Emperor of Mankind
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The Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind is the leader of the Imperium, the largest human organization in the fictional Warhammer 40,000 game universe, created by Games Workshop. He was once walking among his subjects and led a crusade to unite mankind into a vast galactic empire, the character seems heavily influenced by Frank Herbert's character Leto Atreides II also known as "the God Emperor of Dune" in the fictional Dune universe.
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[edit] The Emperor of Mankind
Within the Warhammer 40,000 game, The Emperor is worshiped as Master, Defender and Father of Mankind by the countless of the Imperium's inhabintants. He sits immobile within the Golden Throne, on Earth (often referred to as Holy Terra) and has remained there for ten thousand years. Although once a living man, his shattered body can no longer support life and is held intact by his spirit alone, sustained by the soul-sacrifice of countless millions. He has sacrificed his immortal life in the service of Man.
The Emperor is the object of worship in the Imperial Cult, maintained by the Adeptus Ministorum, also known as the Ecclesiarchy, whose missionaries spread his worship across the human galaxy. Only three groups within the Imperium do not adhere to the tenets of the Imperial Cult; the Adeptus Mechanicus who sometimes worship him as the Omnissiah, a multi-fold divine force that is united with their Machine God; the Adeptus Astartes, who instead see the Emperor as the creator and father of their Primarchs, who were in turn the progenitors of their geneseed, rather than as a god in the flesh; and the few surviving Squats.
The following is a general background of his history within the world and theories introduced throughout the literature of Warhammer 40,000 about his nature. Some of the information is now in dispute, because Warhammer 40,000 has not issued complete background to draw together conflicting canonical materials or clarify which aspects of their associated fiction are correct. What is known is that the Emperor's physical body still resides in the Golden Throne and is guarded by his loyal Adeptus Custodes.
[edit] History of the Emperor
[edit] Early history
The original name of the Emperor is unknown. His history is only known by himself, his primarchs and an "illuminated" few. Mankind always had close links to the warp. In Mankind's prehistory and before the birth of the Emperor, the Chaos Gods were yet to be born. The first psychic individuals were the Shamans who guided their people, acted as spiritual leaders and reincarnated after death. As Mankind grew and prospered however, the warp increasingly became influenced by the character of Mankind. Rather than being reborn into a new body, the shamans' souls were being consumed by the malign entities being created in the warp. All the shamans of Earth gathered at one place to decide what must be done. Presumably, thousands were there, and after many years of debate, they came to the conclusion that they had only two or three generations left before they lost the ability to reincarnate altogether, and that without their guidance, mankind would fall prey to the Chaos of the warp. They decided they must take their own lives together in order to be reborn into a single, immortal body. A year after, the Emperor was born, the reincarnation of all Earth's shamans. (Realm of Chaos)
The Shamans were from then on extinct from the earth, their role as spiritual leaders and guides taken by the Emperor.
The Emperor was born in the 8th millennium AD, in central Anatolia[1][2] and although born to normal human parents, he is the first and greatest human psyker. He gradually remembered his thousands of past lives. For thousands of years he guided and watched humanity develop. During the Dark Age of Technology he was a facilitator of many of the most important inventions. Although the Emperor was powerless to prevent the Age of Strife, towards its end he took a more direct hand in leading mankind. Becoming a warlord of the techno-barbarian warriors of Earth, he conquered the warring factions and united Terra. (Realm of Chaos) During this time, he also met the future Cabal spy and psyker, John Grammaticus, who was then a member of the Emperor's army.
The first mention of the Emperor in Imperial records occurs when he unified Terra at the end of the Age of Strife (sometime in the 30th Millennium). Mankind was spread across the galaxy, divided since the Age of Strife, and at war with itself and against invading alien races. The conquest of Earth was the start of the Emperor's broader plan of unifying all of mankind under a single banner. His use of genetically engineered warriors - the protoastartes, genowarriors, pre-Space Marines - enabled him to emerge from a warlord of techno-barbarian warriors to become Emperor of Earth. With the assistance of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars, the Emperor armed his Space Marines and fleets of interstellar ships to carry his armies to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, beginning the Great Crusade which would create the Imperium.
[edit] The Primarchs
The Emperor created the superhuman Primarchs from his own genetic template, imbuing each one with a unique facet of himself. As mentioned in early Warhammer lore, the Chaos powers united briefly to sunder the Emperor's veil of protection around the nascent Primarchs, and managed to scatter them throughout the galaxy. Presumably, the Ruinous Powers did not have enough power to harm or destroy the Primarchs, or they would have done so. Instead, the Chaos Powers perhaps hoped that the infant Primarchs would land on human populated worlds and develop flawed, human personalities that would be vulnerable to the seductive nature of Chaos. For the most part, the Primarchs all developed into the paramount warriors of whatever culture they were deposited within, and seemingly all rose to prominence, sometimes managing to take over absolute rulership of their new domains. The history of the Space Wolves Primarch Leman Russ clues readers in to the fact that the Emperor quested after his children for many years.[3]
[edit] The Great Crusade
The Emperor had a grand vision: to reunite the elements of humanity who had been scattered across the galaxy and isolated from each other during the Age of Strife. In the initial years of the Great Crusade, the Emperor was at the forefront of the fighting, leading his genetically-engineered soldiers into battle. As more worlds came under the control of the fledgling Imperium of Mankind, the Emperor rediscovered the lost Primarchs, whose genetic template was used to stabilise the creation process of the Space Marines.
Following the triumph at Ullanor[4] the Emperor returned to his underground laboratories on Terra to work on secret projects, including an invasion of the Webway, an entrance to which he had discovered within his mountain fastness.[5] He left his trusted sons, the Primarchs, in control of the Crusade, promoting the foremost of these, Horus, to the rank of Warmaster of the Imperium. Crucially he did not explain to anyone, even Horus, what he was planning to do or why he had returned to Terra; this sowed the first seeds of discontent, which would later bear deadly fruit.
[edit] The Horus Heresy
The Great Crusade came to an end with the events of the Horus Heresy, when Horus turned on the Emperor. Under Horus's leadership, nine Space Marine Legions and many Imperial Army regiments turned to Chaos and started a galactic civil war. The war went so far, that the traitorous forces actually laid siege to the holy walls of Terra itself.
As a last desperate push, the Emperor and his most trusted warriors took the fight to Horus upon his starship. Sanguinius, Primarch to the Blood Angels found Horus first, and after resisting Horus' attempts to corrupt him was slain by the Warmaster. The Emperor found Horus standing over the body of Sanguinius and offered to spare the Emperor's life if he knelt before him. The Emperor refused and told Horus that he was merely a pawn of the Chaos Gods, and not their master as Horus believed. Enraged by the Emperor's statement Horus attacked the Emperor and they fought hard psychically and physically, though the Emperor could not bring himself to summon his full power against his son, and as a result Horus deeply wounded him. Even as he lay dying, the Emperor continued to believe in Horus redemption, but all that changed when he saw Horus needlessly rip apart a lone, mortal solider who charged Horus upon seeing the Emperor's body. He saw how far Horus had fallen and that there was only one way to defeat Chaos: to kill its ultimate pawn, his beloved son. The Emperor mustered a psychic lance of unparalleled power and unleashed it upon Horus. To preserve themselves the Chaos gods deserted their pawn, the Emperor sensed the return of Horus's sanity. He knew Chaos might attempt to possess Horus again, and he would not be present to stop it a second time. Driving all compassion from his mind, the Emperor called on his inner reserves and destroyed Horus' soul utterly, thereby breaking the power of his Legions. The account of this titanic combat is written in the short story "Clash of Gods". It was written by William King, and originally published in WHITE DWARF #131 dated November 1990.
More of this story is told in the Black Library book series, The Horus Heresy, the series' books are written by different authors.
For more information on the clash between the Emperor and Horus see Horus's perspective article
[edit] Present day
The Emperor's broken body was discovered by Rogal Dorn who, following the Emperor's instructions, oversaw the Emperor's connection to the Golden Throne, an arcane device to sustain his spirit. The Emperor has remained in the Golden Throne since his 'ascension' to this day, neither fully living nor wholly dead. Although certain disputed material states that this was initially designed as the hub of the Emperor's project to colonise the webway, the Golden Throne also functions as a complex life support device. The Golden Throne itself lies in the Sanctum Imperialis, which is guarded by the Emperor's Custodian Guard, also known as the Adeptus Custodes[6]. The Emperor's decaying physical form is preserved by the vast machinery of the Golden Throne, which itself is maintained by tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
The Golden Throne is also connected to a massive psychic beacon known as the Astronomican, which makes faster than light travel possible by generating a signal by which Navigators are able to navigate through warp space. The Astronomican signal is directed by the Emperor, but the power behind it comes from a 'choir' of ten thousand human psykers. The life force of the psykers is consumed over the course of several months[7], which means that replacements must constantly be found and brought to Holy Terra aboard the infamous Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.
It is thought that, should the Emperor die then the Astronomican will become useless, and humanity will no longer be able to travel through the warp. Should this happen the Imperium would become fractured and disintegrate into civil war. The reliance on the Emperor's life force, and the dedication of his subject to prevent his death is considered to be the basis of the idea of him being the "God Emperor".
[edit] Religious aspects
The Horus Heresy novels describe how the Emperor proscribed religion. Instead, he demanded his followers accept Imperial Truth - the enlightenment of science and logic. The Emperor's decree is paradoxical, in that he claimed there were no gods, but knew fully of the Chaos Gods; and while he encouraged the pursuit of knowledge, he also kept his "sons," the Primarchs, in ignorance. By denying the existence of gods, perhaps the Emperor intended to weaken Chaos in the material realm; alternatively, he may have seen the Chaos Gods as sentient warp-beings and not true deities.
In the setting's current timeline, the 41st Millennium, "The God-Emperor of Mankind", is worshipped as an omnipresent deity by most of the Imperium. Belief and worship is taught and enforced by the Imperium's Ministorum and monitored by the Ordo Hereticus of the Inquisition, and heresy is punished with conscription into the Penal Legion. Imperial citizens believe that the Emperor guides, protects and watches over the human race. The Imperial Creed teaches that, after death, the Emperor will weigh the deeds of every human. Those that pass are welcomed into his realm to stand by his side at the last battle, those that fail are cast into the realm of the Chaos, their souls devoured by daemons.
The Emperor's mind is no longer whole, but after ten thousand years of constant vigilance and trapped inside an immobile carcass, has fractured into many individual minds. The Emperor is in this way omnipotent, simultaneously guiding his race through his Tarot, directing the Astronomican, granting audiences and enduring his living death[1], (The Inquisition War trilogy). This viewpoint of the Emperors psychological state is repeatedly conflicted, between the novelizations of the 40k universe and "canonical" game material, and is extensively retconned on an almost continual basis.
The opening text of the Inquisitor rulebook describes the mixed feelings that surrounded the Emperor's ascension. The Emperor had ordered his retainers to connect him to the Golden Throne: while he would never walk among his people again, his psychic powers would return in time, his Astronomican would endure, and his webway tunnel would stay closed. Many voiced concerns over the Emperor's self-imposed duty. Without the Imperium's creator to lead humanity in person, they argued, what hope did the Imperium have for survival? Had it been possible for the Emperor to return, members of the newly-formed Inquisition and the High Lords of Terra would have opposed it. They feared such an event, so soon after the Horus Heresy, could destroy the Imperium. They also were afraid of any possible changes to the Emperor resulting from his ascension.
[edit] The Star Child Theory
The Star Child is the nascent power of the Emperor's soul in the warp as it is ebbed away from his dying body. The Star Child has its own champions (the Sensei), and could bestow powers on these individuals.
The Star Child theory was introduced during first edition's Realm of Chaos books and referred to later in the 3rd Edition Warhammer 40,000 guide[1][7]. Like the Thorians, those who believe in the Star Child theory (the Illuminati) hope for the reincarnation of the Emperor[8].
Central to the belief is that the Emperor's soul is part of the warp. After Horus crippled the Emperor's mortal frame, his body and soul could no longer remain as one. As his soul melted into the warp, only a tiny core of the Emperor's humanity remained whole. Since the Emperor's soul survived, the possibility remained that his whole essence could be reborn once more.
Like the Shamans that died together to combine and form the Emperor[2], so too could the Emperor's death herald a new savior. That time would lie far in the future, when mankind's desire for a new savior would strengthen the core of the Emperor's soul and rekindle it to new life.
[edit] The Illuminati
The Illuminati, first described in the Realm of Chaos books, are a secret society - existing beyond even the Emperor's knowledge, but manipulating and interpreting the Imperial Will to bring about their objectives. Its members all share the same experience: they have been possessed by daemons and then, either through the force of their own will or through outside assistance, have freed themselves. Sharing a mind with a daemon they have gained the most intimate understanding of Chaos. Having mastered the Chaos within themselves, they are immune to its temptations and corruption. They then fight Chaos in the broader universe and, as they share a common enemy, are frequently involved on some level with the Eldar, in particular the Harlequins. The Illuminati are some of very few allowed access to the Eldar's Black Library of Chaos. They know of the Fall of the Eldar, and seek to prevent the same from happening to Man.
The Illuminati are plotting to have the Emperor reborn. They realize the Emperor is failing and cannot survive in his current state of living death forever. They plan to rejuvenate the Emperor by sacrificing his descendants, the Sensei, at the moment the Emperor's will finally fails. The Emperor will be reborn, as the Sensei-Emperor, to again lead humanity directly. Their plans are a carefully kept secret; should the Emperor learn their plan, he may see no reason to continue to endure, and allow himself to die prematurely. Should the Sensei learn they may be unwilling to meet their intended fate.
The Illuminati influence events to pave the way for the Emperor's rebirth, and gather together the Sensei, protecting them from the persecution of the Inquisition.
Certain factions of the Inquisition know of and strongly oppose the Illuminati, fearing the Illuminati's plans are influenced by Chaos. They have been known to destroy cells of the Illuminati on several occasions. The Illuminati themselves are engaged in a campaign of disinformation and confusion against these factions of the Inquisition, in order to protect the Sensei.
Many Illuminati are also Inquisitors, which gives the brotherhood much more power and influence. One of the more proactive ways the brotherhood gains members is by illuminating others, subjecting the most promising individuals to daemonic possession and then freeing them.
[edit] The Sensei
The Sensei background is not mentioned in later editions (except in 3rd edition's rulebook where they are killed by Inquisitors).
The Sensei are the sons or descendants of the Emperor, and are the counterparts to the Champions of the Chaos gods - the Sensei are Champions of the nascent Star Child. The Sensei are hunted down by the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition who consider the Sensei a threat to the order of the Imperium, and possibly in league with Chaos. The Sensei are also a vital part of the Illuminati's plan to save humanity, by rejuvenating the Emperor; the Illuminati gather the Sensei and protect them from the Inquisition, preparing them for "the final war with Chaos".
Between the two Realm of Chaos books, the exact nature of the Sensei is contradicted: in one version they are the direct sons of the Emperor, fathered over his vast lifetime, and are to be sacrificed to the Emperor by the Illuminati, in the same way many millions of psykers have already been sacrificed to feed the Emperor. All of the remaining Sensei are to be offered to the Emperor as a sacrifice at the moment his will finally breaks. The Emperor will be rejuvenated, and reborn as the Sensei-Emperor to again lead his race in person.
The Inquisition has discovered that captured or killed Sensei can be rendered down to manufacture the negative psychic energy used in psycannon bolts and Psyk-out weapons. The only other source of this energy is the byproducts of the Emperor's metabolism. A few of the Sensei are said to rebel to Chaos, becoming the Grey Sensei, the cruelest servants of Chaos.
The second version effectively writes out the Illuminati and their plot, introduces the Star Child, and makes the Sensei the Champions of the Star Child:
Some of the Emperor's descendants inherit his power. Although the Sensei do not necessarily know their true identity, they are actually descendants of the Emperor. Nor is the Emperor himself aware of his immortal descendants.
The Sensei have inherited great power from the Emperor. They are immortal; although they can be killed, they do not age, and possess amazing powers of recovery. They are also by their nature protected from the Chaos Powers. Because they harbor none of the emotions or concepts embodied by the Chaos Powers they are largely invisible to them, and can draw on the energies of the warp to use their psychic powers without risk of attracting daemons or other malicious forces of the warp. Due to their harmonious relationship with the warp, the Sensei are invisible to psychic senses, even to those of the Emperor.
Sensei wander throughout the galaxy. Their origins are unknown to the Inquisition, who view them as dangerous mutants and heretics. In contrast to the forces of the Imperium, Sensei are natural rebels. As well as being enemies of Chaos, Sensei are enemies of oppression. They and their followers operate as outlaw bands, and appear across the Imperium to fight against repression and injustice. In this way, they often come into conflict with the Imperium.
The Imperium regards the Sensei as dangerous bandits and nihilists who, if not actually in league with Chaos, are weakening the Imperium's defense against Chaos. Because of their powers and militantly anti-authority natures, they are hunted down and killed by Imperial forces, which in turn forces the Sensei to operate as outlaws.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Priestley, Rick; and Ansell, Bryan (1990). Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned. Nottingham: Games Workshop. ISBN 1-869893-52-2.
- ^ a b Abnett, Dan (2006). Horus Rising. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84416-294-X.
- ^ Warhammer 40,000 - Space Marines
- ^ Abnett, Dan (2006). Horus Rising. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84416-294-X.
- ^ Merrett, Alan (2006). Horus Heresy – Volume IV: Visions of Death. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84416-340-7.
- ^ Priestley, Rick (2004). Warhammer 40,000, 4th Edition, Nottingham: Games Workshop. ISBN 1-84154-468-X.
- ^ a b Priestley, Rick (1998). Warhammer 40,000, 3rd Edition, Nottingham: Games Workshop. ISBN 1-84154-000-5.
- ^ Thorpe, Gav. The Thorians: Faction Sourcebook (PDF). Inquisitor Rulebook. Games Workshop. Retrieved on 2006-03-28.
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