True Purpose of The Emperor | Warhammer 40k Lore

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00:00 - Intro
01:05 - Theories of His Origins
05:00 - What We Know
07:33 - C'tan Perspective
09:28 - Dark Age of Technology
12:02 - Old Ones & The Emperor
17:11 - Avatar
19:58 - Closing Thoughts
21:03 - Outro

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[InquisitorThomas]

The Emperor was actually created by a bunch of British nerds to sell tiny plastic army men for an unreasonable price in the 1980s.

[SolxtheUnmaker]

The Emperor is just 20 shamans in a trench coat.

[killerzillavolt]

I like that the Emperor, in a way, loved or at least cared enough for his father to avenge his death.

[TheBlackFox]

That is a bit of a nutty theory

Malcador being the last shaman, the one left out for the sole purpose of guiding this new god like being upon his path and becoming a close friend, trusted ally, and insanely talented advisor.

[TheGallantDrake]

People forget that Odin is also characterized as a schemer and trickster. He wanders the earth as an old man, cloaked, with a wide-brimmed hat.

[dread_pirate_robberts]

One must imagine the emperor as happy.

[whysogrim]

If the Emporer is a weapon its kind of poetic with how Perty wanted make himself into a weapon

[Dintinosanto]

Even Ra took his vision of the Emperor’s childhood with a grain of salt. Keep reading and at the end of that exchange Ra says something like, “None of this is real, is it, lord?” And the Emperor just muses about the skull, ignores Ra’s question, then tells him to wake from the vision.

If even Ra suspected the vision was b.s., readers should really stop trusting it as reliable lore.
Even the Custodians know the Emperor lies, especially about himself.

[goldjaw]

Anathema is a very important word in Warhammer. It has only been used 4 times as far as I know.
One is the Emperor, whose very nature is meant to weaken Chaos.
Another is Ynnead. He is meant to kill Slaanesh.
Then there is the Anchorite, who merely channels the Emperor.

Then there is the strangest one. The one who is stated to have invented a way to completely counter Chaos. The most powerful being of his universe. The immortal inventor of Necromancy… Nagash.

[ChaoticTabris]

"He is the first one to show up on the book Know no Fear by Dan Abnett"

The hate towards John Grammaticus is so great that Chrono is gaslighting us in forgetting him and another human perpetual show up first in Legion.

[Skelator_Sikelator]

What if the Golden Throne itself was a weapon created by the old ones and C'tan misunderstood throne's presence as Emps? It would be a good choice to spice up the lore.

[alexisgill]

To be honest, I wouldn't trust much in what the C'Tan says, mostly because he says that base on what it saw in Cawl's mind.

[dantereinhardt]

Honestly, my personal theory is that the Emperor was never created. Not by shamans, not by the old ones or even Malcador. In fact, he is literally just an anomaly, like perpetuals are. A freak human that somehow developed into a form of super evolved human... With all its flaws. He knows that, which is why he himself made so many rumors about his creation... Because the truth is hollow. He's not a prophesied savior, he wasn't made with purpose and intention to safeguard humanity or the galaxy. He's an accident, without reason or cause, and that thought itself is too terrifying to think of, which is why he didn't want anyone to think of it.

[Michaeluj]

My initial theory, after reading that line, was that humanity was meant to be a mix of Orc and Aeldari, such that they can be somewhat independently minded while also being capable of WAAAGGGHing, with the Emperor being the center of focus to channel that human WAAAGH energy.

[Elderahn]

My personal preference for the Emperor of mankind is that he is simply an offshoot of an offshoot. He is to perpetuals what perpetuals are to humans. A double-mutant of the human genome that simply happened because it was possible at one point in time. Simply happening due to an insane lineup of probability at such an early stage of Humankinds development that he was able to lay plans and enact them on a scale of aeons.

I just feel like it fits in with how Human species in 40k is capable of having these insanely powerful offshoots like the perpetuals, and the Emperor simply being that concept taken to the nth degree. It gives the species way more agency, and lets us own all of our failures and tragedy wholly.

[Zimzilla]

Speaking purely on the Ctan perspective, outside of the machine god which they say is a lie. But I don’t recall them believing in the concept of gods. Since the emperor has chosen to become a thing hinged on the golden throne he can still be seen as a weapon for them but a god for all purposes. Or it could be that since the ctan fought the old ones, they would they closest they’d consider gods.

[hypnotoad]

Whether or not Big E is a weapon would, to me at least, be a matter of perspective.

To the C’Tan, most likely. The Aeldari were created to be just that, weapons to be used against them. A point a friend of mine made; “Say you were born and died in prehistoric times. Then you were suddenly revived and somebody attacked you with a rusty metal pipe. You wouldn’t know what it was, other than a weapon.”

The Emperor might be akin to a ‘weapon’ if he focused his psychic might via the Astronomican, but he still can serve as a psychic beacon.

As for how he came to be, I’d rather not know. Keeps things interesting, and it’s more fun to theorize.

[Aniket-flqk]

Make a video on " what if emperor returns"

day - 1

[demiurge]

I'm pretty sure the reason the C'tan called the Emperor a weapon is because he sat on the golden throne.

think about it, the throne is a mix of xeno technologies which part eldary and probably part old one technology.

What if the golden throne is the tool the old ones used to create the Eldar gods (Eldar weapons) to fight the C'tan.

[RevolverRho]

It’s less of a theory and more of a ‘piece of the larger puzzle’ the emperors name according to most of chaos is ‘anathema’, his creation was literally predicated by visions of humanities doom by pre historic psykers.

If we go by this then we have 2 pieces of crucial lore, Anathema meaning someone or something against someone or something, in this case Chaos. His creation was deliberately made by the ancient shamans and could sense our collective downfall or the downfall of humanity.

The other thing that makes this less of a theory is that, Warhammer like most pieces of fiction survives on most of its largest pieces being ‘abstract’ for example the Emperor. We know who the Emperor is and we know most of his motivations, but we rarely if ever get anything from his point of view and instead are relegated to the viewpoints of those around him, therefore the bulk of information we have is 2nd and even 3rd hand and these tidbits of information are presented in either hard factoids of abstract points of information ala the C’tan. Therefore we can kinda actually put a lot of those puzzle pieces together to form the ‘truth’ based on what information we do have, although obviously since we’re not being spoon fed the information and outright told we’re left with our ‘theories’ but they aren’t theories so much as uh, pages in a book that’s had its pages and index torn out, we’re left putting the pages back together. IMHO but that in of itself is what makes Warhammer such an interesting world.