminati who seek to turn humanity into a psychic hive-mind) is a Tzeentch cult, but that the general Illuminati population - including many Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and the Exorcists [[Chapter]] (as well as their unknown successor chapters) are genuinely incorruptible by Chaos and are freely permitted to access the Black Library along with Harlequin Solitaires. The Inquisition Trilogy was retconned away.
It's just like that frustrating moment you experience when you don't know if the Squats have been nommed by Tyranids or have never existed in the first place.

== Gallery ==
<center><gallery>
File:Golden Throne-Imperial Webway.jpg|The Big E upon the Golden Throne (before the decay set in)
File:Emperor of Mankind Classic Portrait face.jpg|The guiding light in the Imperium of Man shines forever bright. He's also Arnold Schwarzenegger. Try unseeing that now.
Image:1220179589932.jpg|The Emperor protects man from all.
Image:Horus and the Emperor.jpg|<s>Son, I am disappoint.</s> Empy's disappointment occurred well before this moment.
Image:Wh40k-emperor.jpg| Yearbook photo.
Image:When you ruin his groove by Lutherniel.jpg| His groove, do not ruin it.
File:Emperor_Decree.jpg| Emps laying down some rules, mid combat from the looks of it
File:Go Ahead Make My day Emperor.jpg|That is EXACTLY the same look that's on Batman's face when he's about to put the beatdown on someone!
File:Emperor of Mankind model action figure.jpg|He makes for one helluva action figure
Image:8.jpg|The Em-purr-or of all Catkind! Nyah!
Image:God-Emperor_Goldlich.jpg|Death is no excuse to stop bein' pimp.
File:God_Emperor_Interred_On_Golden_Throne.jpg|Thinking to himself, "I really, REALLY hate Horus!"
Image:The Immortal Emprah.jpg
Image:Emperor_miniature.jpg|Roll d6; stays on the field on seven or less
Image:emperor_old.jpg|A real man never dies, even when he's killed.
Image:emperor.png|Down but not out.
Image:Emperormini.jpg|In all His miniature glory
Image:Carrionlord.jpg|<strike>The Carrion Lord with his two left arms.</strike> {{BLAM}} how the fuck did that heretic get past the custodes?
File:Painting.jpg|This painting sold for $900, that lucky ca/tg/url...
Image:Emperor_model.jpg|Probably the best model of him yet
Image:slowemperor.jpg|Oh God-emperor, how did this get here? I am not good with computers.
Image:Emperor_Sagan.jpg|Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Image:EmpsVSigmar.jpg| You all know you wanna see how this pans out!
Image:Emprasque3.jpg|How do you kill what can not die?
Image:Slavegirl Emperor.jpg|Emperor [[Rule 63]]! NO EXCEPTIONS!
Image:Femprah.jpg|Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher.
Image:Femprah_by_Mr-Culexus.jpg|Oh, give it a fucking rest...
Image:GodEmpress.jpg|On second though... this one is... nice.
Image:Emperor_upon_his_other_throne.jpg|Yeah. We get it. The Emperor sits upon the Golden 'Throne'.
Image:1377291976783.jpg|Unbeknownst to many 40k fans, ol'Emps is fairly amicable when he meets an elf/eldar who isn't a complete failure.
Image:First_Founding_Problems.jpg|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.
File:Rainbow Emperor.gif| The Emperor in Rainbow Form
Image:Konya.jpg|The symbol of the town Konya in Turkey. In Central Anatolia. Emprah's birthplace. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Hittite eagle large.jpg|The symbol of ancient (1600BC) Hittite Empire from Anatolia, which, unknown to many, is Emperor's first try at conquering the world. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Emperor mao.jpg|In alternate universe 32-B, Mao Zedong rules the People's Republic of Mankind
Image:NotSureIfWant.jpg|The Emperor has just discovered [[Rule 34]].
Image:Emperuh.jpg|The Emprah is watching you Masturbate!
Image:Emperor blackwhite.jpg|He might be the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe but the Custodes can't give him a decent hygiene program.
Image:1271118030729.jpg|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)
File:Emperor of Mankind Contemplation.jpg|"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!"
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* The [[Imperium]], for the empire he founded.
* [[Sigmar]] Unbroken, his [[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]] counterpart.
* [[Emperor's To-Do List]]
* [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/25959559/ This thread] which makes the Emperor even cooler.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_2nM1GEllg/ 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.
* [[Heresy from the Emprah’s point of view]]
{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Gods]]

The God-Emperor of Mankind

2017-01-19T22:15:52Z

2001:41D0:FE0D:E500:C996:ADB2:BEB9:76E6: That Epicorus thingy have nothing to do here - But just in case, here's the citation : ''Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.''<br> ''Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.' (Blablabla)

[[File:Lord of Mankind.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Liberating the galaxy is one thing, but he was so powerful he never once stopped looking ''fabulous'' while doing it.]]
<div style="text-align:center;font-size:1.10em;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"><span style='color:gold;font-size:100%'> I have come to eradicate Religion as it is the bane of Man, warped in superstition, ignorance and fear! - The Emperor before the Treason of Horus'''</span> </div>

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

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy. We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos. We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
<br>++ Ayhmen ++</i><br>
-- the [[Imperial Cult|Creed]] of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra</blockquote>

''"Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please."''<br>
— Niccoló Machiavelli

''Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.''<br>
- Proverbs 16:18

The '''God-Emperor of Mankind''', also known as '''The Emprah''', '''Jimmy Zeng''','''Emps''', '''Big E''', '''E-Money''', '''Augustus Imperator''', '''Master of Mankind''', '''Space Jesus,''' and also sometimes called '''The Anathema''', '''The Carrion Lord''', '''The False Emperor''', '''The Immortal Emperor''' or '''The Corpse on the Throne''' is the figurehead ruler of the [[Imperium of Man]] in the [[Warhammer 40k]] universe and is the only sustaining [[Tzeentch|Hope]] for Humanity as Faster than Light Travel is [[Astronomican|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 [[/b/|hellish mess]] that it is. In the [[Imperium]], questioning whatever your superior yells at you, is "moronic" and [[heresy|heretical]], and is typically punished by [[blam|peace]] (at least in the material realm). He created the 20 primarchs, who viewed him as their "father". However, he saw them more as tools, and instead of names, referred to them by numbers. *Dick*. It goes without saying that would The Emperor be up and about in the 41st millennium He would be very disappointed. Most fa/tg/uys expect Him to [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0191520/bio speak in a generic deep, stentorian voice].

Also wrote Pinocchio, which would make Carlo Collodi one of his aliases, He also began life as a two-bit undertaker in an obscure Middle-Eastern village.

==The Entire History of the Emprah==
===Early life===
[[File:Majestica.jpg|250px|left|thumb|Big E gets all the bitches.]]
The Emperor is a [[Perpetual]]; an immortal psyker with countless lifetimes' worth of knowledge and power and the ambition to use it. According to the fluff, the being that would eventually become known as The Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) on the banks of the Sakarya river to a tribe of proto-[[Wikipedia:Hittites|Hittites]]. From his own account, his path towards greatness was spurred on when his uncle murdered his father; so kid-Emps did the responsible thing and gave his uncle a myocardial infarction. Kid-Emps then realised that humans needed laws, and good laws needed to be given by good leaders: setting him on the (xeno/geno)cidal path of self-righteousness and conquest that would continue for the next 38,000 years.

Allegedly, ''(according to 1st & 2nd edition fluff)'', his birth was the result of hundreds of human shamans committing ritual suicide to be reborn as a single individual capable of protecting humanity from the [[Chaos Gods]]. However, [[Skub|the validity of this fluff is frequently questioned]], given it hasn't been "official" since second edition. However, this theory seems unlikely, especially given that other Perpetuals are known to exist, [[Ollanius Pius|some of which]] may be even older than the Emperor, and they don't have godlike powers. The Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival due to his acquisition of powers at a later point ''(see below)''. Yet other fluff tidbits imply that he is some sort of flesh-construct from the Dark Age of Technology run amok and aping human affectation. This one seems to have some level of truth to it, as Constantin Valdor neither confirmed nor denied it when a shit-kicking Nord Afrikan minister mentioned it to him.

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

Sometime around the 11th or 12th century, He battled a shard of the [[Void Dragon]] in modern-day Libya. He eventually defeated it and locked it on [[Mars]], allowing the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] to control machines... eventually. Of course, it's not entirely clear whether this is true or not -- it's entirely possible that ALL of the Emperor's history is a lazily-crafted lie He throws around because no one can debunk it. Although given how [[Awesome]] it sounds, we're going to say it is. Either that, or it's just another example of how [[Games Workshop|Geedubs]] can't be bothered to keep their stories consistent even about the most important parts of the setting.

Whatever his actual origins might have been, for the most part He more or less stayed out of the way of humanity's progress during the next 30,000 years of history, including the [[Dark Age of Technology]], though hot-off-the-press fluff indicates He might have been traversing outer space in old-style NASA rockets with the other Perpetuals, to eventually coming to find the planet '''Molech''', where He passed through a gateway that led ''directly'' to the fortresses of the four [[Chaos Gods]]. Here He either challenged, bargained, or stole portions of power from a source claimed by the gods as their own. This would earn Him the ire of the duped/defeated Ruinous Powers, who consider him as some sort of usurper or that he reneged on some kind of undisclosed deal we haven't been made aware of yet.

===Unification Wars===
He returned to Terra at the closing years of the [[Age of Strife]]. With Terra cut off from the rest of the Human empire and the Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians", in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the E-money decided to reveal Himself, using His mastery of genetic engineering to create the [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]] and cheaper, easier to make [[Thunder Warriors]] ''(the predecessors of the Space Marines)''. Using "join-me-or-die" tactics, He managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the event called Unification Wars. Then, He made contact with the Mechanicum of Mars and calling Himself the [[Omnissiah]], convinced them to build Him weapons and space-ships. Around this time, He also created a doctrine, the [[Imperial Truth]], which states that religion, faith, and superstition must be all banned, because they have never succeeded in unifying the human race during all of Emp's lifetime. Simply put: the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" mumbo-jumbo has never worked and now must be eradicated.

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

===Great Crusade===
But, before He set out to conquer the stars with the newly-formed Imperial Army (which contained both [[Imperial Guard|ground forces]] and [[Imperial Navy|space-borne fleets]]), He decided to create the twenty [[Primarch]]s, using Himself as the genetic template, while splitting the additional power He ''stole'' from the Gods into 20 portions, infusing each piece with a fragment of His own personality, to allow them, in turn, to congeal and gestate (just like how daemons are born!) into the indomitable souls of His future Primarchs. Then, He bound each such vessel/soul to their godlike bodies/shells as they formed in their gestation capsules. Let this sink in: each primarch is basically a unique daemonic soul, bound to a super awesomely tough material body. Though with this power ''apparently'' stolen, The Big Four will inevitably and continually be pissed at Him for using their power for His own ends. So the Chaos Gods snatched the primarchs away (via time-travel-as-a-vision shenanigans, don't even try to explain it here, just read ''The First Heretic''), inside their incubator pods and all, from the secret lab underneath the Himalayas, to scatter them away across the galaxy. Luckily for the Emperor, some genetic code was left over from each primarch, so from that He created 20 Legions to serve as the elites of His army: The [[Space Marine|SPEHSS MEHREENS]]. So, with His armies and space-ships complete (minus the Primarchs, which He hoped to find), He embarked upon the [[Great Crusade]], to once again make humanity great again.

However, the Emperor himself states to Arkhan Land ''(the guy who discovered Land Speeders/Raiders)'' that he never considered the Primarchs to be his literal sons and saw them as well-crafted tools so he could get his work done. Likening himself to Geppetto ''(from 'Pinocchio')'' in that it is only natural for 20 wooden boys to think of their creator as "Father". Whether He felt any kinship between all of them or only some of them is not entirely known. But it seems like He was all like, "Yall think I'm a bad dad, but look, shit I just made these kids in a lab! I'm not really their dad!". Then again He puts on personas for every occasion (during the meeting, Land saw him as not as a gold armoured god, but as an utterly logical scientist and the Emperor had the whole shtick of people interpreting his words in the manner that made the most sense to them personally) who really knows when He's being genuine or not or how He feels.

As He found each Primarch, He assigned them command of their respective Legions and to act as His generals, warlords and pantheon of heroes that humanity were meant to emulate, in the quest to unify humanity in the Great Crusade ''(although, at some point, one of them was executed and the other disappeared, leaving only 18 Primarchs and Legions after 100 years of the Great Crusade).''

A military campaign of a grand scale, this is also when the SPESS MEHREENS were most awesome and at their peak. [[just as planned|Just when things seemed to be going well]], the [[Horus Heresy]] took place, where 8.5 of the Primarchs and their respective legions rebel against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew [[Horus]] (who was daddy's favorite) but at a great cost. The Emperor was mortally wounded to the point that He had to be put permanently on a life support system known as the [[Golden Throne]]. On that day, an untold amount of manly tears was shed.

==="Modern" Day===
Subsequently, 10 thousand years later, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic, [[grimdark]] empire we all know and love today, in the 41st millennium. In the 500th year of the 41st Millennium (the exact middle of the millennium), which is a few centuries before the Time of Ending began, visions and signs reach out to all walks of life and social status to the Imperium of the Emperor crying, whether it's to lowly denizens of an underhive having dreams about it, to respected sanctioned psykers reading it from the Imperial Tarot, to shamans on feral planets instinctively knowing that the extra rain pouring down lately are tears of sadness from their "sky god".

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents [[daemon|daemon kind]] from directly assailing [[Terra]], while additionally sustaining the psychic-beacon known as the [[Astronomican]], that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.

It is common knowledge, that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker alive, humbling even the [[Eldar]]. It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, [[Conan the Barbarian]], [[meme|Chuck Norris]], Christopher Lee and Jesus. It is uncertain as to whether or not His internment on the Golden Throne is a good thing. Some believe that if He were to die, the [[Imperium]] would be truly fall into darkness, whereas others believe that if allowed to finally die, He would reincarnate and return to unify the galaxy once more, stronger than ever. Whatever the truth, [[Games Workshop]] are probably never going to advance the story, so speculation has little worth. Unless you take Warhammer Fantasy as an example, where the time-line ended. Badly.

==The Emprah Himself==
[[File:Climax.jpg|250px|right|thumb|A typical father-and-son chat between Empy and Horus.]]
:''"The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible [[Venus' Burn|father...]]"
:- [[Roboute Guilliman]], giving a short, yet accurate biography of the Emperor. Though on the other hand, he was actually a terrible father because he never actually saw himself as their father.
.

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

The Emperor is said to be so powerful that He could [[C'tan|destroy suns with ease]], though He has never actually done so (he however, ''made'' a golden sun which he put in the middle of his broken Webway gate to prevent daemons from spilling through, albeit needing to concentrate on powering it for the next ten thousand years. This would indicate that the Emperor does indeed have the power to destroy stars.). The [[Chaos Gods]] are scared as fuck of the guy, calling him respectively "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to [[Chaos]]. The [[Eldar]] fear that if the Emperor were to die, a new [[Eye of Terror]] would pop out with Terra at its center and possibly a new Chaos God would be born.

He was also capable of summoning what can only be called an army of human souls (including every soldier who had died for him, Ferrus Manus included) to fight for him; an ability utterly unseen in the 40k universe and suggesting that he has some fundamental connection to human souls in the afterlife - a comforting thought compared to dissolving into the Warp to be eaten by daemons and giving some credence to the 40k era theory that when the Time of Ending...ends..the Emperor and all loyal human souls will join in one final battle against Chaos.

After He was nearly killed by His son, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia. Most of the fluff maintains that His existence on a day-to-day basis since then is a living hell (by comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one, would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter) and yet He carries on. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that He will just take a sit and die. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. It gives Him a fuckton of work to do, and along with being THE lighthouse in the Warp, guiding the Imperial Navy, He also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the [[daemon|nasties]] of the Warp where they're supposed to be (i.e. not invading realspace to make the lives of all living things miserable). He also does it for the good of humanity (sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?). In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and the Emperor is dying. There is a chance of the Emperor returning to life, as well as the risk that He will die forever. If the latter would be the case, then everyone in the galaxy will become a Chaos sex toy/punching bag/plague vector/science experiment. Note that if the Emperor recovers, He'd be several hundred times more powerful. Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act. Maybe. Since then, Empy has probably gained about 365 gigafucktrillion souls since he got put on that Throne (see: leveling in Dark Souls), as he ''is'' the afterlife now, provided one excludes the veritable Hell that is the Warp. And all that stuff the Eldar get up to.

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

His desire to guide and protect humanity, in addition to His power, made the Emperor as close to a farseer as humanity was ever going to get. He declared humanity to be superior to all Xenos which was fair enough considering the collapse of the Eldar, planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed in order to protect them from the whispers of Chaos (fantastic idea anyway), planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), cared little for the Primarchs being His actual sons (thinking of them as generals and tools rather than biological offspring, and screwing over several of them in His efforts to recruit them / making them follow orders (hence causing some of their later betrayals)), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... All because this was the only way He could foresee humanity surviving the threats to come. Also known as the "Golden Path". Any other action He ever partook in, no matter how unorthodox or morally questionable or just outright horrific was secondary to the one and only goal: survival. For a being that's lived millennia, having foreseen as much as is possible to do so whilst not being an actual god, His way was the only way lest we all face extinction. Those were the options with the context of the universe He found Himself in. Time was against Him, and expediency was the order of the day; secure the physical safety of Mankind in the galaxy then safeguard their minds and souls. Everything else was a tool to be utilized in pursuit of that single purpose. It didn't matter how the godlike princelings felt, or how they were raised; it only mattered that they performed their allocated tasks as swiftly and efficiently as possible so that He could move on to the next phase of His Great Work.

His reign eventually [[Inquisition|killed more humans]] (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of humanity's dictators in history. Even during the Unification Wars, several Terran cultures were wiped out completely (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, just to make a point, even after its forces were defeated and its people ready to surrender), while simultaneously being pretty terrible at incorporating non-Terran elements. Because THAT is just how damn important and dire the circumstances were. An entire galaxy spanning empire needed to be constructed in little under two centuries when the cataclysm was foreseen to occur and ain't no one got time to fart arse about with treating people the way they deserve if the species won't survive.

Contrary to popular belief, he really did think the post-Ullanor phase through to some degree, Horus was the right choice as Warmaster for no other could command the respect of nearly all his brother better than Lupercal the First. And Dorn as Praetorian was as correct a decision as was possible to make considering that his talents were put to good use throughout the Heresy that followed. There was no need to put a Primarch in charge of the Council of Terra for the Primarchs were not made to rule, but to serve as generals in retaking the galaxy. Humanity was to be governed by humanity. Primarchs like say, Guilliman, though perfect as an administrator, was better suited and needed as a general for the Great Crusade. Honestly, it's bewildering that no one in the military saw the need for human administration. Having godlike Primarchs in charge at the top only serves to increase superstition in a secular galaxy when the idea was to rid humanity of religion and superstition in order to better protect it from warp predation.

To be fair, the whole reason humanity (and the Emperor) hates aliens is because during the Age of Strife numerous Xenos races exploited humanity's trust and either raided, lollygagged, looted or all of the above and were generally a nuisance the entire time. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop all that from happening again is to wipe out all Xenos that might even think to pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few Xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all, or were intelligent at all, in which case [[Exterminatus|the results]] were predictable). Ever since His ascension, the Imperium forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated. But on the other hand, [[Orks|the]] [[Necron|most]] [[Tyranids|common]] [[Tau|xenos]] [[Dark Eldar|are]] [[Eldrad|dicks]] and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to ''Horus Rising'', the idea of letting Xenos exist and then eventually grow stronger is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the Interex/Diasporex).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. Graham McNeill generally portrays Him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), Dan Abnett portrays Him as competent but bloodthirsty, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays Him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile (and even this is counterbalanced by his portrayal in Master of Mankind, where he's interestingly a mixture of all the previous portrayals at once - which is kinda of appropriate really). Chris Wraight, as far as he has portrayed Him, has done so through the eyes of Jaghatai Khan, showing Him as deeply flawed and distant from His own sons, but also countering that He was working towards goals even the Primarchs couldn't fully grasp. Even in Path of Heaven, where the Khan gets close to learning the secrets of the Webway project, he's shown to not have all the cards (the Emperor's knowledge that humanity is evolving into a psychic race, for example).

===His Goals and Flaws===
*Lead and shape Mankind into a psychic race and surpass the Eldar by learning from their mistakes.
*Unite Humanity under one aegis and allow for instant communication and travel across all human inhabited worlds, thereby uniting the species in a way that it had never been before.

In order to achieve this He had to:
*Reclaim every single human inhabited world, spacecraft or station;
*Purge all humans that had deviated from the normal strain of humanity (because they would not evolve into the predicted psychic species and threatened the Plan with their deviancy);
*Remove alien influence or control from human worlds;
*Eliminate external Xenos threats throughout the galaxy that might challenge or become a threat to Mankind's supremacy.
*Shelter and protect Humanity from the fell hand of [[Chaos]].

To achieve those secondary goals He had to:
*Create [[Primarchs|superhuman generals]] to bestride the galaxy and lead men to innumerable victories;
*Create [[Space Marines|superhuman soldiers]] powerful enough to retake the galaxy beneath the banners of said generals from any enemy;
*Remove the influence of religion from the collective psyche of the human species in order to protect them from the insidious whispers of Chaos (often mistaken for something supernatural and hence a gateway to disaster).

So in the pursuit of those tertiary goals, the Emperor undertook the Great Crusade. Once it was over, all the Primarchs were to have their place Lorgar was to be the Emperor's Herald and shelter mankind from superstition through enlightenment so that if ever they heard whispers in the dark; they knew it was not natural and to be feared by it, thus denying its embrace. Magnus was to assist the Emperor in sitting on the Golden Throne of earth, thus powering the human Webway (somehow), becoming a key figure in Humanity's ascension. Horus was to protect Mankind from [[Tyranids|external]] [[Necrons|physical]] [[Orks|threats]] throughout the Galaxy as Humanity's general. Konrad was to be the enforcer of the Emperor's Laws. Mortarion, His watchguard of wayward deviancy etc.

But the Imperium was only one half of the Plan. The other was the Webway, allowing nigh-instantaneous travel and communication, limiting Mankind's reliance on the warp to almost nothing in the form of Warp travel and thus protecting them against the influence of Chaos. Therefore allowing Mankind to evolve in relative safety and security under the direct guidance and control of the Emperor. When Mankind would be ready, we'd be protected from the warp naturally. That was the final crowning achievement that would bring all the Emperor's plans to fruition and pull all the wayward goals into one singular perfect Great Work. All the sacrifice, all the death, all the heartache, the glory, the battles, the trials and tribulation, 48,000 years of history was culminating into that one Plan. And it all would've been worth it because Mankind would've been saved for all time. Worth any price, where the ends justified the means, or so he claimed.

And yet at the same time, it was this very same pragmatism that ultimately led to his downfall:

*Though his pragmatism made him a superb ruler in wartime, the ultra-militarized society He had [[First Founding|created]] was entirely dependent on war to function properly. Even if the Great Crusade had proceeded exactly as the Emperor expected, it would have run out of enemies eventually. And when you have a whole lot of newly unemployed soldiers with no other skills beyond killing on your hands...well, they tend to get rowdy.
*The Emperor's concern for humanity belied the fact that humanity was little more than an abstraction in his eyes, and one which could only exist if ''he'' was ruling it all. The fact that other human civilizations such as the Interex had already found ways to fight against Chaos on their own and were just as advanced as the Imperium (if not more so) meant very little to him (or at least, to his Plan). In his mind, he alone knew what was good for humanity and anything short of total submission to the Imperium was grounds for destruction. Any sign that his Plan might have been flawed was either explained away or destroyed outright, lest it seem like He might have made a mistake.
*He not only made a critical mistake in thinking the Chaos Gods were empowered by religious worship, but also failed to understand that trying to erase religion was actively counterproductive to his goals. Lacking the immortality and inhumanly grand perspective of the Emperor, it's a basic part of human nature to look for meaning and purpose in a cause greater than oneself, especially in the harsh and grimdark universe that was [[Age of Strife|Old Night]]. The Imperial Truth tried to do this, but it didn't take into account that "reason", "logic", and "humanism" were by definition too mundane to be suited for the replacement of the old religions. The fact that the Imperial Cult took off so quickly after the Emperor's internment on the Golden Throne (and is arguably the only thing keeping the Imperium a remotely unified entity in the present) is proof that the Emperor was once again either too stubborn for his own good or too divorced from the "normal" human condition to understand the value of faith. In either case, all it accomplished was giving all four of the Ruinous Powers a reason to get rid of him, while also giving them an invaluable tool to do so in the form of Lorgar. And all while he was telling the Primarchs that daemons were just another xenos race, ensuring that none of them would be on the lookout for Chaotic corruption among themselves or their legions.
*For a guy who says he's trying to avoid the same mistakes the Eldar made, his obsession with human supremacy and the supposed "purity" of the human form (as defined by what, his own opinion?) are almost indistinguishable from the pre-Fall Eldar's certainty that they were the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Even if humanity did become a purely psychic race, nothing would stop it from making ''another'' Chaos God by accident. (It's not a stretch to hypothesize that this was itself a ploy for him to use the collective psychic power of humanity to elevate himself to the status of godhood, where he could truly rule with infinite power.)
**The only beings who knew how to create new parts of the Webway were the Old Ones, and they're all dead. At best, the Webway project would've delayed the inevitable before the fact that nobody can figure out how to keep it working became obvious. And since the Warp already bleeds into the Webway at the best of times...well, the whole thing would've been rendered pointless.
*Most damningly of all, his total disregard for the possibility that the Primarchs might actually have their own thoughts and feelings ended up being one of the key reasons why so many of the Legions ended up falling to Chaos:
**Lorgar's case (and the entirety of the Horus Heresy for that matter) would have been entirely avoidable if the Emperor acted like a genuine father figure for once in his lifetime and explained to Lorgar why his Emperor worship had to stop (which the Emperor, with all his undeniable charisma could have achieved). Instead, he had to act like a total dick and utterly humiliate his son by having his grandest city utterly ransacked and ruined, all to prove a point (and just to be an even bigger dick; he had one of Lorgar's own [[Roboute Guilliman|brothers]] do his dirty work.).
**Angron's case is self-explanatory; honestly, if it weren't for Emps sending him into battle so often he would have rebelled sooner. Sure, he couldn't just let one of his Primarchs get himself killed in a slave revolt, but you'd think he'd send down some of the War Hounds or something instead of warping him away and earning Angron's undying hatred.
**[[Fulgrim]]'s road to damnation started because he decided to loot a Slaaneshi-possesed sword. Knowing nothing about Chaos, Fulgrim had no idea he was using an incredibly dangerous warp artifact that that would lead to untold consequences. It didn't help that his strict xenophobic teachings prevented Fulgrim from taking [[Eldrad]]'s advice about the Laer Blade into account.
**Even with the Webway fuckup (which itself could have been prevented had the Emperor not kept it a secret from the most important people in his plans) Magnus might have remained a loyalist if the Emperor had been more concerned with the news of Horus's betrayal and fall to Chaos than with Magnus breaking his edicts. Of course, Magnus being nigh-possessed by [[Tzeentch|that one cuttlefish]] at the time means no one could really blame the Emperor for maybe thinking Tzeentch was pulling something.
**Similarly to Angron, [[Mortarion]] always resented the Emperor for not letting him get to kill his adoptive father, and when the Emperor refused to give him an answer about the obvious piece of Warp-tech that was the Golden Throne he concluded that the Emperor was a hypocrite and the Imperial Truth was bullshit.
**The Emperor, being the wisest and most powerful human Psyker in the galaxy of all people, should have been able to see that [[Konrad Curze]] was an unstable psyker who was on the fast road to devolving into insanity due to his uncontrolled talents.
**Completely ignoring that [[Perturabo]] needlessly had one in ten men in his legion killed by Decimation. Coupled with the fact that Perturabo was originally a peaceful, diplomatic soul; these two should have triggered some alarm bells about his mental stability.
**Horus himself was only pushed to fall because the Chaos Gods played on his worries that he wasn't fit to be Warmaster combined with the unrealised, greater fear that the Emperor never cared for him as a person and that he and the other Primarchs would have no place in the Imperium after the Great Crusade's conclusion. You'd have thought the Emperor's most beloved son would at least have been shown the special rooms in the Imperial Palace the Emperor made specifically for the Primarchs to live in after the Great Crusade ended, or at least discussed what he had planned for them when they weren't needed as generals any longer.
**Perhaps the biggest kicker to this is that if we're going to take all of Black Library into account, the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further his ambitions. What fatherly image he's been projecting to them has been nothing more than a facade to placate his sons. Hence, even if the Horus Heresy either never happened or had a better outcome; its likely that his indifference to his own superhuman children's well-being would have spelled even more problems for him down the line, as it would've been only a matter of time for them to realize how little their "father" cared about them. Although one can always argue that the remaining Primarchs stayed loyal either because they believed in his vision for humanity or were too loyal to be turned, there's no telling exactly how long that might have gone on after the Great Crusade's end - some of them showed signs of disloyalty to the Emperor even during the Heresy, only staying on his side either out of loyalty to Mankind as a whole (like Guilliman), by recognizing the other side as an even greater evil (like Jagatai), or only because the Imperium is on the winning side (if Curze's trolling was true; The Lion).

==Worship of the Emperor==
[[File:646545.jpg|thumb|300px|What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to [[Rip and tear|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 armor is a mech and that that's a regular-sized skull) Anyway, back to the topic. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often.]]

The Imperium advocates worship the Emperor as the one true God through the [[Imperial Creed]]. This creed is propagated and its adherence is enforced by the [[Ecclesiarchy|Adeptus Ministorum]] and the [[Inquisition]]. All citizens and fighters of the Imperium have little-to-no say about their choice in faith (or lack thereof); they ''must'' worship the Emperor through the various Ministorum-approved faiths throughout the galaxy (due to varying cultures, many planets have their own way of worshiping the Emperor. Although these are heavily regulated by the Ministorum to weed out any heretical influences.), there is no middle road or compromise that doesn't involve the apostate being on the receiving end of a state-sponsored public lynching. Anyone who defies or deviates from the teachings of the Imperial Creed, whether willingly or unwillingly (after all, incompetence is inexcusable in the eyes of the Emperor), is condemned as a heretic and is executed (whether its going to be fast or excruciatingly slow is dependent on the person judging the condemned). Forgiveness for one's sins is possible, although these cases are exorbitantly rare (atleast the ones that doesn't end with the accused being condemned to a glorious death.).

Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, they pretty much forgot what the Emperor taught them when He preached the Imperial Truth. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption by hoping that ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately, this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place. Some saw that the Emperor [[Mortarion|lied to them by holding the truth hidden]], some did [[Magnus|not know how to handle the temptation]] the Gods conveyed, some did [[Fulgrim|not even know that they were manipulated]] all this time and by whom, some would [[Lorgar|try to seek out something to place their faith upon]], not realizing what would needed to be done to become chosen in the eyes of the Gods. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the [[Interex]], another atheist empire who understood that threat of Chaos, but treated that information secularly and scientifically: they told every citizen everything that was known about "Kaos", and thus resisted the taint altogether.

In the Emperor's long game, he knew that humanity was evolving into a psychic species with even more potential than the Eldar, and look what happened to them? E-money wanted mankind to be [[Star Trek|a utopia of science and reason]], by eliminating religion (and thus preventing the temptations of daemons), controlling psykers (and thus preventing random daemonic possessions), and eliminating warp travel by creating the Human Webway (and thus eliminating all human contact with Chaos when traveling through the Warp). He wanted to isolate humanity from the Chaos Gods, cause who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp with no way of getting out?

Regarding the religion angle: the Emperor very much realized that Chaos runs off emotion, all everyday emotion, and not ''just'' worship; the stronger the emotions, the stronger the Gods get. The problem with religion is that it allows too many avenues for Daemons to exploit: a whisper here and a miracle there, then you get people praying to them, then shortly afterwards you get a planet turned inside out. His plan was not to starve the chaos gods of sustenance and ultimately defeat them, he knew it was impossible, his plan was just to prevent them from touching humanity ever again.

However, He made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite His best efforts, nothing was enough to fill the place of religion in human society. Ironically, the best solution would be not to suppress faith but to redirect it towards something else, but because of his natural awesomeness, unmatched psychic powers and enigmatic nature, that "something else" ended up being the Emperor himself. After He went off being the most powerful psychic cucumber in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium, belief in Him sort of helped the Imperium stand together against all odds, even if it basically dropped 99.9% of humanity's IQ in the process. With the Warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged His power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while His body is still stuck in it's current physical state of near-death. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

*[[Tyranids|Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locust who exist only to feed and multiply it's biomass]]...
*[[Necron|Older-than-Chaos-itself zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy]]...
*[[C'Tan|Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars, whose single desire is harvesting all living souls]]...
*[[Orks|A race of nigh-unkillable barbarians, genetically engineered to have pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams only be about rip and tear]]...
*[[Tau|Technologically superior space communists wanting to assimilate everyone in their quasi heirarchical-Communist empire and who take after Billy Mays]]...
*[[Eldar|Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and to have Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position in planet-sized battle cruisers]]...
*[[Dark Eldar|Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine]]...
*[[Chaos|Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane]]...
*[[Daemon|Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on]]...
*[[Chaos Space Marines|Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived]]...
*[[Rak'gol|Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun]]...
*[[Slaugth|Giant Swarms of Worms in cloaks who might be older than The Old Ones who are more sadistic that the Dark Eldar and More Manipulative than regular Eldar and Feed on Humans in the Most Disgusting and Painful way imaginable (Hint it Involves Maggots.)]]...
*[[Q'Orl|Massive insectoid hive mind filled to the brim with heavy firepower and has a slow but growing empire that is one of the largest in the galaxy, dwarfing the Tau several hundred times over and is seen as the next successor of galactic domination after humanities potential fall]]...
*[[Games Workshop|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]]...
*[[Sly Marbo|And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is]]...

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

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

That said, to Games Workshop's credit His being [[Ultramarines|buttfucked by His own hubris and disregard for the humanity He claimed to be guiding]] in this manner was probably [[Grimdark|intentional as a classic tale of Greek Tragedy]].

==The possible death of the Emperor==
[[File:Emperor of mankind flaming sword armor.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Badass and glorious.]]
With the Golden Throne being consistently worn out, and the Tech-priests too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it, it is certainly possible that the Emperor may die one day, which will obviously result in all of the Imperial worlds and factions to cry tears of disappointment and subsequently devolve into chaos (maybe even with a capital "C"). There are however, 3 possible outcomes of what can happen if the Emperor eventually dies:

===The new Eye of Terror===
Conventional wisdom and the [[Eldar]], says that in the event that the Emperor dies, a new Eye of Terror will be created with Terra at it's center, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets/systems(?) into the Warp. The current main rulebook says that all of reality will be plunged into the warp if the Emperor dies. Even the [[Ecclesiarchy]] agrees that if the Emperor were ever to die, humanity would be FUCKED at the barest minimum.

This is supported by the fact that the '''Golden Throne''' ''(itself a portal to the Webway)'' was broken by [[Magnus]], causing a warp tear to open on Terra, which the Emperor has had to spend every second for the last 10,000 years concentrating on to keep from getting any bigger (while the [[Adeptus Custodes]] have spent the same amount of time chopping up daemons that slip through the crack). They will not be able to stop a full daemonic invasion if the rift would open fully.

Additionally, a new Chaos God could be created (just like with the Eye of Terror and the Eldar), which will most certainly be a God of all the Grimdarkness in the galaxy, ensuring that it would eclipse all of the powers of the other Gods, as the Emperor would finally be the God of all. This is especially true, since nearly everything that is grimdark stems from Chaos and the entire WH40K setting is itself a massive pile of it... That or Malal would burst back into existence, which does have some possibility of happening, since Malal was/is the Chaos god of Atheism, which was the "truth"-part of the Emperor's "Imperial Truth" doctrine.

Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality by merging the Materium (reality) and the Warp into a singular dimension. But that's unlikely, since the birth of the latest Chaos God, Slaanesh, did not destroy reality and he/she/it/xe was fueled by the near extinction of a race far more psychically powerful than humanity. On the other hand, Slaanesh was forced to battle Khorne and most of the Eldar Gods during it's first birth moments. That would not be the case if the 5th Chaos God would be born.

===Regeneration===
No, not the [[Doctor Who]] kind. The Horus Heresy novel 'Vulkan Lives', heavily implies that the Emperor is a [[Perpetual]], just like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson and [[Anval Thawn]], all of who were able to survive multiple deaths that completely obliterated their bodies in the process. So all He simply needs to do is for his current material body to die normally, and wait a couple of hours/days and He'd be reborn again (in the "get up off the ground and dust Himself off" sense (Though one has to wonder why the Emperor would have had Himself interred in the Golden Throne in the first place if He thought He'd heal. Probably to power the Astronomican?)). All of this is still speculation (duh). Vulkan, for instance, was driven mad by the torturous experiences he had endured thanks to Night Haunter, and they were child's play, compared to sitting in unthinkable agony, unable to move or speak for ten thousand years while feeling Himself rotting away. And don't you forget [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|that nose itch]]. However, a more commonly held belief is that He will get up, re-establish the [[Imperial Truth]], and [[Great Crusade|just be]] [[Commissar|a cool guy]].

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

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

But think about it: when Malcador took up the Throne so that the Emperor could fight Horus, the device consumed his vitality; and Malcador was not as blessed as the Emps with regen abilities to recover. Now imagine a weakened, crippled being, who's top priority immediately after killing His son is to stop the Webway gate from spilling forth. You don't have time (and nor does the galaxy) to recover from your wounds. So you sit upon the Throne and it consumes you slowly from that point onwards. The chair is stopping any sort of healing factor.

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

This theory is tied closely to the Illuminati, a group of either supremely enlightened individuals or dangerous mutant heretics (depending on which side of the [[Inquisition]] you're on). The Illuminati plan to catch all of the Sensei and sacrifice them upon the Golden Throne at the moment of Emperor's death.

In a bizarre fusion of new and old fluff, it has been revealed that the Illuminati were a minor Tzeentch cult and the Sensei were effectively brainwashed soon-to-be sacrifices in an attempt to bring Tzeentch to the materium. Needless to say, they have been purged by the Inquisition. The fluff in the Jac Draco books revealed that the Ordo Hydra (a small splinter faction of the Illuminati who seek to turn humanity into a psychic hive-mind) is a Tzeentch cult, but that the general Illuminati population - including many Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and the Exorcists [[Chapter]] (as well as their unknown successor chapters) are genuinely incorruptible by Chaos and are freely permitted to access the Black Library along with Harlequin Solitaires. The Inquisition Trilogy was retconned away.
It's just like that frustrating moment you experience when you don't know if the Squats have been nommed by Tyranids or have never existed in the first place.

== Gallery ==
<center><gallery>
File:Golden Throne-Imperial Webway.jpg|The Big E upon the Golden Throne (before the decay set in)
File:Emperor of Mankind Classic Portrait face.jpg|The guiding light in the Imperium of Man shines forever bright. He's also Arnold Schwarzenegger. Try unseeing that now.
Image:1220179589932.jpg|The Emperor protects man from all.
Image:Horus and the Emperor.jpg|<s>Son, I am disappoint.</s> Empy's disappointment occurred well before this moment.
Image:Wh40k-emperor.jpg| Yearbook photo.
Image:When you ruin his groove by Lutherniel.jpg| His groove, do not ruin it.
File:Emperor_Decree.jpg| Emps laying down some rules, mid combat from the looks of it
File:Go Ahead Make My day Emperor.jpg|That is EXACTLY the same look that's on Batman's face when he's about to put the beatdown on someone!
File:Emperor of Mankind model action figure.jpg|He makes for one helluva action figure
Image:8.jpg|The Em-purr-or of all Catkind! Nyah!
Image:God-Emperor_Goldlich.jpg|Death is no excuse to stop bein' pimp.
File:God_Emperor_Interred_On_Golden_Throne.jpg|Thinking to himself, "I really, REALLY hate Horus!"
Image:The Immortal Emprah.jpg
Image:Emperor_miniature.jpg|Roll d6; stays on the field on seven or less
Image:emperor_old.jpg|A real man never dies, even when he's killed.
Image:emperor.png|Down but not out.
Image:Emperormini.jpg|In all His miniature glory
Image:Carrionlord.jpg|<strike>The Carrion Lord with his two left arms.</strike> {{BLAM}} how the fuck did that heretic get past the custodes?
File:Painting.jpg|This painting sold for $900, that lucky ca/tg/url...
Image:Emperor_model.jpg|Probably the best model of him yet
Image:slowemperor.jpg|Oh God-emperor, how did this get here? I am not good with computers.
Image:Emperor_Sagan.jpg|Search your feelings, you know it to be true.
Image:EmpsVSigmar.jpg| You all know you wanna see how this pans out!
Image:Emprasque3.jpg|How do you kill what can not die?
Image:Slavegirl Emperor.jpg|Emperor [[Rule 63]]! NO EXCEPTIONS!
Image:Femprah.jpg|Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher.
Image:Femprah_by_Mr-Culexus.jpg|Oh, give it a fucking rest...
Image:GodEmpress.jpg|On second though... this one is... nice.
Image:Emperor_upon_his_other_throne.jpg|Yeah. We get it. The Emperor sits upon the Golden 'Throne'.
Image:1377291976783.jpg|Unbeknownst to many 40k fans, ol'Emps is fairly amicable when he meets an elf/eldar who isn't a complete failure.
Image:First_Founding_Problems.jpg|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.
File:Rainbow Emperor.gif| The Emperor in Rainbow Form
Image:Konya.jpg|The symbol of the town Konya in Turkey. In Central Anatolia. Emprah's birthplace. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Hittite eagle large.jpg|The symbol of ancient (1600BC) Hittite Empire from Anatolia, which, unknown to many, is Emperor's first try at conquering the world. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
Image:Emperor mao.jpg|In alternate universe 32-B, Mao Zedong rules the People's Republic of Mankind
Image:NotSureIfWant.jpg|The Emperor has just discovered [[Rule 34]].
Image:Emperuh.jpg|The Emprah is watching you Masturbate!
Image:Emperor blackwhite.jpg|He might be the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe but the Custodes can't give him a decent hygiene program.
Image:1271118030729.jpg|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)
File:Emperor of Mankind Contemplation.jpg|"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!"
</gallery></center>

==See Also==
* The [[Imperium]], for the empire he founded.
* [[Sigmar]] Unbroken, his [[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]] counterpart.
* [[Emperor's To-Do List]]
* [http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/25959559/ This thread] which makes the Emperor even cooler.
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_2nM1GEllg/ 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.
* [[Heresy from the Emprah’s point of view]]
{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Gods]]

Roboute Guilliman

2017-01-19T22:13:13Z

2001:41D0:FE0D:E500:C996:ADB2:BEB9:76E6:

''Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you want peace, prepare a war.''

- Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus

[[File:Robute_Guilliman.jpg|Guilliman as portrayed by Forge World. Also, that face just screams "I'm surrounded by plebeians."...And looks strangely like Mark Strong, maybe Daniel Craig if you squint a bit or block out his forehead.|400px|thumb|right]]

'''Roboute Guilliman''' ("Row-BOOT-ay" "GILL-uh-man" ɹəʊ-buːt-eɪ ɡɪl-ə-mæn) was the Primarch of the [[Ultramarines]], and a man with a staggering collection of nicknames, including but not limited to: Julius Caesar ''in SPESS'', Rowboat Girlyman, Roman Gorillaman, Rawbutt Jellyman, Rampant Gullytan, Robot Gigglytan, Raw-Rigged Ginger-Fan, Robot Gulliver, Robust Gilligan, Robit Ghillie Suit, Reboot Gigabyte, Robert Gullible, Big BobbyG, Roboot Girlymayne, Robot Gorillaman, Robooty Guillotine, Roman Gogillian, R. Googleman Esq., Big Blue Daddy, Papa Ultra Smurf, or High Lord Douchebag and Ward's Ever Chosen Robart "Is said to be slowly healing bullshit" Gilmanz. Thanks to the rabid fanboying of [[Matt Ward]], most of [[/tg/]] hates him, which is sad, because he's actually one of the nicest and most with-it Primarchs, even if he did cling to tradition so much that it made him look like a total jerkwad; this included an inability to deal with "unconventional" tactics, which occasionally caused friction between his brothers and himself, most famously being partially responsible for turning [[Alpharius]] to chaos. [[Omegon|Maybe]]. It's [[Iron Snakes|hard to tell]].

==Life==

Unlike most worlds that the other Primarchs landed on, Macragge was a pretty perfect and nice place to live on. However it was a Greco-Roman theme so someone like Magnus or even <s>Sanguinius</s> {BLAM} misinformation, (papa vamp can fly) would have been thrown off a cliff for being defective, plus Guilliman was found by a politician while they were on a hunting trip.

Konor was one of the co-rulers of Macragge and took the young boy. Konor was a pretty cool dude, he advocated helping the common man and reforms that would make the world a meritocracy. These were a major influence on Roboute and stayed with him throughout his life. It also says something that Konor's seneschal, Tarasha Euten, was effectively Guilliman's surrogate mother, making him one of the only Primarchs to have a conventional family, a fact that twisted Konrad Curze's nipples to no end (which goes double when she tells him to go fuck himself).

One day while Roboute was coming back after fighting the Macragge's version of the Gauls, he found his home in disarray. Konor was the victim of some Roman politics. The other co-ruler, Gallan, was pissed off at all these reforms and so just sent his army to rape, pillage and burn. Seeing his once peaceful home burning, neighbors looting and killing each other; left the second major impact on Roboute and the most likely source of why he was always so anal about keeping things in order.

After gutting Gallan and restoring order, Roboute worked to make his father's dream a reality. This was the third major impact on his life: though he claimed that Gallan's death was justice, Guilliman came to realize that it was in fact vengeance, and worked to master his emotional self-control.

By the time the Emperor reached Macragge, Roboute had ruled for five years and turned the world into a place where you had to earn your place, not just be born, like what his father wanted.

===Great Crusade===
[[File:Know No Fear huge.jpg|400px|thumb|right|''"Lorgar of Colchis. You may consider the following. One: I entirely withdraw my previous offer of solemn ceasefire. It is cancelled, and will not be made again, to you or to any other of your motherless bastards. Two: you are no longer any brother of mine. I will find you, I will kill you, and I will hurl your toxic corpse into hell’s mouth."'' - Roboute Guilliman, channeling Bryan Mills.]]
Generally Roboute was a classic "Jerk with a heart of gold" he was a total asshole for people he didn't think earned their place, and a great number of people he saw as chaotic and unorthodox (although secretly he had great respect for [[Leman Russ]] and [[Jaghatai Khan]]) but was humble and nice to normal people treating them like equals and very much big on the need to raise the living standards of the Imperium. As a result, many of his brother Primarchs were uncertain about his intentions, and fewer still even liked him. His only friends among the Primarchs were [[Horus]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Ferrus Manus]], and [[Rogal Dorn]] and obviously [[Vulkan]] FRIENDLIEST OF MEN ( [[Vulkan]] was everyone's friend, especially ''yours'')

A good example of this was his dealings with Alpharius. While the common view is that Guilliman was simply annoyed at his younger brother for not having the same tactics as the Ultramarines, in truth it was because Guilliman was thinking ''after'' the battle. While the Alpha Legion's methods were great at messing and breaking an army, they left the world a ruined and chaotic mess with very poor public order, mass unrest and paralysed with both fear and uncertainty. By comparison, the Ultramarines' straightforward tactics ensured that planet was mostly intact, which allowed it to be more easily integrated into the Imperium. Curze, however, would strongly disagree on this statement, and so did Alpharius. But since Roby never needed to [[Exterminatus|blow up]] [[Nostramo|a world he previously "pacified" by simply killing people]], maybe Spess Punisher was not the best attorney for Alpharius in retrospect...

He was an extremely skilled tactician, administrator, warrior and designer, and was an unparalleled statesman. While he preferred to form battle plans rather than actually participate in the fighting himself, he still did his fair share of Xeno-killing. In the hopes of passing down some of his strategic expertise, he worked very hard to turn the Ultramarines into an army of thinkers. His primary rule as a commander was "Information is victory", emphasizing that Space Marines needed theoretical knowledge and practical experience, in other words, a sound understanding of the tactical situation and a means to achieve their objective. Given that battle plans proved to be the first casualty, Guilliman soon realized that he would need to refine his own strategies even as he codified them, lest they fall apart in the chaos of warfare. In spite of that, with over 250,000 legionaries, he managed to achieve compliance on the highest number of worlds during the [[Great Crusade]], but was surpassed in ''military'' victories not only by the [[Luna Wolves]], but by [[Space Wolves]] and [[Dark Angels]] as well. Meaning he was either a good diplomat or his crusade encountered much more peaceful human societies not being mutants than average one. Or both. The planets were also model military worlds, and the Ultramarines would not leave until a modern [[Planetary Defence Force]] was established. He really should've been put jointly in charge of administration post-Ullanor, which would've made premature, excessive taxation of newly integrated worlds a lot easier to avoid (and therefore fewer worlds would have joined Horus' rebellion).

It is also implied in ''Know no Fear'' that Guilliman was maybe a little more tolerant than his father regarding religion, Oll Persson managing to remain a Catholic for 18 years after he settled on Calth (and his neighbors were well aware of his faith). Before screaming "noblebright Mary Sue!", you should know that it fits in with the Roman roots of the Ultramarines, as Romans didn't really give a fuck about what you did at home as long as your loyalty to Rome was absolute. But if you placed your private religion above the Emperor's orders, you were badly fucked. So perhaps Guilliman just exterminated the most dangerous cults, kept an eye on the others and chose a unofficial "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Though above his genius, above his skills as an administrator and a statesman, Guilliman's most noteworthy characteristic is probably being one of the few well adjusted, sensible people in the entire freaking galaxy. Guilliman was one of the few Primarchs who didn't really see the Emperor as his father, and he was the first to state how shitty the Emperor was at raising kids and never fully forgave the Emperor for using him and his Legion as a tool to humiliate Lorgar. He understood how to run an empire, how to inspire loyalty and how to temper the flawed nature of humanity with organisation and discipline. The Emperor's greatest failing was always a lack of understanding in the people he ruled, a flaw that few saw in him, save perhaps for [[Malcador the Sigillite]] and Guilliman.

===Horus Heresy===
When civil war broke out, Guilliman was tricked into taking most of his Legion to Calth for a joint Ultramarines/[[Word Bearers]] engagement. While most of his Chapter Masters believed it was just Horus flexing his muscle, Guilliman realized it was partly political: when the Emperor of Mankind rebuked [[Lorgar|Lorgar Aurelian]] for spreading the ''Lectitio Divinatatus'', he ordered the Ultramarines to burn Monarchia, capital city of Khur, as an example of what would happen to those who continued to defy the [[Imperial Truth]]. Guilliman carried out his orders and didn't show Lorgar any sympathy, but privately confided to some of his officers his discomfort in doing so, feeling that the total humiliation would irreparably damage relations between the XIII and XVII Legions. Guilliman saw this as a chance to mend fences and forge friendships the old fashioned way: by getting Space Marines to kill Orks. Unfortunately, Horus and Lorgar used the Calth muster to kill nearly half the Legion in a surprise attack. When he found out Lorgar's treachery he personally declared to hunt Lorgar down and kill him, only to be attacked by some sort of [[Daemon]]ic proxy and voided onto his flagship. Guilliman did what any other pissed off Primarch would do: go on a rampage against Word Bearers trying to board the ''Macragge's Honour'' by punching them to death. In space. [[Mary_Sue|Without a helmet]]. ''For half an hour.'' ([[Dan Abnett]] is still pretty proud of that scene).

Anyway, after the Battle of Calth, Guilliman had to contend with the Shadow Crusade, as Lorgar and Angron tore the 500 Worlds of Ultramar a new one. (<s>Except not really, they razed 26 worlds, just 5.2% of ultramar</s> That is only the main fleet's count, [[Just_as_planned|both WB and WE were split into smaller fleets after Armatura to terrorise 500 Worlds while Guilliman was chasing Lorgar and Angron with his forces amassed]])

After seeing off the Shadow Crusade, Guilliman decided that if his father could not be saved, His ideals would be, setting up a new government called [[Imperium Secundus]], a second Imperium of Man which would reject Horus's alliance with [[Chaos]]. Although potentially traitorous, Guilliman's motives at least ''appeared'' sincere, he made a big hoohah about not taking the throne himself, since he would look like a Tyrant if he did. Fortunately/Unfortunately, [[Lion El'Jonson|The Lion]] arrived at Macragge and didn't like [[heresy|where it was heading]]. Neither brother trusted the other with the job of ruling the next Imperium, so [[Sanguinius]] got the job only to settle the matter between the two and was declared regent of the Imperium in the Emperor's absence, which meant fuck all because he promptly got murdered by Horus in the battle of Terra.

Whatever his intentions, Guilliman led over one hundred thousand Ultramarines to Terra with the [[Dark Angels]] and the [[Space Wolves]], intent on relieving the [[Blood Angels]], [[Imperial Fists]], and [[White Scars]] defending the throneworld. Learning about this and knowing that he could not sustain the assault on Terra anymore once the bulk of the loyalist forces came into the fight, Horus lowered the void shields upon the ''Vengeful Spirit'' in an all-or-nothing gambit to win the war by killing the Emprah in a duel. By one collosal fuckup or another, the vastly superior relieving force DIDN'T crush the beleaguered traitor forces. The traitor legions fled Terra, and the rest is history...

==Popular Opinion==

''All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.''

- Sun Tzu

Guilliman is mostly hated by the community at large because of [[Matt Ward | Mattards]] Codex: Space Marines. However, it is worth stating that Guilliman was probably one of the most important figures holding the Imperium together after the Horus Heresy. He's pretty much the only Primarch to realize that the Emperor's ideals were more important than the man himself, which is something that [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcador]] kept preaching.

He was also the best Primarch when it came to logistics and organization, rivaled only by [[Perturabo]] (but Guilliman wasn't an antisocial autistic weirdo, so there's that), which is pretty much one of the only reasons why the [[Imperium of Man]] didn't collapse after the Horus Heresy. He was able to train and equip more than twice as many Marines during the [[Great Crusade]] than any other Legion, and he wrote the [[Codex Astartes]] (still the standard for Space Marine tactics). He is credited with reorganizing the entire governmental and administrative system of the [[Imperium of Man]] (yes, the reorganized Administratum ended up running the galaxy into the ground, but the fact that it's still running at all is a good sign).

However as the Horus Heresy series continues, it is revealed that it was actually [[Malcador the Sigillite]] who had been creating the foundations for the later Imperium. In fact it is continuously being hinted that Guilliman positioned himself to take over the Imperium after the fall of the Emperor, being almost explicitly stated in ''Vengeful Spirit''. whether through good intentions or through sinister means has yet to be revealed. Funnily enough Kor Phaeron, who hated his guts, identified him as the Primarch best suited to succeed his dad, though given the source, that may well be intended as an insult. Despite this, Guilliman claimed that he had no desire to be Emperor and promised his brothers that if the otherwise impassable Ruinstorm abated, he would immediately send his fleet to Terra. That said, the Blood Angels managed to get back to Terra somehow, despite being on the wrong side of it, so it's unknown just how difficult it was to get back.

''Unfortunately'', thanks to 10,000 years of propaganda and exaggeration (and Matt Ward's Codex: Space Marines), Guilliman is ''absolutely perfect'' in every way and treated as ''second only to the Emperor'' through ''the entire Imperium.'' This is incorrect, considering that [[Sebastian Thor]] is actually the main Imperial saint, and [[Sanguinius]] is the primarch most beloved by the common men of the Imperium. Regardless, Guilliman is pretty high on the list and the only Primarch whose body is on public display. This "better than thou" shit is sad and quite paradoxical, since Guilliman himself genuinely recognized [[Lion El'Jonson|some]] [[Horus|Primarchs]] were better than him as leaders. He has sometimes been portrayed as petty or jealous of his brother Primarchs but also intelligent enough to acknowledge his own errors when proved wrong. Far from the "perfect in every aspect" figure Matt Ward promoted, the HH Guilliman is actually a man with a lot of very human weaknesses but possessing the humility to admit them as flaws he must deal with.

[[Fallen Angels|Astelan]], while a prisoner of the [[Dark Angels]] goes into detail explaining how Guilliman was purportedly the ''"greatest"'' of the Primarchs, but only in the context of what the Emperor intended for them. Astelan describes that Guilliman was '''"not the most able-minded, nor as charismatic, and not as physically adept"''' and was the inferior of [[Horus]] in every respect. Although Astelan was also a traitor and a fallen angel, so his word is hardly reliable. His greatness came from the fact that Guilliman never once wavered in dedication and service and created his Space Marines to be incorruptible. Guilliman and his Ultramarines were the perfect <u>sons</u>, not necessarily perfect soldiers. It's also worthy of note that much like [[Rogal Dorn]] and [[Lion El'Jonson]], Guilliman was a possible candidate for the position of warmaster, but was rejected for the same reasons they were: he didn't get along with many of his brothers.

However, contrary to that, He also did a lot of tricky things in [[Horus Heresy]], like that whole [[Imperium Secundus]] thing, and it's popularly theorized that he was bitter that he never got to be '''Warmaster''', which despite his claims that he had no desire to become Emperor, when he appointed the [[High Lords of Terra]] he nominated himself for the seat of '''Lord Commander of the Imperium''' which was essentially "Warmaster" in all but name, and the titular commander of the entirety of the Imperium's armed forces. So claiming that no man should have the power of a Legion, then place himself at the top of the chain of command for all of the [[Space Marine Chapter|Chapters]] that his remaining brothers were left with was a bit hypocritical.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:600px">
Or was it?
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">
It's quite likely that Guilliman's actions in creating the Imperium Secundus, and his later actions during the reformation of the Imperium, are a reference to the Roman practice of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dictator|Roman Dictatorship]]. A roman dictator was more or less what we think of as a modern dictator, with one key exception. The dictator was given absolute executive and military power over Rome and her holdings in times of crisis, when the gridlock and beaurocratic red tape of roman society got in the way of doing what needed to be done. But as strange as it sounds to our modern minds, dictators were elected to their position, and without exception in all the history of Rome every dictator willingly stepped down and returned power to the senate.

It's highly likely that Guilliman's actions after the emperor's death are a reference to this practice: he set aside the normal moral and legal rules restricting him so that he could restructure the imperium. Despite the fact that he was in the perfect position to assume power over the entire imperium, he relinquished power to the Council of Terra after some sense of stability had returned. This is further supported by how heavily his legion leans on Roman culture, and how much Guilliman himself draws on the famous generals of Rome (Julius and Augustus Caesar, Cininatus, etc).
</div>
</div>

So with that being said, he was no more flawless than the other Primarchs; Even during the Great Crusade, while he was considered to be one of the greatest strategists in the entire Imperium, he was defeated in combat simulations by [[Corax]] of the [[Raven Guard]], having to be specifically taught that there is no fixed dividing line between non-combatants and soldiers when people are defending their homes; that under-strength units should not be ruled out as ineffective; and that small units of adaptable troops can be wielded with just as much effect as larger battalions and chapters. Furthermore, Guilliman stuck closely to his tried and true methods, refusing to give credit to what he considered "unconventional" tactics, pissing off many other Primarchs, most notably [[Alpharius]]. Even though he would later be shown by his own men how effective such unconventional guerrilla tactics would be and would include then in his codex.

Therefore while he was certainly the Primarch with the greatest mental capacity and adaptability, he was apparently incapable of lateral thinking and would fail to see the flaws in his methods until explicitly shown the error of his ways.

Also, though the Codex Astartes undoubtedly did a lot of good things like making sure each chapter could feasibly fight under most conditions no matter their heritage or preference, forcing all of his brothers to split their Legions into [[Codex Astartes|Chapters]] risked a second galactic civil war.

Additionally, although it isn't (entirely) his fault, Guilliman is usually blamed for turning the Ultramarines into such faggots. The Codex is now basically treated as infallible by the Ultramarines ''(at least the more faggot-y ones; [[Captain Titus|there's at least some who take it with a grain of salt and realize where it's strengths and weaknesses lie]])''. even though he '''specifically said''' that the [[Codex Astartes]] should not be treated as a bible to be followed unerringly... Except for the organizational parts, which he forced on his brothers as part of the post-Heresy reforms and were upheld by the High Lords of Terra as a means of keeping the Astartes in check.

Recently he's been increasingly entrusted to the care of the Mighty [[Dan Abnett]] and his faggot level is dropping rapidly. Now, Guilliman isn't portrayed as a power armored Sun Tzu, but as a logistical genius, planning planetary conquest in a way that would leave said worlds in a state that could quickly be returned to order and Imperial rule. His high number of compliant worlds is a direct product of this, helped by his Legion's innate tendency towards discipline, hierarchy and monomaniacal fixation on whatever their objective might be.

This adherence toward a rigid chain of command did end up becoming a double-edged sword later on, since when Guilliman was put into stasis the Ultramarines still tried to follow him (thanks to him being the at the top of the chain) and as such started to forget that the Codex Astartes was only meant to be a guideline, as opposed to a definitive text. More importantly, they slowly lost their ability to adapt to new situations, which was their most famed of traits, until the Tyrannic Wars illustrated the need to improvise new strategies when old ones failed them.

Once upon a time, thanks to the rabid fanboying of [[Matt Ward]], most of [[/tg/]] hated him, but many of them have since come around. Still expect people to [[Rage|bitch endlessly]] about how he was an absolute [[Leman Russ|narrow-minded]] [[Lion El'Jonson|hypocritical]] [[Dorn|jerk]], but don't feel bad about it.

On a side note, he likes Shakespeare's work.

===Suddenly, Forge World!===

[[Image:Girlyman.jpg|400px|thumb|left|[[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|Guilliman atop his mighty Oathstone (not seen are the Chapter Serfs who get the honour of carrying him around)! Note how tiny his sword is. Matt Ward does not approve.]]]]

When Tempest came out, it immediately forgot that Guilliman's supposed to be just as heavily flawed as the other Primarchs, in Tempest Guilliman is "a paragon among the Emperor's sons", and that he "is as much a statesman as he is an indefatigable warrior." He's also as just as great a strategist, in addition to being the most level-headed, the quickest to react, the smartest and the most analytical, constantly basing new and better designs off of existing materials, as well as refining battle plans thanks to having a mind that calmly and coldly allows him to analyze everything around him and wonder how various things like his marines, his armour and his weapons could all be improved. He observes what other Primarchs do with their warriors makes them better in his own creations, in doing so (specifically copying Perturabo's Siege Tyrants in the rules) they say he's "proving himself once again the master of all of the myriad disciplines of war." This is further evidenced by his rules below where he's the best Primarch at buffing his army, while as a warrior in a straight-up fight he only loses to Horus and Fulgrim''(not counting [[Lorgar|psychic interference]] or Primarchs with a [[Angron|bit of momentum behind them]])''.

In addition Guilliman's Ultramarines during the Horus Heresy were the most disciplined of all the Space Marines as well as the most numerous, the ones who prized intelligence above all to help them formulate the best battle plan, and with the best training/recruitment, not to mention being familiar with the other legions MO's and able to pull them off without any problems which had a lot to do with their rigid chain of command. This goes on to the point that they were considered the biggest threat (before Isstvan) and the book outright states that if the Ultramarines were aware of Horus' rebellion they and their Auxilia would be able to make [[Ultramar|the 500 worlds]] a bastion that by itself, would be able to weather the entire heresy and challenge [[Horus]] for control of the eastern half of the Galaxy. [[Matt Ward|I guess the Imperial Fists, White Scars, and Blood Angels on Terra didn't really try hard enough.]] But to be fair this is nothing new since the Ultramarines have always been described as the Legion with the most recruits and the least casualties long before the Wardian plague begins.

A more generous explanation could be that since the books were written after the Heresy in-universe, it could just be a case of "history is written by the winners" kicking in again, since (rather thankfully) "Everything is canon, not everything is true." Or maybe Matt was secretly brought back for that particular book, which would go quite a long way in explaining all of the Smurf wanking in it. It's likely we'll have to wait until the follow-up book on the Shadow Crusade to determine which of those it is. However, none of this is particularly new to the 40k canon; Ultramar was ''always'' considered to have been one of the greatest threats to Horus' rebellion and was the prime reason that the Battle of Calth took place; to get them all in one place and hit them with a surprise attack, and then pin the Ultramarines in place for the duration of the Heresy. The same applies to Guilliman, who has always been considered to have been one of the most intelligent and adaptable of Primarchs, if not the most psychically imposing or gifted with brilliance.

Thankfully he still retains at least one flaw, that being he has no creative spark. He made Perturabo's Terminators better, but he'd never have made them on his own. He made his own versions of power weapons that were far better than regular power weapons as they were more precise/lethal when in trained hands, yet he could only do that after studying countless designs of regular power weapons. Even his own armour is artificer armour that he improved in ways heavily influenced by what Vulkan and Perturabo have made.

On the other side (and that is a good point) Guilliman and the Ultramarines are not as "noblebright" in ''Tempest'' as they can be in other pieces of background. While he promotes meritocracy and progress and refuses to waste any life, Roboute is always described as cold and logical, obsessed with efficiency, and not a kind of crusading philanthropist. FW's Guilliman is first and foremost a statesman and a warlord willing to make the most effective system possible, and ''Tempest'' implies he used a kind of political police of his own (the Vigil Opertii) to silence any opposition in Ultramar. Just like the Imperium does. The only difference with the other Primarchs is Guilliman cannot deny HE is responsible for all the [[1984|authoritarian shit]] happening in HIS private empire. Feel free to think what you want about Guilliman being OP or a Mary Sue, FW still made him more grimdark than before, even if he remains a nice dude by 30k standards.

==Gameplay==
{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Roboute Guilliman:''' || 400 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 4+1 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}<br style="clear: both; height: 0px;" /><br>

True to his legion, Roboute Guilliman is fairly average as far as Primarchs go, both in terms of his stats and his points cost, but it's the rules and equipment you really want him for. He and any unit he joins can re-roll failed charge distances, and the Concussive special rule doesn't do shit against him. All Ultramarines in play gain +1 to Ld while he's in play and he also makes Invictarus Suzerains and Legion Terminators troops as long as he's the warlord. Preternatural Strategy can force opponents to re-roll successful attempts at Seize the Initiative while also granting all units from one entry in the Ultramarines army list Implacable Advance, Interceptor, or Tank Hunters if they don't have it already, and by that they do mean entry, not just one unit, so if you selected Legion Predator Strike Armour Squadron to have Tank Hunters then every Legion Predator Strike Armour Squadron in your army will gain the rule. It also buffs his WS by 1 for each round of combat within a challenge after the first one (e.g. he becomes WS8 on the second round and so on), although it resets back to 7 after the challenge is over or if his opponent swaps out for somebody else via something like Glorius Intervention. Finally, Unyielding Will negates all negative leadership modifiers and allows him to re-roll failed Deny the Witch tests. (Funnily enough, this actually makes him a decent counter for Lorgar's psychic faggotry, though it won't help him deny Lorgars' blessings.)

Guilliman's Armor of Reason gives him a 2+/4++ and the ability to re-roll the first invulnerable save he fails in each phase. (Not per turn, per phase.). As for his weapons, he can choose one of two melee weapons to use in any given assault phase: the Gladius Incandor (a Paragon Blade with Shred) and the Hand of Dominion (a S10 AP1 Power Fist with Concussion). Both of them are Specialist weapons, so regardless of which one he picks he still gets an extra attack. Finally, his gun is the Arbitrator, a S6 AP3 combi-bolter with Assault 2 and Rending- which he might as well have left at home for how often it fires it as he has a Cognis Signum to use instead (+1 BS to a unit instead of firing a weapon himself). Overall, he gives out a nice variety of buffs and can really hold his own in a fight while being one of the best tactician character in the game.

Don't forget, this is all for only 125 points more than [[Marneus Calgar|M.A.C. daddy]], further proof of 30k superiority.

==Roboute Guilliman VS other Primarchs:==
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Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying. With that in mind this section is all about how Roboute Guilliman fares against other Primarchs mathammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities, with the exception of Blind, are taken into account (Blind is ignored because it is just too random and unreliable to come into play) and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. Also do note that Preternatural Strategy is taken into account (obviously) so prepare to see even more mathhammer than for the other Primarchs.
The Armour of Reason is also reduced to a mere 0,25 reduction of damage, which is weaker than he should, seeing that reduce the first allocated wounds, and not the first failed save, not taking into account the possibility of that wound being saved.
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* Roboute Guilliman VS Horus
**Horus will use his Talon of Horus (Rerollable 3+ is better than flat 2+, and Disabling Strike can counter the slow-burn effect of Preternatural Strategy) and hits 4 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.778 after saves, than 1.528 for the Armour of Reason and IWND will take that down to 1.195 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times (Gladius), 0.74 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.4.
**Guilliman loses this fight (Quite appropriately).
**Note: Due to the nature of the fight this match doesn't take into account Preternatural Strategy (Because it is balanced by Disabling Strike). Also do note that after the first few wounds inflicted from Horus, Guilliman will have his WS and S significantly reduced, making it even easier for Horus to win.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Angron
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred, so on the first turn he will hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, 1.972 after Armour of Reason re-roll and IWND take it down to 1.639.
**Angron Round 2: Angron hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves, 1.417 after re-roll and IWND will take that down to 1.084 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 3 and thereafter: Angron hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, 1.25 after saves and 1 after re-roll. Then IWND take it down to 0.667.
**Guilliman Round 1/2/3: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.926 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.59 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 4 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 1.234 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.9 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Unsurprisingly, Guilliman loses this fight in 6 rounds, dying directly before he's able to kill Angron as even though he has an extra wound on Angron, he takes too much damage.(Note: the result of this fight is different than the result of the fight on Angrons page, in that result Angron loses, I am no sure which is the correct result as I do not mathhammer but you guys might wanna fix that.)

* Roboute Guilliman VS Fulgrim
**Fulgrim Round 1: hits 5.333 times (Fireblade is MC), wounds 3.555 times, 1.528 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.195 at the start of the next turn.
**Fulgrim Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 2.667 times, 1.083 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.75 at the start of the next turn.
**Concussed Fulgrim (cannot happen earlier than round 3): Hits 3 times, wounds 2 times, 0.75 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds.
**Guilliman with Gladius Incandor Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.74 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman with Gladius Incandor Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.988 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman with Hand of Dominion Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman with Hand of Dominion Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.777 times, 0.926 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.593 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**An unsurprising loss for Guilliman. If Guilliman chooses to use the Gladius Incandor, Fulgrim will out-damage him in the long run, and if he chooses to concuss Fulgrim, Fulgrim temporarily loses his extra attacks, but Guilliman cannot put out enough damage to keep Fulgrim concussed, meaning Fulgrim gets back up to his normal initiative, gains his extra attacks back, and beats down Guilliman.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Mortarion
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666, 0,833 after saves, 0.583 wounds after Armor of Reason, and after IWND it becomes 0.25 wounds.
**Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 1.042 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.486.
**Guilliman Round 2 and after: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.777 times, 1.388 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.833.
**Easy win for Guilliman.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Ferrus
**Ferrus: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times (Forgebreaker and Servo-Harm), 0.792 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.459 at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times (Hand), 0.694 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, 0.926 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.593 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman wins this fight.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Konrad Curze
**Curze Round 1: hits 4 times, wounds 3 times, 1.25 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.917 at the start of the next turn.
**Curze Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times, 0.875 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.542 at the start of the next turn
**Guilliman Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 1.481 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.148 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman easily wins this fight.
**Note: Konrad could attempt to even the odds with Hit and Run, negating Preternatural Strategy while gaining the +1 attack for the charge (and sniping some wounds with his knives), but so long as Guilliman uses his power fist by the second round of combat Curze will be locked to initiative 1 and will be dead before it's guaranteed he'll be able to leave combat.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 times after saves, 0.584 after Armour of Reason and IWND will take that down to 0.251.
**Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.139 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, 0.926 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.37 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**A long as fuck fight, but Guilliman take the win 'cause he does marginally more damage.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, 1 time after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.667.
**Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.778 times, wounds 1.85 times, 0.926 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.593 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 1.48 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.15 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Even with forcing Guilliman to re-roll 5's and 6's for the first round Lorgar will still lose.
**Note: this doesn't take into account Psychic Powers and with Precognition on Lorgar will easily win. Guilliman's rerollable DtW doesn't do shit, as it only works against witchfires and maledictions, while Lorgar's most powerful spells are blessings.

*Roboute Guilliman VS Perturabo
**Perturabo Round 1: hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.861 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.528.
**Perturabo Round 2 and thereafter: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 times after saves, 0.583 after Armour of Reason and IWND will take that down to 0.25.
**Guilliman Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.74 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.988 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Again, Guilliman wins pretty safely. Starting to see a trend here.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.92 times and wounds 1.701 times (Remember he has Preferred Enemy), 0.851 wounds after saves, 0.601 after Armour of Reason and IWND will take that down to 0.268 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 1: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 1.482 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.148 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman wins really easily, as the damage Alpharius does is almost irrelevant, thus making the claim that he personally killed the lord of the Alpha Legion actually believable...

* Roboute Guilliman VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn Round 1: hits 2.666 times, wounds 2 times, 0.75 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Dorn Round 2 and thereafter: hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.5 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.167 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 1.482 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.148 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman easily wins this fight, taking a lot less damage and dishing out more.
**Note: Dorn doesn't use Sundering Blow because he would actually cause less damage with it.

* Roboute Guilliman VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 3 times (Scourge)/2.25 times (Shadow-walk), causing 1.25 wounds (Scourge)/1 wound (Shadow-walk) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.917/0.667 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 1: 2.5/1.666 times, wounds 2.0833/1.389 times, 1.389/0.926 wounds after saves and 1.055/0.593 wounds after IWND.
**Guilliman Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3.333/2.5 times, wounds 2.963/2.083 times, 1.975/1.389 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.642/1.055 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman easily win this fight
**Note: Like Curze, Corax could try to use Hit and Run to even the odds, having even more bonus than Curze thanks to his uber-Furious Charge, but unlike Curze it wouldn't work for too long as the second time they fight (whether Corax charges or Guilliman catches him) Guilliman will have him concussed (He's using his fist for a reason) for the rest of the fight and will kill him before Corax can escape again, thus making the strategy not viable against Papa Smurf.

* TL;DR version: Surprisingly, despite being one the best army buffers amongst Primarchs and his generally not outstanding (for a Primarch) stats, Guilliman is actually a beast in 1 on 1 fights if they drag on long enough, beating all but the most specialised Primarchs and mathematically losing only to Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim. Truth is that he's very well balanced with a choice of good weapons for offense, a decent defense and an extra ability that benefits both. He loses when his more balls out brothers just dump damage on him but when he has the chance to let his strategy impact the fight he'll typically win. He'll likely fall down the rankings some when we get Russ and Sanguinius but with his army buffs he'll remain a good choice.
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[[Category:Imperial]][[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Space Marines]][[Category:Primarchs]]