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Author Topic: WH40K discussion thread: from Tyran's heart I stab at thee.  (Read 1043783 times)

Rolan7

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6945 on: October 08, 2016, 11:40:08 pm »

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My brother (who is disintered in Warhammer/WH40K stuff) agrees that this was sweet!
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6946 on: October 08, 2016, 11:46:53 pm »

There's a lot of potential for good characterization in the Emperor (just look at Text-To-Speech Device and The Last Church), but much like the problem Nintendo has with Mario I doubt Geedubs will ever release their generic stranglehold long enough for anything to come of it.

Just as a short list:

-We know the Emperor previously had a policy of non-involvement or at least limited himself to being a single famous figure per lifetime, but eventually shifted it all in the exact opposite direction and took over humanity following the Age of Strife. That's a lot of atrocity and failure to live through before finally deciding that humans can't be permitted to manage themselves. One has to wonder what the final straw was.

-Emps clearly does not have anything approaching a flawless personality, his charisma is so through the roof almost everybody just gives into it immediately, but his sons both loyal and traitor all are able to recognize his shortcomings. Too absolute and too caught up in the vision of the Imperium to see what's right in front of him, for one.

-That whole thing with whether or not he actually consorted with/tricked/stole from Chaos to create the Primarchs.

-What exactly he saw in Malcador to elevate him almost beyond his sons and what it was about Ollanius' sacrifice that finally committed him to deleting Horus.

-The source of the beliefs he spouts in the Last Church, which definitely came from somewhere and are also uniquely hypocritical given that he was the one playing god and causing half the atrocities he attributes to religious belief. Is it just regret at how badly the plans went, worrying about Chaos, or is Big E seriously euphoric for other reasons?

-Oh, and speaking of Chaos, when the fuck did he even run into them the first time? We know when he first ran into the C'tan, during the legend of St. George and the Dragon, but the first mentions of Chaos are during the Primarch era when they definitely were already aware of each other.
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Egan_BW

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6947 on: October 09, 2016, 01:04:35 am »

I guess you could say that normally Emp's charisma totally make up for his somewhat flawed personality, so he's had no opportunity to improve for the past 10000000000000000 years. (Number acurite to the closest order of magnitude of orders of magnitude. Warranty not included.)
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Andres

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6948 on: October 09, 2016, 01:55:30 am »

-What exactly he saw in Malcador to elevate him almost beyond his sons and what it was about Ollanius' sacrifice that finally committed him to deleting Horus.
Malcador was fucking awesome, that's why he was so elevated. Never mind being the most powerful normal human psyker in the galaxy (and third most powerful psyker period when including Magnus), he was insanely intelligent, had an iron will and unshakeable loyalty, and he could keep up with the Emperor to the point that he wasn't just his subordinate, he was his friend. So competent was he that one of his titles was that of Regent of Terra. That means that he alone could take the Emperor's place as ruler of the Imperium should the Emperor for some reason be unable to do so. When you have a guy who's so awesome that he's fully qualified to be a substitute Emperor of Man, of course you elevate him as highly as he was.

As for Ollanius' sacrifice, it was because Horus killing him was the equivalent of killing a human child. Seeing it himself is what showed the Emperor that truly nothing remained of the son he loved and raised.

-Oh, and speaking of Chaos, when the fuck did he even run into them the first time? We know when he first ran into the C'tan, during the legend of St. George and the Dragon, but the first mentions of Chaos are during the Primarch era when they definitely were already aware of each other.
He could've just seen them with his psychic powers and vice-versa. Neither are exactly difficult to take notice of in the Warp.
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Xantalos

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6949 on: October 09, 2016, 02:04:13 am »

Ya gotta wonder where the hell some dude like Malcador popped up from though. I mean I have my own headcanon, but it's ... screwy and not really in line with conventional 40k canon.
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Egan_BW

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6951 on: October 09, 2016, 02:08:54 am »

Malcador wos 'un ork, obviously.
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Rolepgeek

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6952 on: October 09, 2016, 02:36:26 am »

I guess you could say that normally Emp's charisma totally make up for his somewhat flawed personality, so he's had no opportunity to improve for the past 10000000000000000 years. (Number acurite to the closest order of magnitude of orders of magnitude. Warranty not included.)

Being able to psychically dominate people by accident does that, indeed.
@Andres
Although, if that were true, you'd think Magnus would've noticed them sooner, rather than learning about Tzeentch just in time to be fucked over by him. Khorne, at least, would be pretty obvious, I would think. He doesn't do subtle.

EDIT: Raised? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Try "met as an adult".
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Xantalos

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6953 on: October 09, 2016, 02:45:08 am »

'kay.

So y'know how the accepted origin story of the Emperor is that a bunch of psyker shamans did mass suicide and fused into one giant soul? In my headcanon, that wasn't what happened. Well, it did, but not for him.

The shaman combination soul thing did happen, and it formed a combined superpowerful immortal psyker, who over the eons was such esteemed figures as Jesus, Buddha, and Mr. Rogers. Sometime in the 30th millennium, this being was known as Malcador.

He did the stuff that the Emperor did in canon pre-age of strife, stayed in the shadows, tried to positively influence humanity subtly, etc. For a while it worked - the Dark Age of Technology came about, humanity was the second most powerful species in the galaxy behind the Eldar, at the time the unstoppable galactic hyperpower, Heirs of the Old Ones, etc. Then the Age of Strife happened and Malcador, knowing about chaos from his 27,000something years in existence, knew shit was about to go down and sensed that humanity was about to get its shit kicked in even harder than it was against the Men of Iron, which they barely won against by deploying technology inspired by the thoughts of the sleeping Void Dragon on mars. So he decided he had to take drastic action - humanity needed a leader, a shining beacon to guide them through the dark times to come. But who? He could give it a go, but he was a humble dude and didn't consider himself powerful enough for the task, especially given all the threats that'd try to shank him should he try. So he decided to do something else.

Humanity remained fairly religious even well into the Dark Age - the sheer fact of having a soul renders a species instinctively wanting gods or a belief system, an ideal to aspire towards. The most successful religions were stuff from the most dominant on earth right now - Christianity, Judaism, islam, Buddhism, stuff like that. Altered by time obviously, but the same basic tenets. All that belief accumulating over the millennia eventually would've formed a warp god kinda akin in function to Asuryan and the rest of the Eldar, protecting the species from Chaos and all that stuff. It takes a critical mass of accumulated belief to make a god though, and it wasn't quite at that point yet by the time all the warpstorms came about. It was just kinda sitting there in the warp, begging to be used.

In a ritual reminiscent of the process that formed him, and long before, some things the Old Ones did, Malcador used all that belief and coalesced it into a soul. A newborn fully grown as a man. The Emperor of Mankind.

The Emperor was aware of his nature as a godmortal from the moment of his birth, and forever in conflict because of it. He possessed the capacity to basically blow up planets, annihilate anyone that stood in his way if he so wished - he was a god concentrated into the form of a coherent soul, allowing him to focus all his might into one vessel. But it came with a cost - whenever he tapped into his powers other than his passive use of it, which is the super-charisma, his 'godly' side grew more dominant over his human side. His godly side is basically all the weird controlling asshole things he did in canon - the Lorgar overreaction, teleporting Angron up without his buds, never telling anyone the fuck he was doing, etc. The human side of him is the more reasonable depiction of him. It was forever a struggle for him, and the more he used his powers the stronger his asshole god side grew. As he grew as a person, he became disgusted by this side of him and vowed never to succumb to it, hence his militant atheism despite the fact that he clearly knows better and his pushing of the Imperial Truth.

To avoid having to expend too much power and thus let the god side overwhelm him, he decided he had to create generals to help him on his crusade to unite humans. To that end, he took various minor gods/saints/etc still worshiped and remembered and made them into people as well, creating the primarchs. Leman Russ was Thor, for example, and Sanguinous was St. Michael.

The crusade went well at first, he didn't have to do too much in the godly might department and he was gonna make the Imperial Webway to stop his having to project the Astronomicon. Then Heresy of the Horus variety, things went to shit, and he's stuck on the Throne with people worshipping him as a god, the thing he feared most would happen.

The last ten thousand years have been an exercise in agony for the Emperor, who not only has to watch the Imperium he built with Malcador's help crumble into a bigoted theocracy, he has to experience all those desperate prayers to His might ringing out throughout the galaxy. He hears them all, and is empowered by them, and increasingly he cannot stop himself from answering. The asshole side of him has grown to dominate his being as his soul grows splintered from the effort of holding everything together, leaving his human soul - what some call the Star Child - a small nugget of decency, constantly screaming in horror as his mind gets rewritten by people who claim to love him.

He hears the asshole side whispering to him. Look at the masses, how badly they're doing things. No coherency, no vision, just strife and petty conflict. Wouldn't it be so easy to just ... take control? Do it. Take command. Direct your subjects. Make things better. Dominate them. Protect them. Oppress them. For their own good. You know you want to.

Humanity's guiding angel died forever on the golden throne 10,000 years ago, and the Emperor can feel his hold slipping as he slips ever closer to becoming a chaos god.

GRIIIIMDAARK
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Neonivek

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6954 on: October 09, 2016, 03:41:24 am »

Honestly my head canon is that The Emperor wasn't special.

It was the belief people put into him and essentially his cult of personality that kept pushing him more and more into this god like being.

Anything written to suggest otherwise is mostly propaganda... the same kind that elevates him to that position.

It is also equally likely that his existence came about due to a desire.

What makes the Chaos gods different from the other gods is they aren't so much empowered by belief so much as empowered by the nature of their existence. Then again those two things are one and the same just not in a obvious fashion.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2016, 03:46:25 am by Neonivek »
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Xantalos

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6955 on: October 09, 2016, 04:00:30 am »

Honestly my head canon is that The Emperor wasn't special.

It was the belief people put into him and essentially his cult of personality that kept pushing him more and more into this god like being.

Anything written to suggest otherwise is mostly propaganda... the same kind that elevates him to that position.

It is also equally likely that his existence came about due to a desire.

What makes the Chaos gods different from the other gods is they aren't so much empowered by belief so much as empowered by the nature of their existence. Then again those two things are one and the same just not in a obvious fashion.
That's a good interpretation too. It explains the near-DBZ style escalation where he had trouble fighting the various techno-barbarian warlords on Terra but then later starts exploding Ork Waaagh!s by frying them all through their gestalt field and making entire armies kneel before him and stuff.
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Andres

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6956 on: October 09, 2016, 04:32:29 am »

EDIT: Raised? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Try "met as an adult".
Didn't they meet when Horus was just 15? They had plenty of time for father-son bonding before the next Primarch would be found fifty years later.

EDIT: Went back and watched TLI:Prologue again and unf it's still so cool being able to see the Imperium like this.
« Last Edit: October 09, 2016, 05:44:43 am by Andres »
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Grim Portent

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6957 on: October 09, 2016, 07:11:01 am »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Painted my purestrain genestealers after having them laying around since Deathwatch: Overkill came out. This just leaves the various hybrids to do from that box and all the genestealer stuff will be done, though the actual Deathwatch will still need dealt with.
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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6958 on: October 09, 2016, 12:12:12 pm »

I like Love Can Bloom.

I adore Love and Krieg.
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My brother (who is disintered in Warhammer/WH40K stuff) agrees that this was sweet!

Are 40k romcoms the grimdark future of black library?

KingofstarrySkies

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Re: WH40K thread: wait, 40K has religious overtones?! THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!
« Reply #6959 on: October 09, 2016, 01:14:18 pm »

I hope so.
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