The Emperor's Long Walk

While reading the Horus Heresy novels, I often finding myself speculating about the nature of the 40k universe. What would have happened if Ferrus Manus killed Fulgrim? What was the true goal of the great crusade? Why did the Emperor choose Horus to be the Warmaster. One of the questions that keeps coming up, and seems to be necessary for any true speculation, is the nature of the Emperor's divinity. Did the Emperor see the coming of the Heresy and the fall of his civilization? Did he become blinded by another task, and simply miss what was happening?

Here are some thoughts:

The Emperor is a great man, but is still just a man.

There is certainly enough in the stories to back this up. His Great Crusade centered around the Imperial Truth, which denounced the idea of religions and mysticism. What possible benefit is gained from this if he knows it to be false (because there are in fact gods.....bad ones, but whatever). Arguably he could have avoided the whole Heresy if he wouldn't have been a bad critic to Lorgar's first published book.

Emperor on the Lectitio Divinitatus:
Don't quit your day job Lorgar

Lastly, the Emperor seems to suffer from something very human: a time management issue. He leaves the crusade in a hurry to work on his special project. Why not see the crusade through? From all of the fluff it seems that Malcador the Sigillite's sole responsibility was to pester the Emperor on all the other shit he was supposed to do (e.g. maintain the Astronimican, protect the imperial palace, etc.). At the end I get this vision of the Emperor being annoyed having to go up to kill Horus because he needs to get back to work.

So where does that leave us? It means the Emperor chose Horus because he thought he was the greatest warrior he had. He probably underestimated the jealousy a primarch can feel, even being subservient to some like the Emperor. He pretty much got pwnd by the chaos gods, and his empire is on a long slow decline till it breaks. YAY humanity.

"...and I for one, welcome our new Chaos masters."

The Emperor is Truly Divine

How to diafy a man who expressly forbids it? Well we can certainly try. So the seeds of this is planeted in couple of places. First of all lets throw out all the stuff from the 40k universe, his divinity is taken as fact then, and there are countless stories in the canon about how "the Emperor Protects." But even in the 30k universe:

• He seems to be immortal
• He beat a C'Tan, which are basically living gods.
• His psychic power is so great to look at him is to be cowed and he single-handedly powers the Astronomican

There is also one story in Tales of Heresy which point directly at it. In The Last Church the Emperor has a religious discussion with a man on earth. It is set right before the time of the Great Crusade. During the conversation he describes the long narrow path humanity must walk to survive, and how he above any other human knew the path. It certainly is different from the very deliberate tasks he sets about completing over the next two plus centuries (conquer the galaxy, fix that stupid warp business, live happily ever after). In fact the path that the empire is following right now seems like more of a long narrow path. By this logic it seems like the Great Crusade was more of means to an end than the road to humanities greatness.

What if the emperor wanted the Heresy to happen, what if it was all part of the plan.? Does that mean he planned on being interned in the golden throne? Is there a rise again scenario? It is certainly the light at the end of the tunnel explanation, it also gives humanity something to look forward to besides endless toil before an eventual defeat.

A slightly happier ending

So what do I believe.....unfortunately this is a tough one. From a fluff perspective it is nice to believe that the current state of the empire is all part of a great plan. Unfortunately this does not allow much insight into the rest of the universe. Any questions about how or why something happened can only be chalked up to divine presence.

I guess I would have to say that the emperor is indeed divine. But in a universe where there are multiple divine entities he is fighting a hard fight against the other gods (specifically the chaos gods). So in my mind he planned the Heresy to happen, but could not really see past the point where he was basically in direct confrontation with the Chaos Gods (i.e. fighting Horus). This was a "Shadow Point" where he could not plan past it, but things may or may not have gone the way he wanted them to.

One very interesting thought spawns off of this, what if he planned to die? What if the inquisition is fouling his plans by sustaining him. Beings with psychic presence can maintain their sentience in the warp, that's why the Eldar are scared shitless of dieing without a soulstone. The Emperor's psychic presence would certainly put any eldar's to shame. What if his real rebirth was to be in the Warp as a truly divine being. Its an interesting thought.

Rix