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Imperial Cult

2021-01-21T02:49:24Z

2A02:120B:C3D2:D6C0:D55F:F74B:B430:3998:

{{Topquote|We are the [[Primarch|Gods]] of the [[Great Crusade|New World Order]]! We are the [[Imperial Guard|Soldiers]], the [[Space Marine|Legion of Light]]! We are the [[Terra|Center]], the [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|Death of the Sun]]! [[Ecclesiarchy|Fire]] and [[Inquisition|flame]], [[Imperium of Man|We are One]]!|One of many possible hymns of the Imperial Cult, reeking of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[awesome]], as quoted from "We Are One" by Triarii, is also the season 2 intro of [[TTS]]}}

{{Topquote|As long as there will be rascals and imbeciles, there will be religions. Ours is without contradict the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloodthirsty one to ever infect the world.|Voltaire, providing another, equally valid take on the Imperial Cult}}

In a broad sense, an '''Imperial Cult''' is any religion in which a head of state is worshipped as (a) God. Examples of real (historical) civilizations with an Imperial Cult include Ancient Egypt and the Japanese Empire. On [[/tg/]], it almost always refers specifically to the state religion of [[Warhammer 40,000]]'s [[Imperium of Man]], and basically <s>Catholic</s> Juche in Space {{BLAM|HERESY!}}{{BLAM}}'''There is no ''filioque'' in the Imperial creed!'''

==History==
{{Topquote|Rejoice, for I bring you glorious news. God walks among us.|The first lines of the Lectitio Divinatus}}

It got its start from the '''Lectitio Divinatus''', a spess bible written by [[Lorgar]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Word Bearers]], on the worlds conquered by his Legion during the [[Great Crusade]] and further perpetuated by believers amongst the crusade fleets. The Emperor, an advocate of atheism, did not approve, and betrayed, attacked, and humiliated Lorgar for it, which pushed his son into the worship of [[Chaos]] instead, which in turn ended up setting the [[Horus Heresy]] into motion. Afterwards, the Imperium worshiped the atheist even more than ever before. [[Just as planned]].

After the Heresy, the Emperor was entombed in the Golden Throne and was not exactly in a condition to stop people from portraying him as a god, and it was soon discovered that [[humanity]] could be united by using this religion to control them far more effectively than the old Imperial Truth ever could. It's anyone's guess as to what he thinks about the whole mess now.

==The Imperial Creed==
Though the substance of the Imperial [[Creed]] can vary from world to world as the Imperium is extremely vast, the Creed itself is deceptively simple. This makes life easier for missionaries who are attempting to bring new planets into the fold as the original superstitions of each planet might be fundamentally incompatible with a convoluted religion with too many doctrines.

Regardless of any other deviations in belief, the basic tenets are as follows:

# Worship the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] as the One-True-God, your Lord and Savior.
# [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Humanity is perfect]] and are the dominant form of life in the galaxy, [[Chaos|everything]] [[Eldar|else]] [[Orks|needs]] [[Tyranids|to be crushed]] [[Tau|or subjugated.]]

So at its simplest, a world can believe whatever it likes, so long as the Emperor is God or at the very least the head God, so on some worlds he might be a god of [[Thunder Warriors|thunder]] and [[Psyker|lightning]], on others he might be the judge of the dead, on others he might just be an almighty paymaster, whilst on others he might be seen as a god of destruction who must be [[Death Cult Assassin|appeased with death]]... essentially each planet can have its own view of the Emperor. This makes the Imperial Cult an extremely tolerant religion when it comes to expressions of faith, which is ironically [[skub|at odds]] with most observers' opinions on what the Imperial Creed is actually about. In addition, the Imperium is so vast and its history so expansive that just about any belief can be matched with something that already exists within the Imperium. Protector god? Space Marines. God of plenty? Agricultural world. God of fire? Salamanders. God of frost? Some world close to its star. God of light? World with weak atmosphere where they live underground. God of machines? Adeptus Mechanicus. The big guy who the plebs think is a god? Adeptus Custodes. And so on. On top of that, the Imperial Cult is perfectly willing to spend centuries or even millennia very slowly shifting a new world’s beliefs to fit closely enough to be accepted.

==The Imperial Cult and the Imperium==
Where people get confused is with the distinction between the '''Imperial Cult''' and the '''[[Ecclesiarchy]]''', which are distinct from one another; just as the worship of the pagan Roman Emperor was to the specific rites carried out in Rome. Comparisons are often drawn to the Roman Catholic Church, but a more accurate comparison would be to pagan Rome, which tolerated or ignored the various beliefs of its subject peoples, as long as they acknowledged the Emperor as the high priest of their pantheons in his role as Pontifex Maximus.

The "Imperial Cult" is just a blanket term which covers a multitude of belief systems which are compatible with the Imperial Creed and are tolerated by the Imperium, such as the [[Cult of the Redemption]], [[Dark Heresy|Cult of Pure Form]], a large variety of [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] (but not some of the more [[Khorne|extreme]] ones), as well as a wide variety of Feral or Death world belief systems that have been modified by missionaries to incorporate the Emperor in some form.

The Ecclesiarchy is just the state church, which attempts to bring a level of standardization to how people worship the Emperor and to make relations between worlds relatively frictionless. Unfortunately, even this is a difficult task. The sheer size of the Imperium ensures that various sectors can ''still'' have their own variations on how the creed is interpreted, and may have different doctrines or venerate different canonised saints because no one system can control every form of belief that pops up across the Imperium. Needless to say, this translates into a lot of people calling each other heretics even when their interpretations of the Imperial Cult are equally valid as far as the Ecclesiarchy is concerned. Actual violence (outside of planetary affairs) is rare as the Imperium is willing to tolerate infighting between planets only as much as necessary and sectarian divisions are pretty bad for general stability.

Because of this, the issue of [[Heresy]] can occasionally come about where different factions disagree with each other on what constitutes acceptable worship of the Emperor, though as per the original tenets of the Creed it takes a considerable level of deviation to truly count as abominable. Typically, this is determined either by the adoption of tolerance (or worse, outright subservience) towards [[xenos]] or the outright worship of other deities that are obviously not the Emperor, especially the [[Chaos God]]s. The accusation of heresy still does a pretty good job of silencing debates or threatening people whose views are considered to be too far from the norm, even if they wouldn't actually be viewed as heretics, as it basically means "You are straying too far from the planetary/sector government policy and you need to shut up before we kill you.".

However, it ''can'' and ''does'' go a bit further than this in day to day life. As the state religion, it does its best to cement itself as the only acceptable way to behave. So whereas the Emperor is the only true god, the [[High Lords of Terra]] are the Emperor's living agents, and the Ecclesiarchal priests are the speakers of His word --all of them are to be obeyed without question, no matter how suicidal or pointless their commands may be. Which basically translates as "Do as you are told by your superiors, [[Inquisition | or else]]". This generally involves: [[Hive| Working in horrible conditions]] [[Grimdark | until you die.]] If you don't want to do so and are stupid enough to express your views along those lines, you will quickly find out the hard way that the Imperium considers treason to be the same as heresy, since both of those involve refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Adeptus Terra.

The only major deviation allowed in the Imperium is the Cult Mechanicus of the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] (and [[Squats]]), thanks to the original Treaty of Mars allowing them to practice their own faith. Even so, this hasn't stopped tensions from popping up between the Mechanicus and the Ecclesiarchy. The commonly accepted compromise is that the Emperor represents the Machine God's physical avatar, the [[Omnissiah]]. While this compromise satisfies neither side, everyone goes along with it to keep the Imperium functioning as everyone ranked high enough (that is, not a lot) to be able to do something about it being at least somewhat aware of the intimidatingly insane shit they need to stand together to face (there is also the fact that the Emperor intentionally manipulated things so that the Cult Mechanicum was established at the very end of the Dark Age of Technology after the Men of Iron rebellion and before the Age of Strife, and he was probably aware of how exactly he could keep things stable and pre-arranged that as well). Even pious humans outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus, particularly [[Imperial Guard|Guardsmen]], take the Machine Cult's beliefs seriously as their lives depend upon the technology they use. Squats on the other hand are completely exempted and they do ancestor worship, though the Emperor is considered the greatest and oldest ancestor, which he technically is.

===Specific variants of the Imperial Cult===
At mentioned there is a huge variation of the sects and subsects of the Imperial Cult, many of which are officially sanctioned, others less so, and just because an expression of faith is considered heretical or unofficial does make them any less of a faithful servant of the Emperor than the next belief structure. Though some of the bloodier cults are more susceptible to corruption than others.

*'''Confederation of Light:''' aka the "[[Ecclesiarchy]] proper" from M36 onwards. The Emperor sacrificed himself for you and that you should feel bad about it and follow the penitent principles of poverty, generosity and humility. Also heavily linked to the principles of [[Inquisition|Thorianism]]: that the <s>Holy Ghost</s> Emperor can work through inspired individuals and give rise to the [[Living Saint]]s. What the average Imperial who has regular contact with the Adeptus Terra will be believing in as the vast majority of humans never leave their home planet (also home sub-sector or sector if they are temporarily conscripted) and worship one of the many variations.
*'''[[Temple Tendency|Temple of the Saviour Emperor]]''': The old Ecclesiarchy from M32-M36. If the Emperor is a god, and the Ministorum are his divinely appointed agents, then the Ministorum should get all the power and wealth. This belief was directly responsible for causing the barrel of laughs that was the [[Age of Apostasy]]. Some still believe in this doctrine, though they keep their mouths shut very tightly if they don't want a trip to the gallows.
*'''[[Cult of the Redemption]]:''' The Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, therefore mankind needs saving from its sinfulness; PURGE IT WITH FIRE! Considered too extreme and fanatical for mainstream doctrine, though tolerated as they are willing to go to insane lenghts no normal can handle to squash heretics and aliens.
*'''[[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]]:''' There is no single "Death Cult", though most share the common belief that since the Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, that debt needs to be repaid with sacrifices of Death, Blood or Pain, often in combination. This means their adherents are almost universally incredibly deadly since even the lowest layperson is likely to be able to gut you in any number of imaginative ways. Regularly found engaging heretics in a crusade. The cults who take it too far are susceptible to Chaos corruption.
*'''Cult of the Pure Form:''' Takes the doctrine of human purity very seriously. They believe that any tampering with the human body is a corruption and therefore oppose the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] and reject any form of mechanical augmentation to the point that they will even rip it out of themselves after converting to the faith and causing themselves severe physical trauma. Considering even the most fanatical Sister of Battle can have bionics, this is pretty stupid.
*'''Cult of the Emperor Revenant:''' almost indistinguishable from the mainstream Imperial Cult aside from its focus how the Emperor gained immortality/divinity through his martyrdom. Most servants of the Ministorum can't see a difference between this and "proper" doctrines, although this belief serves as the basis for several [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] and Funerary Sects.
**'''Night Cult''' also called the ''Temple of the True Resurrection'' in different locations. Believes that you can also gain immortality in death just like the Emperor, but attempts various methods to make it actually happen, including [[Zombie|raising the dead]] through [[Sorcerer (Warhammer 40,000)|sorcerous]] or [[Heretek|technological means]]. Understandably, the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy take dim views on this matter.
*'''Cult of the Dead Emperor.''' Main antagonist in the Horusian War first book, they believe that for the Emperor to truly ascend to his divine form, he should die and get freed from his limbo-like-cage. Yeeeeeaaahh... considering what would happen to Terra if this [[Eye of Terror|ever happen]], you can understand that they are usually spited by the Inquisition or almost any other cult, many times be labelled as heretics.
*'''Space Marine Chapter Cults:''' Most Space Marine Chapters reject the Imperial Cult ''(often with with extreme prejudice and gratuitous violence)'' and do not consider the Emperor to be a God, holding instead to local forms of the Imperial Truth doctrine. Therefore they are not actually compatible with the Imperial Creed, though individual Chapters occasionally have "He wasn't a god then but is now." as a sort of midpoint. Their specific chapter cults often spread to their respective homeworlds, with the natives crudely mimicking their masters veneration for their creator.

{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]

Imperial Cult

2021-01-21T02:48:57Z

2A02:120B:C3D2:D6C0:D55F:F74B:B430:3998:

{{Topquote|We are the [[Primarch|Gods]] of the [[Great Crusade|New World Order]]! We are the [[Imperial Guard|Soldiers]], the [[Space Marine|Legion of Light]]! We are the [[Terra|Center]], the [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|Death of the Sun]]! [[Ecclesiarchy|Fire]] and [[Inquisition|flame]], [[Imperium of Man|We are One]]!|One of many possible hymns of the Imperial Cult, reeking of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[awesome]], as quoted from "We Are One" by Triarii, is also the season 2 intro of [[TTS]]}}

{{Topquote|As long as there will be rascals and imbeciles, there will be religions. Ours is without contradict the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and the most bloodthirsty one to ever infect the world.|Voltaire, providing another, just as equally valid take on the Imperial Cult}}

In a broad sense, an '''Imperial Cult''' is any religion in which a head of state is worshipped as (a) God. Examples of real (historical) civilizations with an Imperial Cult include Ancient Egypt and the Japanese Empire. On [[/tg/]], it almost always refers specifically to the state religion of [[Warhammer 40,000]]'s [[Imperium of Man]], and basically <s>Catholic</s> Juche in Space {{BLAM|HERESY!}}{{BLAM}}'''There is no ''filioque'' in the Imperial creed!'''

==History==
{{Topquote|Rejoice, for I bring you glorious news. God walks among us.|The first lines of the Lectitio Divinatus}}

It got its start from the '''Lectitio Divinatus''', a spess bible written by [[Lorgar]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Word Bearers]], on the worlds conquered by his Legion during the [[Great Crusade]] and further perpetuated by believers amongst the crusade fleets. The Emperor, an advocate of atheism, did not approve, and betrayed, attacked, and humiliated Lorgar for it, which pushed his son into the worship of [[Chaos]] instead, which in turn ended up setting the [[Horus Heresy]] into motion. Afterwards, the Imperium worshiped the atheist even more than ever before. [[Just as planned]].

After the Heresy, the Emperor was entombed in the Golden Throne and was not exactly in a condition to stop people from portraying him as a god, and it was soon discovered that [[humanity]] could be united by using this religion to control them far more effectively than the old Imperial Truth ever could. It's anyone's guess as to what he thinks about the whole mess now.

==The Imperial Creed==
Though the substance of the Imperial [[Creed]] can vary from world to world as the Imperium is extremely vast, the Creed itself is deceptively simple. This makes life easier for missionaries who are attempting to bring new planets into the fold as the original superstitions of each planet might be fundamentally incompatible with a convoluted religion with too many doctrines.

Regardless of any other deviations in belief, the basic tenets are as follows:

# Worship the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] as the One-True-God, your Lord and Savior.
# [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Humanity is perfect]] and are the dominant form of life in the galaxy, [[Chaos|everything]] [[Eldar|else]] [[Orks|needs]] [[Tyranids|to be crushed]] [[Tau|or subjugated.]]

So at its simplest, a world can believe whatever it likes, so long as the Emperor is God or at the very least the head God, so on some worlds he might be a god of [[Thunder Warriors|thunder]] and [[Psyker|lightning]], on others he might be the judge of the dead, on others he might just be an almighty paymaster, whilst on others he might be seen as a god of destruction who must be [[Death Cult Assassin|appeased with death]]... essentially each planet can have its own view of the Emperor. This makes the Imperial Cult an extremely tolerant religion when it comes to expressions of faith, which is ironically [[skub|at odds]] with most observers' opinions on what the Imperial Creed is actually about. In addition, the Imperium is so vast and its history so expansive that just about any belief can be matched with something that already exists within the Imperium. Protector god? Space Marines. God of plenty? Agricultural world. God of fire? Salamanders. God of frost? Some world close to its star. God of light? World with weak atmosphere where they live underground. God of machines? Adeptus Mechanicus. The big guy who the plebs think is a god? Adeptus Custodes. And so on. On top of that, the Imperial Cult is perfectly willing to spend centuries or even millennia very slowly shifting a new world’s beliefs to fit closely enough to be accepted.

==The Imperial Cult and the Imperium==
Where people get confused is with the distinction between the '''Imperial Cult''' and the '''[[Ecclesiarchy]]''', which are distinct from one another; just as the worship of the pagan Roman Emperor was to the specific rites carried out in Rome. Comparisons are often drawn to the Roman Catholic Church, but a more accurate comparison would be to pagan Rome, which tolerated or ignored the various beliefs of its subject peoples, as long as they acknowledged the Emperor as the high priest of their pantheons in his role as Pontifex Maximus.

The "Imperial Cult" is just a blanket term which covers a multitude of belief systems which are compatible with the Imperial Creed and are tolerated by the Imperium, such as the [[Cult of the Redemption]], [[Dark Heresy|Cult of Pure Form]], a large variety of [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] (but not some of the more [[Khorne|extreme]] ones), as well as a wide variety of Feral or Death world belief systems that have been modified by missionaries to incorporate the Emperor in some form.

The Ecclesiarchy is just the state church, which attempts to bring a level of standardization to how people worship the Emperor and to make relations between worlds relatively frictionless. Unfortunately, even this is a difficult task. The sheer size of the Imperium ensures that various sectors can ''still'' have their own variations on how the creed is interpreted, and may have different doctrines or venerate different canonised saints because no one system can control every form of belief that pops up across the Imperium. Needless to say, this translates into a lot of people calling each other heretics even when their interpretations of the Imperial Cult are equally valid as far as the Ecclesiarchy is concerned. Actual violence (outside of planetary affairs) is rare as the Imperium is willing to tolerate infighting between planets only as much as necessary and sectarian divisions are pretty bad for general stability.

Because of this, the issue of [[Heresy]] can occasionally come about where different factions disagree with each other on what constitutes acceptable worship of the Emperor, though as per the original tenets of the Creed it takes a considerable level of deviation to truly count as abominable. Typically, this is determined either by the adoption of tolerance (or worse, outright subservience) towards [[xenos]] or the outright worship of other deities that are obviously not the Emperor, especially the [[Chaos God]]s. The accusation of heresy still does a pretty good job of silencing debates or threatening people whose views are considered to be too far from the norm, even if they wouldn't actually be viewed as heretics, as it basically means "You are straying too far from the planetary/sector government policy and you need to shut up before we kill you.".

However, it ''can'' and ''does'' go a bit further than this in day to day life. As the state religion, it does its best to cement itself as the only acceptable way to behave. So whereas the Emperor is the only true god, the [[High Lords of Terra]] are the Emperor's living agents, and the Ecclesiarchal priests are the speakers of His word --all of them are to be obeyed without question, no matter how suicidal or pointless their commands may be. Which basically translates as "Do as you are told by your superiors, [[Inquisition | or else]]". This generally involves: [[Hive| Working in horrible conditions]] [[Grimdark | until you die.]] If you don't want to do so and are stupid enough to express your views along those lines, you will quickly find out the hard way that the Imperium considers treason to be the same as heresy, since both of those involve refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Adeptus Terra.

The only major deviation allowed in the Imperium is the Cult Mechanicus of the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] (and [[Squats]]), thanks to the original Treaty of Mars allowing them to practice their own faith. Even so, this hasn't stopped tensions from popping up between the Mechanicus and the Ecclesiarchy. The commonly accepted compromise is that the Emperor represents the Machine God's physical avatar, the [[Omnissiah]]. While this compromise satisfies neither side, everyone goes along with it to keep the Imperium functioning as everyone ranked high enough (that is, not a lot) to be able to do something about it being at least somewhat aware of the intimidatingly insane shit they need to stand together to face (there is also the fact that the Emperor intentionally manipulated things so that the Cult Mechanicum was established at the very end of the Dark Age of Technology after the Men of Iron rebellion and before the Age of Strife, and he was probably aware of how exactly he could keep things stable and pre-arranged that as well). Even pious humans outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus, particularly [[Imperial Guard|Guardsmen]], take the Machine Cult's beliefs seriously as their lives depend upon the technology they use. Squats on the other hand are completely exempted and they do ancestor worship, though the Emperor is considered the greatest and oldest ancestor, which he technically is.

===Specific variants of the Imperial Cult===
At mentioned there is a huge variation of the sects and subsects of the Imperial Cult, many of which are officially sanctioned, others less so, and just because an expression of faith is considered heretical or unofficial does make them any less of a faithful servant of the Emperor than the next belief structure. Though some of the bloodier cults are more susceptible to corruption than others.

*'''Confederation of Light:''' aka the "[[Ecclesiarchy]] proper" from M36 onwards. The Emperor sacrificed himself for you and that you should feel bad about it and follow the penitent principles of poverty, generosity and humility. Also heavily linked to the principles of [[Inquisition|Thorianism]]: that the <s>Holy Ghost</s> Emperor can work through inspired individuals and give rise to the [[Living Saint]]s. What the average Imperial who has regular contact with the Adeptus Terra will be believing in as the vast majority of humans never leave their home planet (also home sub-sector or sector if they are temporarily conscripted) and worship one of the many variations.
*'''[[Temple Tendency|Temple of the Saviour Emperor]]''': The old Ecclesiarchy from M32-M36. If the Emperor is a god, and the Ministorum are his divinely appointed agents, then the Ministorum should get all the power and wealth. This belief was directly responsible for causing the barrel of laughs that was the [[Age of Apostasy]]. Some still believe in this doctrine, though they keep their mouths shut very tightly if they don't want a trip to the gallows.
*'''[[Cult of the Redemption]]:''' The Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, therefore mankind needs saving from its sinfulness; PURGE IT WITH FIRE! Considered too extreme and fanatical for mainstream doctrine, though tolerated as they are willing to go to insane lenghts no normal can handle to squash heretics and aliens.
*'''[[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]]:''' There is no single "Death Cult", though most share the common belief that since the Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, that debt needs to be repaid with sacrifices of Death, Blood or Pain, often in combination. This means their adherents are almost universally incredibly deadly since even the lowest layperson is likely to be able to gut you in any number of imaginative ways. Regularly found engaging heretics in a crusade. The cults who take it too far are susceptible to Chaos corruption.
*'''Cult of the Pure Form:''' Takes the doctrine of human purity very seriously. They believe that any tampering with the human body is a corruption and therefore oppose the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] and reject any form of mechanical augmentation to the point that they will even rip it out of themselves after converting to the faith and causing themselves severe physical trauma. Considering even the most fanatical Sister of Battle can have bionics, this is pretty stupid.
*'''Cult of the Emperor Revenant:''' almost indistinguishable from the mainstream Imperial Cult aside from its focus how the Emperor gained immortality/divinity through his martyrdom. Most servants of the Ministorum can't see a difference between this and "proper" doctrines, although this belief serves as the basis for several [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] and Funerary Sects.
**'''Night Cult''' also called the ''Temple of the True Resurrection'' in different locations. Believes that you can also gain immortality in death just like the Emperor, but attempts various methods to make it actually happen, including [[Zombie|raising the dead]] through [[Sorcerer (Warhammer 40,000)|sorcerous]] or [[Heretek|technological means]]. Understandably, the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy take dim views on this matter.
*'''Cult of the Dead Emperor.''' Main antagonist in the Horusian War first book, they believe that for the Emperor to truly ascend to his divine form, he should die and get freed from his limbo-like-cage. Yeeeeeaaahh... considering what would happen to Terra if this [[Eye of Terror|ever happen]], you can understand that they are usually spited by the Inquisition or almost any other cult, many times be labelled as heretics.
*'''Space Marine Chapter Cults:''' Most Space Marine Chapters reject the Imperial Cult ''(often with with extreme prejudice and gratuitous violence)'' and do not consider the Emperor to be a God, holding instead to local forms of the Imperial Truth doctrine. Therefore they are not actually compatible with the Imperial Creed, though individual Chapters occasionally have "He wasn't a god then but is now." as a sort of midpoint. Their specific chapter cults often spread to their respective homeworlds, with the natives crudely mimicking their masters veneration for their creator.

{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]

Imperial Cult

2021-01-21T02:42:22Z

2A02:120B:C3D2:D6C0:D55F:F74B:B430:3998:

{{Topquote|If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.|Voltaire}}

{{Topquote|We are the [[Primarch|Gods]] of the [[Great Crusade|New World Order]]! We are the [[Imperial Guard|Soldiers]], the [[Space Marine|Legion of Light]]! We are the [[Terra|Center]], the [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|Death of the Sun]]! [[Ecclesiarchy|Fire]] and [[Inquisition|flame]], [[Imperium of Man|We are One]]!|One of many possible hymns of the Imperial Cult, reeking of [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[awesome]], as quoted from "We Are One" by Triarii, is also the season 2 intro of [[TTS]]}}

In a broad sense, an '''Imperial Cult''' is any religion in which a head of state is worshipped as (a) God. Examples of real (historical) civilizations with an Imperial Cult include Ancient Egypt and the Japanese Empire. On [[/tg/]], it almost always refers specifically to the state religion of [[Warhammer 40,000]]'s [[Imperium of Man]], and basically <s>Catholic</s> Juche in Space {{BLAM|HERESY!}}{{BLAM}}'''There is no ''filioque'' in the Imperial creed!'''

==History==
{{Topquote|Rejoice, for I bring you glorious news. God walks among us.|The first lines of the Lectitio Divinatus}}

It got its start from the '''Lectitio Divinatus''', a spess bible written by [[Lorgar]], [[Primarch]] of the [[Word Bearers]], on the worlds conquered by his Legion during the [[Great Crusade]] and further perpetuated by believers amongst the crusade fleets. The Emperor, an advocate of atheism, did not approve, and betrayed, attacked, and humiliated Lorgar for it, which pushed his son into the worship of [[Chaos]] instead, which in turn ended up setting the [[Horus Heresy]] into motion. Afterwards, the Imperium worshiped the atheist even more than ever before. [[Just as planned]].

After the Heresy, the Emperor was entombed in the Golden Throne and was not exactly in a condition to stop people from portraying him as a god, and it was soon discovered that [[humanity]] could be united by using this religion to control them far more effectively than the old Imperial Truth ever could. It's anyone's guess as to what he thinks about the whole mess now.

==The Imperial Creed==
Though the substance of the Imperial [[Creed]] can vary from world to world as the Imperium is extremely vast, the Creed itself is deceptively simple. This makes life easier for missionaries who are attempting to bring new planets into the fold as the original superstitions of each planet might be fundamentally incompatible with a convoluted religion with too many doctrines.

Regardless of any other deviations in belief, the basic tenets are as follows:

# Worship the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] as the One-True-God, your Lord and Savior.
# [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Humanity is perfect]] and are the dominant form of life in the galaxy, [[Chaos|everything]] [[Eldar|else]] [[Orks|needs]] [[Tyranids|to be crushed]] [[Tau|or subjugated.]]

So at its simplest, a world can believe whatever it likes, so long as the Emperor is God or at the very least the head God, so on some worlds he might be a god of [[Thunder Warriors|thunder]] and [[Psyker|lightning]], on others he might be the judge of the dead, on others he might just be an almighty paymaster, whilst on others he might be seen as a god of destruction who must be [[Death Cult Assassin|appeased with death]]... essentially each planet can have its own view of the Emperor. This makes the Imperial Cult an extremely tolerant religion when it comes to expressions of faith, which is ironically [[skub|at odds]] with most observers' opinions on what the Imperial Creed is actually about. In addition, the Imperium is so vast and its history so expansive that just about any belief can be matched with something that already exists within the Imperium. Protector god? Space Marines. God of plenty? Agricultural world. God of fire? Salamanders. God of frost? Some world close to its star. God of light? World with weak atmosphere where they live underground. God of machines? Adeptus Mechanicus. The big guy who the plebs think is a god? Adeptus Custodes. And so on. On top of that, the Imperial Cult is perfectly willing to spend centuries or even millennia very slowly shifting a new world’s beliefs to fit closely enough to be accepted.

==The Imperial Cult and the Imperium==
Where people get confused is with the distinction between the '''Imperial Cult''' and the '''[[Ecclesiarchy]]''', which are distinct from one another; just as the worship of the pagan Roman Emperor was to the specific rites carried out in Rome. Comparisons are often drawn to the Roman Catholic Church, but a more accurate comparison would be to pagan Rome, which tolerated or ignored the various beliefs of its subject peoples, as long as they acknowledged the Emperor as the high priest of their pantheons in his role as Pontifex Maximus.

The "Imperial Cult" is just a blanket term which covers a multitude of belief systems which are compatible with the Imperial Creed and are tolerated by the Imperium, such as the [[Cult of the Redemption]], [[Dark Heresy|Cult of Pure Form]], a large variety of [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] (but not some of the more [[Khorne|extreme]] ones), as well as a wide variety of Feral or Death world belief systems that have been modified by missionaries to incorporate the Emperor in some form.

The Ecclesiarchy is just the state church, which attempts to bring a level of standardization to how people worship the Emperor and to make relations between worlds relatively frictionless. Unfortunately, even this is a difficult task. The sheer size of the Imperium ensures that various sectors can ''still'' have their own variations on how the creed is interpreted, and may have different doctrines or venerate different canonised saints because no one system can control every form of belief that pops up across the Imperium. Needless to say, this translates into a lot of people calling each other heretics even when their interpretations of the Imperial Cult are equally valid as far as the Ecclesiarchy is concerned. Actual violence (outside of planetary affairs) is rare as the Imperium is willing to tolerate infighting between planets only as much as necessary and sectarian divisions are pretty bad for general stability.

Because of this, the issue of [[Heresy]] can occasionally come about where different factions disagree with each other on what constitutes acceptable worship of the Emperor, though as per the original tenets of the Creed it takes a considerable level of deviation to truly count as abominable. Typically, this is determined either by the adoption of tolerance (or worse, outright subservience) towards [[xenos]] or the outright worship of other deities that are obviously not the Emperor, especially the [[Chaos God]]s. The accusation of heresy still does a pretty good job of silencing debates or threatening people whose views are considered to be too far from the norm, even if they wouldn't actually be viewed as heretics, as it basically means "You are straying too far from the planetary/sector government policy and you need to shut up before we kill you.".

However, it ''can'' and ''does'' go a bit further than this in day to day life. As the state religion, it does its best to cement itself as the only acceptable way to behave. So whereas the Emperor is the only true god, the [[High Lords of Terra]] are the Emperor's living agents, and the Ecclesiarchal priests are the speakers of His word --all of them are to be obeyed without question, no matter how suicidal or pointless their commands may be. Which basically translates as "Do as you are told by your superiors, [[Inquisition | or else]]". This generally involves: [[Hive| Working in horrible conditions]] [[Grimdark | until you die.]] If you don't want to do so and are stupid enough to express your views along those lines, you will quickly find out the hard way that the Imperium considers treason to be the same as heresy, since both of those involve refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Adeptus Terra.

The only major deviation allowed in the Imperium is the Cult Mechanicus of the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] (and [[Squats]]), thanks to the original Treaty of Mars allowing them to practice their own faith. Even so, this hasn't stopped tensions from popping up between the Mechanicus and the Ecclesiarchy. The commonly accepted compromise is that the Emperor represents the Machine God's physical avatar, the [[Omnissiah]]. While this compromise satisfies neither side, everyone goes along with it to keep the Imperium functioning as everyone ranked high enough (that is, not a lot) to be able to do something about it being at least somewhat aware of the intimidatingly insane shit they need to stand together to face (there is also the fact that the Emperor intentionally manipulated things so that the Cult Mechanicum was established at the very end of the Dark Age of Technology after the Men of Iron rebellion and before the Age of Strife, and he was probably aware of how exactly he could keep things stable and pre-arranged that as well). Even pious humans outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus, particularly [[Imperial Guard|Guardsmen]], take the Machine Cult's beliefs seriously as their lives depend upon the technology they use. Squats on the other hand are completely exempted and they do ancestor worship, though the Emperor is considered the greatest and oldest ancestor, which he technically is.

===Specific variants of the Imperial Cult===
At mentioned there is a huge variation of the sects and subsects of the Imperial Cult, many of which are officially sanctioned, others less so, and just because an expression of faith is considered heretical or unofficial does make them any less of a faithful servant of the Emperor than the next belief structure. Though some of the bloodier cults are more susceptible to corruption than others.

*'''Confederation of Light:''' aka the "[[Ecclesiarchy]] proper" from M36 onwards. The Emperor sacrificed himself for you and that you should feel bad about it and follow the penitent principles of poverty, generosity and humility. Also heavily linked to the principles of [[Inquisition|Thorianism]]: that the <s>Holy Ghost</s> Emperor can work through inspired individuals and give rise to the [[Living Saint]]s. What the average Imperial who has regular contact with the Adeptus Terra will be believing in as the vast majority of humans never leave their home planet (also home sub-sector or sector if they are temporarily conscripted) and worship one of the many variations.
*'''[[Temple Tendency|Temple of the Saviour Emperor]]''': The old Ecclesiarchy from M32-M36. If the Emperor is a god, and the Ministorum are his divinely appointed agents, then the Ministorum should get all the power and wealth. This belief was directly responsible for causing the barrel of laughs that was the [[Age of Apostasy]]. Some still believe in this doctrine, though they keep their mouths shut very tightly if they don't want a trip to the gallows.
*'''[[Cult of the Redemption]]:''' The Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, therefore mankind needs saving from its sinfulness; PURGE IT WITH FIRE! Considered too extreme and fanatical for mainstream doctrine, though tolerated as they are willing to go to insane lenghts no normal can handle to squash heretics and aliens.
*'''[[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]]:''' There is no single "Death Cult", though most share the common belief that since the Emperor sacrificed himself for your sins, that debt needs to be repaid with sacrifices of Death, Blood or Pain, often in combination. This means their adherents are almost universally incredibly deadly since even the lowest layperson is likely to be able to gut you in any number of imaginative ways. Regularly found engaging heretics in a crusade. The cults who take it too far are susceptible to Chaos corruption.
*'''Cult of the Pure Form:''' Takes the doctrine of human purity very seriously. They believe that any tampering with the human body is a corruption and therefore oppose the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] and reject any form of mechanical augmentation to the point that they will even rip it out of themselves after converting to the faith and causing themselves severe physical trauma. Considering even the most fanatical Sister of Battle can have bionics, this is pretty stupid.
*'''Cult of the Emperor Revenant:''' almost indistinguishable from the mainstream Imperial Cult aside from its focus how the Emperor gained immortality/divinity through his martyrdom. Most servants of the Ministorum can't see a difference between this and "proper" doctrines, although this belief serves as the basis for several [[Death Cult Assassin|Death Cults]] and Funerary Sects.
**'''Night Cult''' also called the ''Temple of the True Resurrection'' in different locations. Believes that you can also gain immortality in death just like the Emperor, but attempts various methods to make it actually happen, including [[Zombie|raising the dead]] through [[Sorcerer (Warhammer 40,000)|sorcerous]] or [[Heretek|technological means]]. Understandably, the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy take dim views on this matter.
*'''Cult of the Dead Emperor.''' Main antagonist in the Horusian War first book, they believe that for the Emperor to truly ascend to his divine form, he should die and get freed from his limbo-like-cage. Yeeeeeaaahh... considering what would happen to Terra if this [[Eye of Terror|ever happen]], you can understand that they are usually spited by the Inquisition or almost any other cult, many times be labelled as heretics.
*'''Space Marine Chapter Cults:''' Most Space Marine Chapters reject the Imperial Cult ''(often with with extreme prejudice and gratuitous violence)'' and do not consider the Emperor to be a God, holding instead to local forms of the Imperial Truth doctrine. Therefore they are not actually compatible with the Imperial Creed, though individual Chapters occasionally have "He wasn't a god then but is now." as a sort of midpoint. Their specific chapter cults often spread to their respective homeworlds, with the natives crudely mimicking their masters veneration for their creator.

{{Imperium}}

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Imperial]]

Omegon

2021-01-21T02:04:05Z

2A02:120B:C3D2:D6C0:D55F:F74B:B430:3998:

{{heresy}}
{{Wh40k-stub}}
[[File:OmegonArt.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Omegon's painted sketch...''or is it?'']]
{{Topquote|All around me darkness gathers, Fading is the sun that shone, We must speak of other matters, You can be me when I'm gone.|The Sandman}}

{{Topquote|I is another.|Arthur Rimbaud}}

'''Omegon''', all otherwise known as '''The Unknown Twin''', '''Anonymous #2''' and '''The ''Other'' One''' is/was the twin brother of [[Alpharius]]; collectively, they are the [[Primarchs]] of the [[Alpha Legion]]. People know less about this guy than they do about Alpharius, [[Bear Lore|so that's pretty much less than jack squat.]] In fact, people know so little about this guy and his brother that it isn't even known [[What|if they are one person or two.]] This is leveraged by the fact that everyone is either one of these guys or the other, [[Just as planned|including themselves.]]

If you don't know anybody who is secretly Alpharius or Omegon, you probably are him (or the other one (or both (or neither (or all at the same time)))).

==Conspiracies within Conspiracies (as usual)==
[[Image: 1478040498934.jpg|400px|thumb|right|[[Metal Gear|Now do you remember? Who you are? What you were meant to do? I've remained a phantom, thanks to you. And thanks to you I’ve left my mark. You have too – you’ve written your own history. You’re your own man. I’m Alpharius Omegon, and you are too… No… He’s the two of us. Together. Where we are today? We built it. This story – this “Primarch” – it’s ours. We can change the Galaxy - and with it, the future. I am you, and you are me. Carry that with you, wherever you go. Thank you… my brother. From here on out, you’re Alpharius. - The Man Who Sold the Galaxy]]]]
Alpharius/Omegon despite being twin primarchs have been shown to be at odds with each other, both helping and hindering the Horus Heresy to varying degrees. Therefore it is possible that one is a loyalist while the other is a traitor. Consider the following evidence:

===Undermining Horus and the Traitor cause===
The Alpha Legion's first victory in the [[Horus Heresy]] was claiming the Forge World of Paramar, which was left in such a state that Horus had to garrison the world with substantial forces earmarked for warzones elsewhere just to maintain control over it (partly because Loyalist Iron Warriors took a hand during the conquest). When [[Horus]] called Alpharius out on this bullshit, the encrypted response was '''"The Devil is not Mocked"''' which is an oblique reference to a [[Bullshit|meaningful proverb]] (the full saying of which goes "When evil faces evil, the Devil is not mocked"); the moral being just because they're both evil doesn't mean they're on the same side, and that a major evil badass won't automatically consider a smaller, also evil upstart his equal.

When the White Scars eventually left the Chondax system, an Alpha Legion "fleet" ''(actually made up of several "fake" battlecruisers with [[Abbadon|no real teeth]])'' arrived to hold them in position long enough to receive orders from [[Rogal Dorn]] to return to Terra. Mortarion has no idea what that was meant to achieve (the mission was apparently to give them misinformation about Prospero and con them into helping a different, non-toothless Alpha fleet to wipe out the Space Wolves) and comments that Alpharius will end up "throttling" himself with all his schemes. Given that the other fleet did its best to wipe out the Wolves, it suggests two Primarchs working towards two different goals.

The Alpha Legion saved Corax and the survivors of Istvaan from the World Eaters. If Corax died, the Raven Guard would have been finished and out of the war for good ''(much like the Salamanders were)''. Instead, the Alpha Legion infiltrated the Raven Guard and let them get away to go get genetech from the Emperor to rebuild, since Omegon was forewarned of this turn of events by the Cabal. Omegon and his infiltrators managed to [[Blood Ravens|steal]] a version of the genetech for himself, and sabotaged the Raven Guard's copy and turned their Marines into mutants, and gave another copy of the sabotaged design to Horus. The upshot is that no one could really benefit from the ability to supercharge making Marines other than Omegon himself, and the Raven Guard managed to rebuild enough to rejoin the war towards the end and still have enough marines left over to split into successor chapters.

===Alpharius vs Omegon===
Alpharius/Omegon sided with [[Horus]] despite being explicitly told by [[The Cabal]] prior to the Heresy that if Horus won it would mean the end of the human race but the ultimate victory against Chaos. While if the Emperor won it would mean humanity survives long enough to see the decay and eventual death of the galaxy. A Catch 22 with '''two''' undesirable outcomes, but hey, the Alpha Legion has two Primarchs, go figure?
*By the time of ''Vulkan Lives'', the Cabal have apparently written off their "Alpharius Gambit" as a failure, despite from all appearances that the Alpha Legion joined Horus just like they wanted.

Omegon discretely plotted against Alpharius to destroy an Alpha Legion facility which was causing warp storms and preventing the [[White Scars]] from returning to Terra. If this facility was not destroyed the White Scars would not have been present during the final battle.
*Evidence of one brother conspiring against the other? Just like the rest of the Horus Heresy. Just because they are twins it doesn't mean they are always of the same mindset.

In '''Vengeful Spirit''' by Graham McNeill, during a conversation between Malcador and the Emperor, Malcador reveals that the Dark Angels had come to the aid of Leman Russ and the Space Wolves against the Alpha Legion, to which the Emperor replies: ''"Alpharius...my son, what chance did you give my dream?"'' This line is actually very important on many levels. First it indicates that the Emperor is either unaware that Alpharius Omegon is actually two twin Primarchs, which seems unlikely given his whole creation of them using parts of his godlike power and psyche (all the more so given that when Word Bearers were shown a vision of the birthing vault "too many limbs" were visible in pod XX), '''or''' that he IS aware of their dual nature but knows that, while Alpharius could give up on the Emperor's dream, Omegon would never ''actually'' turn on him. If this latter part is the truth, it could indicate that Alpharius and Omegon haven't always been together.

In '''Seventh Serpent''' also by Graham McNeill, a sizable fleet of Alpha Legion Loyalists was preparing to join the war effort, until Traitor-Alpharius manipulates the Shattered Legion Loyalists into destroying them, under the ironic pretext of assassinating "Alpharius".
*Alpharius refers to himself here as ''"the one and only"'', which at a stretch might be a subtle hint that he has done away with his twin. As the existence of his twin is a monumental secret that there would be no need to draw attention to the fact there is only one of him, short of [[Primarch|ego]] that is.
*The Loyalist Alpha Legionnaires queried ''"which one of them is it?"'' upon realising that other Alpha Legionnaires were in orbit. Then later determined ''"You're one of his"'' as if the distinction between the two Primarchs mattered at this point.

===Formation of Malcador's Grey Knights===
Despite the Alpha Legion stealing the ORIGINAL genetic template of the Primarchs, they handed false information to Horus which would never have resulted in anything useful.

The said [[Genestealer|stolen genetic information]] was never utilized by the traitor Alpha Legion either, even after 10,000 years, even when they could have been producing "[[Primaris Marines|super]]" space marines!
But hey? aren't [[Grey Knights]] an "original" space marine chapter with NO known Primarch? with psychic powers? [[Mary Sue|AND]] an unusual resistance to corruption? And [[Matt Ward|supposedly]] improved genetic template?
*Also 7th edition Grey Knights Codex hints that it has traits that none of the Legions Gene-Seed has ''(such as making the purer/more resilient to Warp Corruption (read Castellan Crowe's entry)'' which would mean that they are an entirely new strain of Gene-Seed and someone would have needed the knowledge/data to be able to create it.
*The Emperor's Gift novel has a Grey Knight outright say their gene-seed was derived directly from the Emperor rather than any Primarch. While it would go a long way in explaining how the Grey Knights are so Grey Knightly, it could certainly be the case that the Knights are [[Pretend|told this]] to keep them from asking questions. Especially since the Emperor had no gene-seed and no unique organs, just a ton of psychic power.

==Present Day==

It seems Omegon has survived up to the present day and is currently involved with the Necrons/C'tan. Also his Legion has no idea where he is

==Which Alpha Legionaire Are You?==
[[Black Library]] used to have an [http://www.blacklibrary.com/Home/alpha-legion-quiz.html Alpha Legion quiz] on their site. About half the answers seem to lead to Alpharius, and the other half lead to Omegon (fitting for the two Primarchs). If you get "I am Alpharius" for your result, there's a description of him that basically encompasses all answers (but does tellingly say "You are absolutely loyal to your legion") whereas Omegon's description says he answers to no one in pursuit of his mysterious goals and will kill anyone in the way... Actually, we kind of already knew that, but at least this confirms it.)

==Tabletop==
[[File:AlphariusModel.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Omegon's [[awesome]] new model... [[Alpharius#Tabletop|or is it?]] Also note the massive red pimple in the middle of his forehead.]]
{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Omegon:''' || 7 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 5 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}

While not a monster of close combat like other Primarchs, Omegon gives candy to his army while [[Tzeentch|fucking with the opponents]] like no one but him can (That being said, even the worst of combat primarchs will whomp just about anything else). Sire of the Alpha Legion grants all Alpha Legion units Preferred Enemy ([[Rape|Everything]]) and gives Omegon Preferred Enemy (Everything), Counter attack, Move through Cover, Scout, and Crusader- but not right away. You see, after both sides deploy he can opt out of deploying normally or via deep striking and choose to hide in any Alpha Legion Infantry unit which is part of the Primary Detachment, disguised as a rank-and-file model, but can reveal himself starting at turn 2 (and does so automatically at turn 5) replacing a model and gaining all of the above buffs. If the unit he's hiding in is "falling back" when he reveals himself, it auto-rallies, and if it's destroyed while he's still hiding (or if it is in a Transport and there is no space for him), he just goes into reserves (you must write which unit is hiding Omegon... but if you're a true Alpha legionnaire you'd have 6 different notes, ''none of them with your actual handwriting style''). Be careful though: remember that he is Bulky and that he can only be revealed at the beginning of your own turn, so if he is hiding in a transport at full capacity he could be impossible to place (for example in a ten man Breacher squad inside a Rhino) unless you already disembarked the Squad on the previous turn, so plan accordingly. He can also Seize the Initiative on a 4+, give units arriving via Outflank a +D3 movement bonus and, best of all, [[Troll|if an enemy unit is successfully brought in from reserves and your army has an identical version of that same type also in reserve, roll a D6: on a 4+, the opponent brings in your unit instead]]. ''Combine him with his Legion RoW to almost guarantee going first and almost completely negate your enemy's reserves''.

As far as equipment goes: on defense,'''The Pythian Scales''' gives him 2+ armour save and 4+ invulnerable save and also ignores the effects of Poison and Fleshbane. Not bad. His weapon, '''The Pale Spear''' doesn't boost his Strength, but it does have AP1, Armourbane, and Instant Death along with Two-Handed (as an interesting note, this actually makes him one of the best Primarchs for murdering monsters: he is one of the few Primarchs with access to Instant Death without a proc from a dice roll. He could reasonably take out a trio of Carnifex in a single round of CQC, or more topically, a squad of Taghmatta). He also has the following equipment: '''Venom Spheres''', '''Master-Crafted Plasma Blaster''', '''Cognis Signum''', '''Nuncio Vox''' and '''Camelioline''', making him quite the force multiplier and perfectly capable to adapt to a variety of circumstances, like he should be.

All in all Omegon is one of the if not flat out the single best force multiplier in Warhammer 30k, as his value for money only increases the larger battles get. In 3000pts games, stubborn and other once per game abilities are useful. At 10000pts they are less so. Preferred enemy (Everything) is universally useful and becomes more useful the larger the armies become (seriously, you'd happily pay 415 points to give your apocalypse army preferred enemy anyway, never mind that you're also getting a Primarch as well).

{{Primarchs}}

[[Category:Imperial]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Chaos Space Marines]]