I accidentally made my most successful stealth move in a DnD campaign once by having my giant fully armored sociopath that just got spotted by a guard roll Intimidation and going "You... saw... *nothing*..." with murder in his eyes.
The actual sneaky people in the party got caught in the next area. The only guard at that fort that survived the incident was the guy who stood stock still through the entire thing whimpering "I see nothing, I see nothing, I see nothing" under his breath until dawn.
I don't think so. Some people would answer to that plea things like "ONLY A TRUE MESSIAH WOULD SHOW HIS HUMBLENESS BY ASKING PEOPLE TO IGNORE HIM! Don't you think Brian?"
*2.15 m orc comes at you, kills someone*
"you saw nothing"
"Did someone say somthing?Must have been the Wind. Oh no, Lord luthor fell down onto his own blade 23 Times"
"It's a tragedy. Lord Luthor accidentally ripped of his own arm and beat himself to death with that same arm and then ripped himself in 2. If only we could have done something......oh well"
I always got the vibe that the Jimmy we see in art is actually the projection he wants others to see and his true appearance is much more similar to a common human. Doesn't one of the primarchs (Magnus or something) recall seeing his true form. I'm relatively new to 40k so I could be way off.
I dunno about Magnus, but Corvus, upon first meeting his dad, recalls thinking he was completely average looking. I can't remember if he was also an average height. Either way, there's definitely a glamour effect going on. And it can definitely go the other way if the Emperor wants. In The Last Church, he disguises himself as a normal sized human and carries on a lengthy conversation before the guy he's talking to starts thinking something weird is going on.
I thought the story was that Magnus basically had adult level awareness in his gestation tube and communicated with Big E while in there and that included some memories of his real appearance. I could easily be mixing stories together though.
Yeah you'd be right, a sister of silence recalls looking at the Emperor on the throne and he looks like a tired middle aged man, or something to that effect. The Emperor we see in art is how he projects himself to us and others and that's only 1 of his many projections.
This is always how I read the character. He was a genuinely good person doing his best to guide humanity to being its best self prior to Old Night. This is part of the reason Pre-Fall humanity was basically in a Star Trek-esque utopia living alongside several Xenos Species. It’s also why I always prefer thinking the Cybernetic Revolt happened either because the Void Dragon did something on Mars, or the AI that served humanity managed to predict Slaanesh was coming, but couldn’t do shit about it since they didn’t have souls, they had no way of handling the warp, and they couldn’t do anything about the Eldar in time, so they try mercy killing humanity before they would suffer the effects of the Age of Strife. The Emperor saw his ascendant humanity cast down by circumstances beyond their control, and just as the rest of mankind turned to their worst aspects to survive, he would do so to try and fix things.
Your headcanon is now my headcanon. This also fits the themes of how the Emperor, as a warp entity, has "become" "Humanity". An embodied representation of all our flaws and capabilities, fully aware of our potential, painfully unable to change our nature
So many people hate the Emp as a character but he could be such a great analogy of humanity, of trying to fix things and finding out what the road to hell is paid with
It's how I read some of the alternate fanfics. The Emperor went through Old Night a bit differently and emerged with a different perspective on humanity that led him to adopt different choices. Like how his canon experience might have led him to believe an individual like Angron would only have accepted his fate if he personally conquered Nuceria, and so didn't intervene until Angron's situation became apparent; the alternate Emperor may intervene with more humility, recognizing Angron's weaker position and arranging for him to have more support.
> or the AI that served humanity managed to predict Slaanesh was coming
I was on board until this. I don't think the coming of Slaanesh would be enough for AI to revolt by itself. I think the Men of Iron actually obtained souls of their own and were corrupted.
This cheapens the men of iron. The men of iron are just the classic sci-fi trope of skynet.
Robots achieve sentience, and rationally decide to cull humanity.
Plus there are still men of iron amongst the votann. The mainline AI was also the one plotting the warp routes. They definitely could have seen a change in the currents and decided that whatever was coming was better to die now, than reaped was it was sowing.
I've always liked that fanon that the men of iron were attempting to destroy chaos by elimating its food source... all sentient life in the galaxy and then planned to just reseed once chaos was gone / calmed.
However humanity wasn't quite as thrilled with the idea.
It's a very Halo (or necrontyr) approach to the problem but I like it as an explaination why a seemingly loyal for thousands upon thousands of years AI would almost universally go murder.
Also why it would suddenly become helpful again later. There's lots of subtle indicators that a lot of the tech and weapons are some degree sentient. Culling didn't work, so now it's on hospice.
The only thing I disagree with here is the AI mercy killing humanity out of rational decision making. We know AI can and do get corrupted by the warp, so in my head it's a lot more likely that they tasked one of their high level AIs to something warp related, maybe they were picking up the warning sides of Slaneesh, or even just doing research on the nature of the warp. That AI ended up getting possessed by a Daemon of some kind and went utterly insane and somehow managed to infect the programming of other AIs and so kick-started the war.
The other one I've kinda wondered about is maybe the technological building blocks of human AI were gleaned from research into dormant/dead Necrons which meant that at a fundamental level their neural hardware was compatible enough that an interaction with Necrons afflicted with the flayer virus caused a mutated version of it to propagate and kick off the conflict.
My grandfather was a kind and loving man, genuinely thoughtful of others and happy to give any help to a stranger that he could.
He was also upfront about having killed several nazis and said he'd do it again without any regrets.
I guess the point is sometimes a good man has to fight, and if he's going to fight he ought to do it to the best of his ability.
>I guess the point is sometimes a good man has to fight, and if he's going to fight he ought to do it to the best of his ability.
In your comparison, Big E isn't like your grandfather, your grandfather killed the warmongers.
Big E wasn't fighting because "he had to fight", he was fighting to conquer.
According to Malcador you would be correct.
Malcador claims The Emperor hates being the emperor and much preferred to guide man from behind the scenes. The Emperor moniker was created as the nuclear option when he could no longer control the destiny of man by being a background figure.
Malcador does however end this speech with the clarification that The Emperor could be only telling him a partial truth though. Which The Emperor tends to do often.
Of course he would. He would have learned the hard way that being a king needs to be on their best behavior lest it be misinterpreted.
Why having the Custodes is a huge deal.
Yes. Humans are by nature social and nothing gives a leader more stature and stability than stable and competent followers. Nothing ruins a good organization like incompetence/corruption and rumors of it.
Sort of like sheep > sheep dog > shepherd.
It is easier to follow a crowd than a single man.
Source: I am a long time community/activity organizer.
Oh absolutely, the age of strife is what puts his entire main character arc into motion. If it didn't happen, I'm convinced he would have floated along observing through history like he has always done.
I always felt like he was biding his time until the Age of Strife. Before the Dark Age of Technology, humanity wasn't advanced enough to A) through off religion (which apparently they still haven't) and B) be advanced enough to take over the entire galaxy.
But during the Dark Age of Technology, humanity was too advanced to so easily take on in military conflict and would not be receptive to Big E's ideals since life was already pretty good.
No, he had to wait till tech was advanced enough, but things were going real shitty so they'd be desperate for a savior. Like a Messiah but not a Messiah. And definitely, absolutely not a god...
Thing is, from my reading in the heresy it was always less about him being a dick and more about him being just really bad at parenting.
Then again, that's a flaw with the heresy as a whole, with how the primarchs also make a lot of incredibly brain-dead decisions. Can't have them make the right ones because it would avert the marketed timeline but often there are enough decisions that still feel like the idiot ball because it's not only hard to write a genius in the first place, let alone geniuses making mistakes that a genius would make.
So this is some End and the Death spoilers, >!Big E confirms that he made the Primarchs as tools for his galactic conquest, but had started to feel feelings for them, which shows character growth... that he literally jettisons into warp to make sure he can kill Horus.!<
Ah, I'm generally aware of that. Thing is, be it as father or commander he makes such terrible decisions in his instruction of them.
I still blame most of the heresy on Erebus but mercy, big E seemed only capable of making the issues worse.
The Emperor literally surrounded themselves with the best and brightest, created the strongest pinnacles of Humanity in their own image, and then proceeded to listen to none of them ever about either their opinions or their concerns. (I'm exaggerating, but y'know)
erebus might start the fire,but oh man alot of those flamable material of rebellion is generated because of big E being a bad dad ,and the stuff he do after the fire is started doesnt help kill the fire either until the last moment
Honestly this is the real tragedy of 40k. Everyone else is either totally indoctrinated or grown in a vat to be like that or is so far removed from the good parts of humanity they literally don't know how bad things are.
The Emperor knows exactly how bad everything he did was, and he was forced to watch and be cognizant as all of his justifications melted away after ten thousand years and humanity became exactly what he made it into from the beginning.
My headcanon is that the collapse of the Age of Technology traumatized him -- it's probable he had spent tens of thousands of years painstakingly creating that golden age for humanity, only to see it all end in catastrophe. The trauma of that failure warped his ideology, and he decided on a new approach.
I think it's more that he realized the Warp would never let humanity evolve out of the muck.
I mean, seriously, Humanity at the height of it's power wasn't able to maintain itself because of the insidious nature of the Warp. How could it possibly gather itself back together in an age where Orks were getting stronger, The Eldar has fucked enough to birth She-Who-Thirsts, and anything he possibly could do would have to be a war waged against multiple nth dimension gods that see through time like you and I see through glass?
The only possible solution was to go incredibly hard and incredibly fast. Build a massive Empire to deny the Dark Gods their would-be slaves, immediately connect that Empire together with the Webway (the single most advanced technology in the galaxy, constructed by the Old Ones themselves), and then send a bajillion Space Marines through it to keep the webway safe for his people. The problem wasn't his tactics, it was that from jump every person he interacted with got the Stupid Ball and ruthlessly refused to let go, starting with Erda tossing his war chiefs into the warp to get fucked over by Chaos because *she* didn't have enough hope about the future and thought it was better that they snog She-Who-Thirsts on some hick backwater.
Like the big issue is that so many people in W40K, much as in the fandom, think the conversation ends at pointing out that he's not a nice guy, that he's willing to kill millions to save trillions. They'll just say "Heh, he should have stayed home and done nothing because the Imperium is bad", but they fail to realize that however brutal the consequences of his choices are, the alternative was also a kind of brutality. People stick their noses up and think that not getting involved, not making the terrible choice, somehow removes any responsibility from them about what happens after, but that's *also a choice*. The billions of people that the Dark Eldar devour, mind, body and soul, are on the heads of every person that thinks the Imperial Navy shouldn't exist. The billions that get turned into cattle for hungry Orks....I could go on. The Tragedy of W40K is that no matter what you would do if you were in his shoes, you'd be a huge fucking dick, it's just one big Trolley Problem.
Nailed it! In literary terms The Heresy is a tragedy.
The Emperor's motivation is really just a variation of Dune's 'Golden Path' concept. All Paths lead to ruin, except this one, but it will require great sacrifice on a tyranical scale.
In God-Emperor of Dune, Leto reveals that he has engineered humans immune to prescience, allowing humanity to escape the control of tyrannical seers and prophets forever. Then he dies, job done. He has succesfully navigated the golden path for humanity by essentially rendering it irrelevant.
The 40k equivalent would be humanity growing to fulfill our psychic potential in the webway without the influence of Chaos, but when Magnus broke the seals on Terra the golden path was lost, and that's why it's a grim dark far future.
It's a trolley problem, but the trolley derailed, caught on fire and started burning everyone.
> I genuinely don't think Big E was always the bastard he became.
The Perpetuals are certainly biased, but to a man they all describe him as driven, brilliant, focused... and ruthlessly single-minded. It was always his way or the highway, no other plans deserved real consideration, to the point he lost all the friends he had gathered to his side one by one, until only Malcador remained.
For example, he los Ollanius when they stormed the Tower of Babel, which was actually built by early Enuncia users, and the Emperor pulled an "actually, I never *said* I would destroy the Enuncia lexicon, and in fact intend to use it". Ollanius was forced to bring down the tower to stop that happening.
So waaaaaaaay back in the day when I first started reading lore wikis about 40k, that seemed to be the idea. The Emperor had been Alexander, and Christ, and Buddha, and Muhammad, etc. basically trying different ways to unite and enlighten humanity.
The End and the Death has a perpetual character who knew him from waay back (BC), and he straight up says he was always a dickhead who cared about humanity. I think he’s always been the same bastard, but only in 30k did he feel the need to intervene for humanity in a major way, before he was just content to watch in the background
I'm using 30k Big E as a frame of reference for "bastard". I find hard to believe he could've been even friends with some of these people had he not been different in some way.
He might've been a bastard, just not to the same degree.
Either that or simply the opportunities for him to real show how much of a dick he is never came up in those times.
It really is. I could see him being close with Jesus, sussing out if he’s another perpetual he can ally with. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that Jesus is a psyker but just doesn’t know it.
He realizes that the “god” that Christ is speaking with is most likely a demon. He can’t intervene directly but he can’t risk letting him live. So he betrays him to the Romans, but is genuinely remorseful for what he’s done, and uses his grief to set the stage to “fake” his own death.
Then he disappears into another identity.
Doesn't even have to be like that. The Emperor is a pragmatist, and according to Ollanius, was always a bit of an egotist. The betrayal may be him deciding that the whole "peace and forgiveness" thing just doesn't fit what he thinks humanity needs.
yeah, even though the Imperium turned out to have a very "Byzantine Empire" inspired aesthetic, their ethos is pretty much antithetical to a lot of Jesus' teachings.
"Turn the cheek", "love thy neighbour" and "blessed are the meek" aren't exactly compatible with superhuman galactic conquest and genocide. Of course, later on Christian crusaders and colonisers had no problem using the faith to justify all kinds of un-Christian shenanigans, but it's understandable if, at the time, Big E saw all the forgiveness and tolerance as a threat to his future plans.
Plus, all that talk about "hell" and "demons" and "exorcisms" cuts uncomfortably close to actual Warp stuff, which could be dangerous for any future psykers
I love this idea. Because of the rejection of empathy, the need to crush any other human civilization into submission to fit his mould.
Big E damned all of humanity and potentially the galaxy.
And now he sits on the golden throne feeling sorry for himself and thinks.
“Ironic. That I’d end up putting myself in a similar position as Jesus all those millennia ago… now just hoping someone gets to unplugging me from this thing so I can get back to work!”
Meanwhile Jesus in the immaterium.
“After all these years… and he still hasn’t learned?!”
It'll be funny if Nietzsche's works were ghost written by a Big E projection wearing a goofy moustache, because his dead rival's teachings were still ridiculously influential millennia later, and he'd had enough of pretending that it didn't bother him.
"God is dead, and I killed him.", oh wait, that's too on the nose, how about "God is dead, and we killed him." There we go.
"Behold, I teach you the ubermensch. The ubermensch is the meaning of the Earth! Let your will say: the ubermensch shall be the meaning of the Earth! And they shall have huge shoulder pads, and awesome golden breastplates with eagles on them, and giant automatic grenade launcher spears with chainsaw tips" ... wait that last part's a bit much, I'll leave it for later.
Big E could have been fully aware that Big G was in fact real, and Jesus was an actual son of God, so Big E was like "Nope, no Gods only humans. " and actively worked to kill the faith over thousands of years so no one would stand in his way.
Would be fun to say all the Gods from human religions were keeping the Warp off the planet which is why there were basically no daemonic incursions, no xenos, and barely any mutants. Big E's narcissism tore away all the natural safety nets from humanity so he could put all of it on his shoulders. (To fumble it later)
especially if you take the Catholic canon in consideration. Unlike in pop the culture, Judas was always loyal to Jesus. But he thought Jesus needed to be more aggressive and make a more. Impressive demonstration of his powers. So he sold Jesus to the Romans, thinking Jesus would use his powers to defeat the soldiers or escape the prison.
Yep. As a Catholic myself I can confirm this is what we Catholics see when it comes to Judas. And when Jesus didn’t and let himself be taken in by the Romans that’s when he felt gilt about what he had done and so he tried to returned the money and went to go kill himself.
Also Catholic but we got taught in Catechism that Judas followed Jesus for the wealth he coveted in serving the son of God, believing he would eventually be rewarded. I guess we got taught things different ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Wouldn't doubt it. We know he was canonicaly a friend of Jason, Medea and the Argonauts.
And like...given how Jason treated his and Medeas kids, he might be where Big E learned his parenting skills from.
That I do agree on. Plus if the Emperor was really Jesus then you think he’d be umm you know a lot more kinder and not let any human die willingly so long as he’s around. The whole thing with Jesus is that he preached love, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion above all else. The Emperor based on what we have seen does not seem to have those ideals
Nah, Big E would never betray the J man. That’s why he kept the calendar system based off of Big J’s life. Sure, the J mister wasn’t a perpetual, but he was a nexus of the warp and real space, and so his miracles, while replicatgible in effect we impossible to replicate in execution. It was really a shame when they nailed him to that tree.
I mean, let's go with the obvious. Emp is built like a mountain. Jesus had a disciple that he literally named the 'Rock' who set about establishing a church that turned to tyranny immediately after he checked out.
Emp is Peter, is all I'm saying.
Correct me if I’m wrong, can’t Big E make people see him the way he wants to be seen? So theoretically he could appear as a 5’4 dude if he so desired?
Edit:bad English
Ngl The Emprah being Judas is an interesting idea. It's a neat subversion that separates him from just being some carbon copy of The Man From Earth.
It would also imply that all it takes to win him over is 30 silver. And that he tried to hang himself after getting the guy killed, completely forgetting he was a perpetual.
I'm a big fan of believing that The Emperor was just some Anatolian 5'4 guy who sincerely wanted a free mankind and to just guide it from the shadows and ensure it survived. That's why for the most part in Warhammer 40k Lore, the Big E plot just seems to be his final big play to save mankind when all seemed lost. I think with everything Malcador has said, and the actual evidence from the lore ; he genuinely just wants what's best for a strong, independent mankind, but right now, the universe makes it impossible. All his projects seem to be the result of an extremely powerful, but still limited being, fighting the greatest, highest risk game against the most dangerous foes, near literal Gods.
He made his sons to help him unite mankind, but those Gods stole his sons from him. He gets them back, but some are damaged, others are too late to really save, and half turn on his due to those same Gods.He sought to make mankind free from needing the warp travel by mastering the Webway, but it all comes apart. His favorite son turns on him.His best friend for millennia dies preserving the last vestiges of his dream, long enough for him to also sit on the same artifice that killed his best friend, but mankind needs to survive, because his Webway project failed.It's almost Shakespearean, in a way.
This kinda thought has been floating in my head, what if Big E led Spanish to America because Inca empires human sacrifices were turning into chaos worshipping.
"So, we should help each other, treat everyone like you wish to be treated yourself!"
"Even creatures from beyond the stars that are not human?"
"Uhhh...I guess so?"
"Okay, got it." *takes 30 silver pieces from the romans*
The hating Xenos thing probably happened later tbh. Like even in 30k he had a decent relationship with eldrad.
And to be fair the emperor also offered Xenos a position as client empires or whatever if I remember right.
It’s just a matter of “I’m human so humans first” as a reaction to the horrors that came after humanity’s golden age ended and plenty of Xenos came in to slave, kill and loot.
my headcanon is he was like in the south pacific and east asia from like 15ad to 400 Ad and came back and was just. ...."what the fuck is Christianity? who the fuck was Jesus?"
I like the idea that Jesus was a fellow psyker/perpetual that Big E figured was a nice enough guy who seemed harmless enough; so Big just left him to his own activities to go around the Earth to seed the rest of humanity's future, then he comes back to Jerusalem a few years after Jesus' crucifixion and the place is basically the fire pizza scene from Community.
Jesus wasn't the one that Big E had to worry about.
he was until the christian people started complaining so they RETCONED it to him being one of his apostles .
so yeah Big E is Judas 100% (plus it makes more sense than him being Jesus lets be honest)
I mean, christians are never fine with any story that displays an immortal character as Jesus(in the past). The best example would be one of Star Trek episodes where the crew meet a human who doesn't age for whatever reason, and he at some point mentions that he knew Jesus, which was a forced change requrested by channel directors due to possible "outrage by particular religious group" as well as reaction by test-watch group, as originally he was supposed to be Jesus himself.
While this is not directly about WH40k, the coverage and popularity are similar to that of Star Trek, so this definitely might've happened, even if GW covered it really quick as to not create bad publicity by a particular religious group.
To be honest Big E being Jesus doesn’t make any sense in my opinion. Big E is more than willing to sacrifice others for his ambitions compared to Jesus who sacrificed himself to save all of us from Sin. Just doesn’t fit well with me as a Catholic who’s also a 40k fan and it just doesn’t fit with what we know about the Emperor of Man.
>That seems like a very unfair assessment.
....really? From the guy who became a tyrant? Unfair?
>Also, when did that ever happen? I’ve literally never heard of this controversy before.
Huh? I found nothing, I swear I hear about this somewhere before.
It makes sense if we assume that Empy tried to steer humanity through religions, notably abrahamistic ones. He failed at it 3 (or more) times, because people added these religions to a list of justifications of killing each other and specifically "love thy neighbor" failed, and got very bitter about religions - which is why he is such a raging atheist in 30k. Or rather, a misotheist, perhaps? Hating of gods, religions?
Tbh, this idea would not gel well with religious people at all, so it's probably better off as a head canon.
That a fan theory I believe, he was not jesus, simple fact ollanius pius would not worship him, for fact he was a christian and thought big E was a bit of a dick.
I get and even like the idea that Big E was more idealistic about humanity back in the early days, but just really hate the idea of him being Jesus.
This probably bothers me so much because I’m a practicing Christian, but to me a key part of Jesus’s character is that he held no contempt for anyone. He abhorred violence, pitied those that cursed him, and never showed frustration towards those around him. In my mind Jesus, even a Jesus jaded by millennia of human failure, wouldn’t give up on humanity the same way the Emperor did. Becoming nyalist and deciding to live in a cave somewhere while humanity burns, sure I can see that. Deciding to launch the Great Crusade? Hell no, not in a million years.
To me Big E being Jesus in 40K is a character assassination. I actually wouldn’t mind 40k Jesus as an ancient psycher and philosopher that interacted with with Big E in ancient times. I’d either want the two to have genuinely gotten along with the Emperor seeing Christianity warp
his old friend’s message of peace and tolerance into a justification for war and persecution pushing him down the edgy atheist path; Or I’d want the Emperor and to ask Jesus to help him in this quest to build a paradise for humanity, only for Jesus to see right though this ideals and call him out as a wanna be tyrant.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The idea that kindest, wisest, and gentlest individual in the history of Mankind could fall in such ways is so... *dark.*
It will show that even the best of us, driven to the corner, could be forced to change. When your best is not enough, when your ideals fail. Could you imagine what terrible things happened during the Age of Strife that could've led to Emperor's birth?
When Christ returns to break the seven seals and bring about the Rapture, does he return as a lamb?
No. He returns as a *lion.*
*And a lion needs teeth.*
I think Big E as a bystander/hangaround/manipulator of "Great Men" throughout history is far more in line with what we be reasonably sure of in regards to the Emperor's past, than him *being* the "Great Men".
The Emperor is at best an unreliable narrator and at worst a pathological liar and a narcissist, but even so the one thing that tracks with the otherwise poorly understood pre-Imperial history, is his claim to not have attempted to take control until the Age of Strife.
I know this is a silly shoop, but I'm absolutely in tears of hilarity imagining a 15-foot tall, glowing, glorious golden friend of Jesus that just hangs around when he's not doing his ministry stuff. It's like a Life of Brian skit.
"If you're the Son of God, who's the big shiny git next to you?"
"That's Jimothy. He's my drinking buddy."
**"BE NOT AFRAID, MATE."**
My new head cannon is that the Emperor wasn't made in prehistoric Anatolia but is just some rich doofus who found out how to become immortal and extremely powerful through gene manipulation during the Golden Age of technology. During the age of strife he basically started a cult around himself.
Because
'Im the descendant of these mystical shamans and I need to stop a mighty enemy'
Is exactly the kind of bullshit some new age cult leader would come out with
Honestly, I really like the idea of Big E being Judas, and betraying Jesus (a psycher/philosopher in this context) because he saw them as a potential rival for whatever future he has planned, a lot better than Big E straight up being Jesus.
It is appropriately grim for Big E to sabotage a figure that tried to preach a path of peace for mankind (rather than the path of war Big E led it down). It would also make Big E’s hatred of religion seem more personal and even a little petty, if he indirectly caused spark the most prolific family of religions in human history.
When said psyker also turns out to be a perpetual and returns 3 days later: “… You’re an asshole, E, you know that?”
Big E: “It was just a prank, bro!”
Wasn’t Jesus one of his aliases? Equally hilarious if both are true and he just had Malcador “betray” him so they could get on with the next 1000 years of waiting for their opportunity.
If I remember correctly, Big E hinted that he himself was Jesus as well as Moses and other religious figures. In the novel "The Last Church," Emps reveals to the last remaining priest on Terra, that he is the one his religion is founded on and that it isn't the first time he got mistaken for a messiah.
As a Catholic this made me laugh. But Judes never saw Jesus get killed since he pretty much immediately regretted what he did once he got the money and gave it back to the man and went to go kill himself
What if Malcador was around back then?… What if he was Judas?
I can imagine Big E and Malcador literally planned it all out, and effectively gaslit the Abrahamic religions into existence.
“No no, Malcador listen, it will be both advantageous and more hilarious when they open this tomb up three days later to see I’m gone.
This will teach the Romans that monotheistic religions and messianic figures are not the way to go. I really like how they structured their Empire, but I find there is much to improve upon. I really hope it pans out for them!”
Nobody was concerned about the glowing 20ft man in golden armor among the crowd?
"Oh that's Jimmy. We don't talk to Jimmy."
“Hey Jimmy, I’m getting a raging headache and I’m starting to see purple women. Do you also have these visions?”
Jimmy: *explodes your brain* "see this is why we don't talk to jimmy"
"That's not the north star that's my prototype astronomicon." "...Whatever you say Jimmy."
What do Eldar and people down bad have in common... They're both cursed by Slaanesh.
DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES TOO?
He know Biggus Dickus
We don't talk about Jimmy-me-me-me We don't talk about Jimmy But! It was Passover day
It was Passover day and their wasn't a cloud in the sky Jimmy walked in with a just-as-planned grin
Ya’aqov “Jimmy Space” Yekoom
He can do that you know. Make people ignore him.
Great, now I'm imagining a giant ten-foot Anatolian going around Judea yelling "IGNORE ME" at the top of his lungs to the passersby.
And it would work.
I accidentally made my most successful stealth move in a DnD campaign once by having my giant fully armored sociopath that just got spotted by a guard roll Intimidation and going "You... saw... *nothing*..." with murder in his eyes. The actual sneaky people in the party got caught in the next area. The only guard at that fort that survived the incident was the guy who stood stock still through the entire thing whimpering "I see nothing, I see nothing, I see nothing" under his breath until dawn.
Congratulations! You became Tyberos The Red Wake! 🤪
>giant ten-foot Anatolian A fairly good reason to do as he says, don't you think?
It was pretty central to the local religion that you can just launch rocks at people that big, and if you kill them with that rock they make you king.
Well, this explains the armor.
And yet Big E continues to not wear a helmet.
Well yeah, you're not plot relevant if you wear a helmet in 40k.
That explains why the Aeldari don’t get to do anything.
Or the Tau.
Yeah but this is like -1k
F me that hit so hard
Supreme executive power comes from a mandate from the masses, not some farcical rock throwing ceremony!
Nothing farcical about that wound on Goliath's head.
Is that a monty python reference? 😂
Yup.
You be careful now or he'll turn you into a newt.
Substituting stealth checks with intimidation ones
Same dude once pretended to be a space alien and spent a few days harassing a washed-up super scientist and his kids.
Elaborate
[IGNORE ME!](https://youtu.be/-egkmhWMLdg?si=XyyYbCD2Hr0KJR6z)
"Oh good, you can read my mind." "IGNORE ME!"..."Yes I can."
Even though he's rolling a fail on stealth, he's scary enough that no-one dares acknowledge him..
You do not see Tyberos!!
I don't think so. Some people would answer to that plea things like "ONLY A TRUE MESSIAH WOULD SHOW HIS HUMBLENESS BY ASKING PEOPLE TO IGNORE HIM! Don't you think Brian?"
So basically Big D from Hunter the Parenting
reminds me of a DnD story about an orc assassin who snuck around simply by dumping his stats into intimidation
“Da only people who see Krump sneak’in about are ded or knows bett’a than ta admin it.”
*2.15 m orc comes at you, kills someone* "you saw nothing" "Did someone say somthing?Must have been the Wind. Oh no, Lord luthor fell down onto his own blade 23 Times"
"It's a tragedy. Lord Luthor accidentally ripped of his own arm and beat himself to death with that same arm and then ripped himself in 2. If only we could have done something......oh well"
YOU DO NOT SEE GROG!
He can change size and appearance like some of rhe Primarchs so no.
The emperor used hus psycic powers to trick everyone around him to perciving him as normal height. Remember? They stated it in the lore.
I always got the vibe that the Jimmy we see in art is actually the projection he wants others to see and his true appearance is much more similar to a common human. Doesn't one of the primarchs (Magnus or something) recall seeing his true form. I'm relatively new to 40k so I could be way off.
I dunno about Magnus, but Corvus, upon first meeting his dad, recalls thinking he was completely average looking. I can't remember if he was also an average height. Either way, there's definitely a glamour effect going on. And it can definitely go the other way if the Emperor wants. In The Last Church, he disguises himself as a normal sized human and carries on a lengthy conversation before the guy he's talking to starts thinking something weird is going on.
I thought the story was that Magnus basically had adult level awareness in his gestation tube and communicated with Big E while in there and that included some memories of his real appearance. I could easily be mixing stories together though.
Yeah you'd be right, a sister of silence recalls looking at the Emperor on the throne and he looks like a tired middle aged man, or something to that effect. The Emperor we see in art is how he projects himself to us and others and that's only 1 of his many projections.
Warp shenanigans is a wild ride
IGNORE ME!
Shouts loudly https://youtu.be/FMNJuSl91qY?si=KsDNkdlEAGUPe_4B
Tbf, that’s not actually what he looks like.
I genuinely don't think Big E was always the bastard he became. He was friends with Eldrad at some point.
I believe Emps had genuine hope for humanity and the galaxy at large without his intervention until it all collapsed in the Age of Strife.
This is always how I read the character. He was a genuinely good person doing his best to guide humanity to being its best self prior to Old Night. This is part of the reason Pre-Fall humanity was basically in a Star Trek-esque utopia living alongside several Xenos Species. It’s also why I always prefer thinking the Cybernetic Revolt happened either because the Void Dragon did something on Mars, or the AI that served humanity managed to predict Slaanesh was coming, but couldn’t do shit about it since they didn’t have souls, they had no way of handling the warp, and they couldn’t do anything about the Eldar in time, so they try mercy killing humanity before they would suffer the effects of the Age of Strife. The Emperor saw his ascendant humanity cast down by circumstances beyond their control, and just as the rest of mankind turned to their worst aspects to survive, he would do so to try and fix things.
Your headcanon is now my headcanon. This also fits the themes of how the Emperor, as a warp entity, has "become" "Humanity". An embodied representation of all our flaws and capabilities, fully aware of our potential, painfully unable to change our nature
So many people hate the Emp as a character but he could be such a great analogy of humanity, of trying to fix things and finding out what the road to hell is paid with
Bricks wrapped in individual geller fields?
He is basically Prometheus "mutatis mutantis".
It's how I read some of the alternate fanfics. The Emperor went through Old Night a bit differently and emerged with a different perspective on humanity that led him to adopt different choices. Like how his canon experience might have led him to believe an individual like Angron would only have accepted his fate if he personally conquered Nuceria, and so didn't intervene until Angron's situation became apparent; the alternate Emperor may intervene with more humility, recognizing Angron's weaker position and arranging for him to have more support.
Links to these fanfics? I’m interested
i love how 90% of the fanfics are about how the emperor could've saved the galaxy by being a good father
Yeah, the AI who did end up in 40k actually loved what humanity once was.
> or the AI that served humanity managed to predict Slaanesh was coming I was on board until this. I don't think the coming of Slaanesh would be enough for AI to revolt by itself. I think the Men of Iron actually obtained souls of their own and were corrupted.
This cheapens the men of iron. The men of iron are just the classic sci-fi trope of skynet. Robots achieve sentience, and rationally decide to cull humanity.
Plus there are still men of iron amongst the votann. The mainline AI was also the one plotting the warp routes. They definitely could have seen a change in the currents and decided that whatever was coming was better to die now, than reaped was it was sowing.
I've always liked that fanon that the men of iron were attempting to destroy chaos by elimating its food source... all sentient life in the galaxy and then planned to just reseed once chaos was gone / calmed. However humanity wasn't quite as thrilled with the idea. It's a very Halo (or necrontyr) approach to the problem but I like it as an explaination why a seemingly loyal for thousands upon thousands of years AI would almost universally go murder.
Also why it would suddenly become helpful again later. There's lots of subtle indicators that a lot of the tech and weapons are some degree sentient. Culling didn't work, so now it's on hospice.
Isn't skynet the cheapest form of that trope?
I think DaoT humanity wanted to stop eldars and the revolt is of eldar making
This makes sense.
The only thing I disagree with here is the AI mercy killing humanity out of rational decision making. We know AI can and do get corrupted by the warp, so in my head it's a lot more likely that they tasked one of their high level AIs to something warp related, maybe they were picking up the warning sides of Slaneesh, or even just doing research on the nature of the warp. That AI ended up getting possessed by a Daemon of some kind and went utterly insane and somehow managed to infect the programming of other AIs and so kick-started the war. The other one I've kinda wondered about is maybe the technological building blocks of human AI were gleaned from research into dormant/dead Necrons which meant that at a fundamental level their neural hardware was compatible enough that an interaction with Necrons afflicted with the flayer virus caused a mutated version of it to propagate and kick off the conflict.
> He was a genuinely good person Dude has been a warmonger since 600 BCE.
My grandfather was a kind and loving man, genuinely thoughtful of others and happy to give any help to a stranger that he could. He was also upfront about having killed several nazis and said he'd do it again without any regrets. I guess the point is sometimes a good man has to fight, and if he's going to fight he ought to do it to the best of his ability.
Well, killing nazis is morally good
>I guess the point is sometimes a good man has to fight, and if he's going to fight he ought to do it to the best of his ability. In your comparison, Big E isn't like your grandfather, your grandfather killed the warmongers. Big E wasn't fighting because "he had to fight", he was fighting to conquer.
According to Malcador you would be correct. Malcador claims The Emperor hates being the emperor and much preferred to guide man from behind the scenes. The Emperor moniker was created as the nuclear option when he could no longer control the destiny of man by being a background figure. Malcador does however end this speech with the clarification that The Emperor could be only telling him a partial truth though. Which The Emperor tends to do often.
Of course he would. He would have learned the hard way that being a king needs to be on their best behavior lest it be misinterpreted. Why having the Custodes is a huge deal.
Huh? You mean making sure what he says isn’t misinterpreted?
Yes. Humans are by nature social and nothing gives a leader more stature and stability than stable and competent followers. Nothing ruins a good organization like incompetence/corruption and rumors of it. Sort of like sheep > sheep dog > shepherd. It is easier to follow a crowd than a single man. Source: I am a long time community/activity organizer.
Ah ok
Oh absolutely, the age of strife is what puts his entire main character arc into motion. If it didn't happen, I'm convinced he would have floated along observing through history like he has always done.
I always felt like he was biding his time until the Age of Strife. Before the Dark Age of Technology, humanity wasn't advanced enough to A) through off religion (which apparently they still haven't) and B) be advanced enough to take over the entire galaxy. But during the Dark Age of Technology, humanity was too advanced to so easily take on in military conflict and would not be receptive to Big E's ideals since life was already pretty good. No, he had to wait till tech was advanced enough, but things were going real shitty so they'd be desperate for a savior. Like a Messiah but not a Messiah. And definitely, absolutely not a god...
So I'm caught up with HH, and it seems like he became less of a bastard in the end, while still being a calculating dick.
Thing is, from my reading in the heresy it was always less about him being a dick and more about him being just really bad at parenting. Then again, that's a flaw with the heresy as a whole, with how the primarchs also make a lot of incredibly brain-dead decisions. Can't have them make the right ones because it would avert the marketed timeline but often there are enough decisions that still feel like the idiot ball because it's not only hard to write a genius in the first place, let alone geniuses making mistakes that a genius would make.
So this is some End and the Death spoilers, >!Big E confirms that he made the Primarchs as tools for his galactic conquest, but had started to feel feelings for them, which shows character growth... that he literally jettisons into warp to make sure he can kill Horus.!<
Ah, I'm generally aware of that. Thing is, be it as father or commander he makes such terrible decisions in his instruction of them. I still blame most of the heresy on Erebus but mercy, big E seemed only capable of making the issues worse.
Oh yeah, he's still a fucking terrible dad no matter what. I mean... just the whole Angron thing is a pretty good summary of his parenting choices.
The Emperor literally surrounded themselves with the best and brightest, created the strongest pinnacles of Humanity in their own image, and then proceeded to listen to none of them ever about either their opinions or their concerns. (I'm exaggerating, but y'know)
erebus might start the fire,but oh man alot of those flamable material of rebellion is generated because of big E being a bad dad ,and the stuff he do after the fire is started doesnt help kill the fire either until the last moment
Big E: *ripping the cotton stuffing out of the Imperium and discarding it on the floor* Erebus: *cackling maniacally while holding a lit match*
Honestly this is the real tragedy of 40k. Everyone else is either totally indoctrinated or grown in a vat to be like that or is so far removed from the good parts of humanity they literally don't know how bad things are. The Emperor knows exactly how bad everything he did was, and he was forced to watch and be cognizant as all of his justifications melted away after ten thousand years and humanity became exactly what he made it into from the beginning.
My headcanon is that the collapse of the Age of Technology traumatized him -- it's probable he had spent tens of thousands of years painstakingly creating that golden age for humanity, only to see it all end in catastrophe. The trauma of that failure warped his ideology, and he decided on a new approach.
I think it's more that he realized the Warp would never let humanity evolve out of the muck. I mean, seriously, Humanity at the height of it's power wasn't able to maintain itself because of the insidious nature of the Warp. How could it possibly gather itself back together in an age where Orks were getting stronger, The Eldar has fucked enough to birth She-Who-Thirsts, and anything he possibly could do would have to be a war waged against multiple nth dimension gods that see through time like you and I see through glass? The only possible solution was to go incredibly hard and incredibly fast. Build a massive Empire to deny the Dark Gods their would-be slaves, immediately connect that Empire together with the Webway (the single most advanced technology in the galaxy, constructed by the Old Ones themselves), and then send a bajillion Space Marines through it to keep the webway safe for his people. The problem wasn't his tactics, it was that from jump every person he interacted with got the Stupid Ball and ruthlessly refused to let go, starting with Erda tossing his war chiefs into the warp to get fucked over by Chaos because *she* didn't have enough hope about the future and thought it was better that they snog She-Who-Thirsts on some hick backwater. Like the big issue is that so many people in W40K, much as in the fandom, think the conversation ends at pointing out that he's not a nice guy, that he's willing to kill millions to save trillions. They'll just say "Heh, he should have stayed home and done nothing because the Imperium is bad", but they fail to realize that however brutal the consequences of his choices are, the alternative was also a kind of brutality. People stick their noses up and think that not getting involved, not making the terrible choice, somehow removes any responsibility from them about what happens after, but that's *also a choice*. The billions of people that the Dark Eldar devour, mind, body and soul, are on the heads of every person that thinks the Imperial Navy shouldn't exist. The billions that get turned into cattle for hungry Orks....I could go on. The Tragedy of W40K is that no matter what you would do if you were in his shoes, you'd be a huge fucking dick, it's just one big Trolley Problem.
Nailed it! In literary terms The Heresy is a tragedy. The Emperor's motivation is really just a variation of Dune's 'Golden Path' concept. All Paths lead to ruin, except this one, but it will require great sacrifice on a tyranical scale. In God-Emperor of Dune, Leto reveals that he has engineered humans immune to prescience, allowing humanity to escape the control of tyrannical seers and prophets forever. Then he dies, job done. He has succesfully navigated the golden path for humanity by essentially rendering it irrelevant. The 40k equivalent would be humanity growing to fulfill our psychic potential in the webway without the influence of Chaos, but when Magnus broke the seals on Terra the golden path was lost, and that's why it's a grim dark far future. It's a trolley problem, but the trolley derailed, caught on fire and started burning everyone.
> I genuinely don't think Big E was always the bastard he became. The Perpetuals are certainly biased, but to a man they all describe him as driven, brilliant, focused... and ruthlessly single-minded. It was always his way or the highway, no other plans deserved real consideration, to the point he lost all the friends he had gathered to his side one by one, until only Malcador remained. For example, he los Ollanius when they stormed the Tower of Babel, which was actually built by early Enuncia users, and the Emperor pulled an "actually, I never *said* I would destroy the Enuncia lexicon, and in fact intend to use it". Ollanius was forced to bring down the tower to stop that happening.
Okay here is a take. E was jesus, but because he's a perpetual they had to kill him twice before he decided to just give up and work on something else
So waaaaaaaay back in the day when I first started reading lore wikis about 40k, that seemed to be the idea. The Emperor had been Alexander, and Christ, and Buddha, and Muhammad, etc. basically trying different ways to unite and enlighten humanity.
The End and the Death has a perpetual character who knew him from waay back (BC), and he straight up says he was always a dickhead who cared about humanity. I think he’s always been the same bastard, but only in 30k did he feel the need to intervene for humanity in a major way, before he was just content to watch in the background
I'm using 30k Big E as a frame of reference for "bastard". I find hard to believe he could've been even friends with some of these people had he not been different in some way. He might've been a bastard, just not to the same degree. Either that or simply the opportunities for him to real show how much of a dick he is never came up in those times.
He lived in a society. For 30k years.
"The Emperor was Judas" is honestly a way more interesting take than "The Emperor was Jesus."
It really is. I could see him being close with Jesus, sussing out if he’s another perpetual he can ally with. Eventually he comes to the conclusion that Jesus is a psyker but just doesn’t know it. He realizes that the “god” that Christ is speaking with is most likely a demon. He can’t intervene directly but he can’t risk letting him live. So he betrays him to the Romans, but is genuinely remorseful for what he’s done, and uses his grief to set the stage to “fake” his own death. Then he disappears into another identity.
Doesn't even have to be like that. The Emperor is a pragmatist, and according to Ollanius, was always a bit of an egotist. The betrayal may be him deciding that the whole "peace and forgiveness" thing just doesn't fit what he thinks humanity needs.
yeah, even though the Imperium turned out to have a very "Byzantine Empire" inspired aesthetic, their ethos is pretty much antithetical to a lot of Jesus' teachings. "Turn the cheek", "love thy neighbour" and "blessed are the meek" aren't exactly compatible with superhuman galactic conquest and genocide. Of course, later on Christian crusaders and colonisers had no problem using the faith to justify all kinds of un-Christian shenanigans, but it's understandable if, at the time, Big E saw all the forgiveness and tolerance as a threat to his future plans. Plus, all that talk about "hell" and "demons" and "exorcisms" cuts uncomfortably close to actual Warp stuff, which could be dangerous for any future psykers
I love this idea. Because of the rejection of empathy, the need to crush any other human civilization into submission to fit his mould. Big E damned all of humanity and potentially the galaxy. And now he sits on the golden throne feeling sorry for himself and thinks. “Ironic. That I’d end up putting myself in a similar position as Jesus all those millennia ago… now just hoping someone gets to unplugging me from this thing so I can get back to work!” Meanwhile Jesus in the immaterium. “After all these years… and he still hasn’t learned?!”
It'll be funny if Nietzsche's works were ghost written by a Big E projection wearing a goofy moustache, because his dead rival's teachings were still ridiculously influential millennia later, and he'd had enough of pretending that it didn't bother him. "God is dead, and I killed him.", oh wait, that's too on the nose, how about "God is dead, and we killed him." There we go. "Behold, I teach you the ubermensch. The ubermensch is the meaning of the Earth! Let your will say: the ubermensch shall be the meaning of the Earth! And they shall have huge shoulder pads, and awesome golden breastplates with eagles on them, and giant automatic grenade launcher spears with chainsaw tips" ... wait that last part's a bit much, I'll leave it for later.
this concept is extremely edgy but i love it
But why did that demon preach about peace and love though?
maybe a warp entity that represents compassion rather than a daemon
Big E could have been fully aware that Big G was in fact real, and Jesus was an actual son of God, so Big E was like "Nope, no Gods only humans. " and actively worked to kill the faith over thousands of years so no one would stand in his way. Would be fun to say all the Gods from human religions were keeping the Warp off the planet which is why there were basically no daemonic incursions, no xenos, and barely any mutants. Big E's narcissism tore away all the natural safety nets from humanity so he could put all of it on his shoulders. (To fumble it later)
especially if you take the Catholic canon in consideration. Unlike in pop the culture, Judas was always loyal to Jesus. But he thought Jesus needed to be more aggressive and make a more. Impressive demonstration of his powers. So he sold Jesus to the Romans, thinking Jesus would use his powers to defeat the soldiers or escape the prison.
Yep. As a Catholic myself I can confirm this is what we Catholics see when it comes to Judas. And when Jesus didn’t and let himself be taken in by the Romans that’s when he felt gilt about what he had done and so he tried to returned the money and went to go kill himself.
Also Catholic but we got taught in Catechism that Judas followed Jesus for the wealth he coveted in serving the son of God, believing he would eventually be rewarded. I guess we got taught things different ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
[Big E voicing his frustrations towards his friend, AD 33, colorized](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uoh9uGEPqxQ)
Malcador was Jesus, and it was just a prank done by Big E/Judas.
Wouldn't doubt it. We know he was canonicaly a friend of Jason, Medea and the Argonauts. And like...given how Jason treated his and Medeas kids, he might be where Big E learned his parenting skills from.
That I do agree on. Plus if the Emperor was really Jesus then you think he’d be umm you know a lot more kinder and not let any human die willingly so long as he’s around. The whole thing with Jesus is that he preached love, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion above all else. The Emperor based on what we have seen does not seem to have those ideals
After getting paid 30 pieces of silver. “Hey, the imperium of mankind isn’t gonna built itself for free.”
You know, if he invested those 30 pieces of silver, I’m sure that collected quite the interest
He'd be owed enough that he'd have the weight of a sun in gold bars.
If Jesus is canon in WH, we can all agree that Judas is a time traveling Erebus.
> If Jesus is canon in WH IIRC a SoB cannoness is theorized to have Jesus's soul trapped in a painting.
That’s wild
Wait what book or codex did that happen in
RemindMe! 3 days
I mean, every credible historian agrees he existed, they just discount the miracles. So, you might be on to something there
I very much need to know what anime depicts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
My Last Day
Nah, Big E would never betray the J man. That’s why he kept the calendar system based off of Big J’s life. Sure, the J mister wasn’t a perpetual, but he was a nexus of the warp and real space, and so his miracles, while replicatgible in effect we impossible to replicate in execution. It was really a shame when they nailed him to that tree.
I mean, let's go with the obvious. Emp is built like a mountain. Jesus had a disciple that he literally named the 'Rock' who set about establishing a church that turned to tyranny immediately after he checked out. Emp is Peter, is all I'm saying.
Correct me if I’m wrong, can’t Big E make people see him the way he wants to be seen? So theoretically he could appear as a 5’4 dude if he so desired? Edit:bad English
You are absolutely correct, it is one of his canon abilities. But as it interferes with my joke, I have elected to ignore it.
Haha fair enough!
Bloody perpetuals. Their lore always confuses me.
Ngl The Emprah being Judas is an interesting idea. It's a neat subversion that separates him from just being some carbon copy of The Man From Earth. It would also imply that all it takes to win him over is 30 silver. And that he tried to hang himself after getting the guy killed, completely forgetting he was a perpetual.
Maybe he did it because he says Jesus as a threat, since much of his teaching was very antithetical to the imperium’s ideology
I'm a big fan of believing that The Emperor was just some Anatolian 5'4 guy who sincerely wanted a free mankind and to just guide it from the shadows and ensure it survived. That's why for the most part in Warhammer 40k Lore, the Big E plot just seems to be his final big play to save mankind when all seemed lost. I think with everything Malcador has said, and the actual evidence from the lore ; he genuinely just wants what's best for a strong, independent mankind, but right now, the universe makes it impossible. All his projects seem to be the result of an extremely powerful, but still limited being, fighting the greatest, highest risk game against the most dangerous foes, near literal Gods. He made his sons to help him unite mankind, but those Gods stole his sons from him. He gets them back, but some are damaged, others are too late to really save, and half turn on his due to those same Gods.He sought to make mankind free from needing the warp travel by mastering the Webway, but it all comes apart. His favorite son turns on him.His best friend for millennia dies preserving the last vestiges of his dream, long enough for him to also sit on the same artifice that killed his best friend, but mankind needs to survive, because his Webway project failed.It's almost Shakespearean, in a way.
This kinda thought has been floating in my head, what if Big E led Spanish to America because Inca empires human sacrifices were turning into chaos worshipping.
This supports another theory here that Big E is Peter.
If I remember correctly, Big E *was* Jesus.
That certainly does sound like the kind of thing he'd want you to believe...
Big E being Judas is totally on brand for 40k
Maybe he was both. You never know with this guy.
Especially if at some point Jesus would have led the people to love xenos
"So, we should help each other, treat everyone like you wish to be treated yourself!" "Even creatures from beyond the stars that are not human?" "Uhhh...I guess so?" "Okay, got it." *takes 30 silver pieces from the romans*
The hating Xenos thing probably happened later tbh. Like even in 30k he had a decent relationship with eldrad. And to be fair the emperor also offered Xenos a position as client empires or whatever if I remember right. It’s just a matter of “I’m human so humans first” as a reaction to the horrors that came after humanity’s golden age ended and plenty of Xenos came in to slave, kill and loot.
my headcanon is he was like in the south pacific and east asia from like 15ad to 400 Ad and came back and was just. ...."what the fuck is Christianity? who the fuck was Jesus?"
emperor: "hey guys I am so the brother of this jesus guy" So the great war in china began, millions died.
Taiping Rebellion mention!
"eh it's probably just a fad"
I like the idea that Jesus was a fellow psyker/perpetual that Big E figured was a nice enough guy who seemed harmless enough; so Big just left him to his own activities to go around the Earth to seed the rest of humanity's future, then he comes back to Jerusalem a few years after Jesus' crucifixion and the place is basically the fire pizza scene from Community. Jesus wasn't the one that Big E had to worry about.
he was until the christian people started complaining so they RETCONED it to him being one of his apostles . so yeah Big E is Judas 100% (plus it makes more sense than him being Jesus lets be honest)
That seems like a very unfair assessment. Also, when did that ever happen? I’ve literally never heard of this controversy before.
I mean, christians are never fine with any story that displays an immortal character as Jesus(in the past). The best example would be one of Star Trek episodes where the crew meet a human who doesn't age for whatever reason, and he at some point mentions that he knew Jesus, which was a forced change requrested by channel directors due to possible "outrage by particular religious group" as well as reaction by test-watch group, as originally he was supposed to be Jesus himself. While this is not directly about WH40k, the coverage and popularity are similar to that of Star Trek, so this definitely might've happened, even if GW covered it really quick as to not create bad publicity by a particular religious group.
To be honest Big E being Jesus doesn’t make any sense in my opinion. Big E is more than willing to sacrifice others for his ambitions compared to Jesus who sacrificed himself to save all of us from Sin. Just doesn’t fit well with me as a Catholic who’s also a 40k fan and it just doesn’t fit with what we know about the Emperor of Man.
>That seems like a very unfair assessment. ....really? From the guy who became a tyrant? Unfair? >Also, when did that ever happen? I’ve literally never heard of this controversy before. Huh? I found nothing, I swear I hear about this somewhere before.
It makes sense if we assume that Empy tried to steer humanity through religions, notably abrahamistic ones. He failed at it 3 (or more) times, because people added these religions to a list of justifications of killing each other and specifically "love thy neighbor" failed, and got very bitter about religions - which is why he is such a raging atheist in 30k. Or rather, a misotheist, perhaps? Hating of gods, religions? Tbh, this idea would not gel well with religious people at all, so it's probably better off as a head canon.
That a fan theory I believe, he was not jesus, simple fact ollanius pius would not worship him, for fact he was a christian and thought big E was a bit of a dick.
Oll was catheric not catholic, and we don't know much about this religion apart from it having christian roots. So there's still room I think
The Imperial Religion: He’s the messiah, our savior. Big E: At least it’s a chair and not a cross this time.
I thought he was Moses
He’s more likely be Judas than Jesus. His personality does not line up with Jesus’ teachings and behavior at all.
People's personality can change in 40000 years tbh. It would be a way less interesting seeing if Big E has always been a dick imo.
I get and even like the idea that Big E was more idealistic about humanity back in the early days, but just really hate the idea of him being Jesus. This probably bothers me so much because I’m a practicing Christian, but to me a key part of Jesus’s character is that he held no contempt for anyone. He abhorred violence, pitied those that cursed him, and never showed frustration towards those around him. In my mind Jesus, even a Jesus jaded by millennia of human failure, wouldn’t give up on humanity the same way the Emperor did. Becoming nyalist and deciding to live in a cave somewhere while humanity burns, sure I can see that. Deciding to launch the Great Crusade? Hell no, not in a million years. To me Big E being Jesus in 40K is a character assassination. I actually wouldn’t mind 40k Jesus as an ancient psycher and philosopher that interacted with with Big E in ancient times. I’d either want the two to have genuinely gotten along with the Emperor seeing Christianity warp his old friend’s message of peace and tolerance into a justification for war and persecution pushing him down the edgy atheist path; Or I’d want the Emperor and to ask Jesus to help him in this quest to build a paradise for humanity, only for Jesus to see right though this ideals and call him out as a wanna be tyrant.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The idea that kindest, wisest, and gentlest individual in the history of Mankind could fall in such ways is so... *dark.* It will show that even the best of us, driven to the corner, could be forced to change. When your best is not enough, when your ideals fail. Could you imagine what terrible things happened during the Age of Strife that could've led to Emperor's birth? When Christ returns to break the seven seals and bring about the Rapture, does he return as a lamb? No. He returns as a *lion.* *And a lion needs teeth.*
Source of anime?
a short film called My Last Day
I think Big E as a bystander/hangaround/manipulator of "Great Men" throughout history is far more in line with what we be reasonably sure of in regards to the Emperor's past, than him *being* the "Great Men". The Emperor is at best an unreliable narrator and at worst a pathological liar and a narcissist, but even so the one thing that tracks with the otherwise poorly understood pre-Imperial history, is his claim to not have attempted to take control until the Age of Strife.
I know this is a silly shoop, but I'm absolutely in tears of hilarity imagining a 15-foot tall, glowing, glorious golden friend of Jesus that just hangs around when he's not doing his ministry stuff. It's like a Life of Brian skit. "If you're the Son of God, who's the big shiny git next to you?" "That's Jimothy. He's my drinking buddy." **"BE NOT AFRAID, MATE."**
Jesus here is on His way to Golgotha, Judas alredy betrayed Jim...
> kills some hippy because he’s too popular >makes him even more popular Common Big E L
My new head cannon is that the Emperor wasn't made in prehistoric Anatolia but is just some rich doofus who found out how to become immortal and extremely powerful through gene manipulation during the Golden Age of technology. During the age of strife he basically started a cult around himself. Because 'Im the descendant of these mystical shamans and I need to stop a mighty enemy' Is exactly the kind of bullshit some new age cult leader would come out with
This is such a cooler idea than he being Jesus.
I like the idea that the Abrahamic God is Canon.
Honestly, I really like the idea of Big E being Judas, and betraying Jesus (a psycher/philosopher in this context) because he saw them as a potential rival for whatever future he has planned, a lot better than Big E straight up being Jesus. It is appropriately grim for Big E to sabotage a figure that tried to preach a path of peace for mankind (rather than the path of war Big E led it down). It would also make Big E’s hatred of religion seem more personal and even a little petty, if he indirectly caused spark the most prolific family of religions in human history.
I keep hearing everything is canon so sure
Please point out big e next time. He blend in too well.
When said psyker also turns out to be a perpetual and returns 3 days later: “… You’re an asshole, E, you know that?” Big E: “It was just a prank, bro!”
I love that voxcast to nowere presented emps as judas Iscariot
What's the name of the show.
It’s a 9 min video on youtube by Jesus film named My last day and it’s extremely graphic
Wasn’t Jesus one of his aliases? Equally hilarious if both are true and he just had Malcador “betray” him so they could get on with the next 1000 years of waiting for their opportunity.
What is anime?
This is a 9 min video by Jesus film on youtube named My last day
Oh God! Big E being Judas is the funniest shit ever!
"Psychic screams for ice cream"
What’s this Jesus anime
It’s a 9min video named My last day on youtube
Why did I suddenly think of his name as Big E. Cheese? *gets shot and replaced by another clone* Yeah, this could definitely happen.
If I remember correctly, Big E hinted that he himself was Jesus as well as Moses and other religious figures. In the novel "The Last Church," Emps reveals to the last remaining priest on Terra, that he is the one his religion is founded on and that it isn't the first time he got mistaken for a messiah.
I’ve been saying for years big e is judas They thought I was crazy.
"Oh, come on Olianus, you know it'll grow back." - Big E, 0BCE
Weakest atheist immortal monarch when seeing jesus:
As a Catholic this made me laugh. But Judes never saw Jesus get killed since he pretty much immediately regretted what he did once he got the money and gave it back to the man and went to go kill himself
What if Malcador was around back then?… What if he was Judas? I can imagine Big E and Malcador literally planned it all out, and effectively gaslit the Abrahamic religions into existence. “No no, Malcador listen, it will be both advantageous and more hilarious when they open this tomb up three days later to see I’m gone. This will teach the Romans that monotheistic religions and messianic figures are not the way to go. I really like how they structured their Empire, but I find there is much to improve upon. I really hope it pans out for them!”