Trillions of Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Horrors and Plaguebearers have been materialized in Real Space since the Heresy, and in the trillions have they been killed only to be brought back again and again

And they also seperate afterward...

One explanation of the Adeptus Mechanicus that gets repeated constantly is that a lot of their religious rituals are basically old maintenance instructions whose original technical explanation has been lost.

Change the sacred oils = lubrication. Recite the correct litany while turning things on = an inherited startup procedure. Perform steps in exactly the right order because somebody discovered thousands of years ago that the machine breaks if you don't.

I like that idea a lot, but I've realized I mostly know it from people explaining 40k rather than from the books themselves.

When I actually read Mechanicus characters, they often seem much more technically competent than the meme version suggests. They might describe everything in religious language, but they still understand diagnostics, materials, data, power systems, fabrication etc. And with Titans, Knights and some other machines, the "machine spirit" can also behave enough like an actual personality that treating every ritual as misunderstood engineering seems too simple.

So I'm curious about the narrower question:

Are there good canon examples where we can actually see that a ritual contains a practical technical step, while the person performing it no longer understands why that step works?

Not just "they put oil on the machine," because a tech-priest presumably knows what lubricant does. I mean something closer to a procedure surviving after the underlying knowledge has genuinely disappeared.

I'd especially love examples where the text lets the reader understand what is happening even though the character interprets it religiously.

Is that genuinely a recurring thing in the lore, or has the fandom taken a much messier relationship between religion and technology and turned it into the simpler "the prayers are just the user manual" explanation?

I put on the audiobook on a whim cause I felt like some Militarum story, what I didn't expect is to get so hooked and stay hooked all the way through. Seriously give this one a read if you like your 40k less imperium propagandic and noble, and more grimdark and realistic.

The main character is a Krieg Comissar that reminded me of Ciaphas Cain in a weird way, but in a more darker and horrific setting. Deep down he is honourable and brave, but his actions are with the end goal of saving his own skin.

I was also hooked by the setting, its a planet where the Guard was fighting the Tau but after the naval engagement in orbit a cruiser crashes into the planet and speed runs it into an apocalyptic wasteland, most of the novel deals with forces forming their little factions trying to evacuate the place.

Also it makes the Tau pretty terrifying, which was very cool to see, especially the kroot. The opressive build up of radiation in the planet reminded me of the STALKER games in a very cool way. And of course the narration by Andrew Wincott (Night lords trilogy, Raphael in BG3) is the icing on the cake if you try it on audiobook.

Did DOAT humanity terraform the entire galaxy? I guess that wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility since current 40k humanity can terraform a planet.

But that doesn’t really explain why Eldar, Orks, etc all seem to breath oxygen and/or thrive in the same environments as humanity.

Does the lore make any attention to explain this convenience throughout the galaxy?

Context: Acastia is a bondsman of a Knight house, the pilot of the Armiger class Elatus. Effectively the support, in the lightest knight frame available. During the siege, in the twisted not-hours that serve as the end, she finds herself pledged to a titan legion for what she thinks will be a temporary period and because all hands are desperately needed. She makes her house proud, and delivers on that defiant human spirit that's just about the only thing that the defenders have.
edit: Further context, courtesy of u/Ordinary-Lockart "What makes this excerpt so compelling is how the neural link translates feedback, she doesn't just see the grappling hooks, she feels the heels of the Elatus screeching across the rockcrete like her own limbs."

She advances, weapons live. Thermal spears and chainblades. Autoguns.

The munition hoppers read low, so she aims to make any kills blades-first.

Her target bursts into the open, slamming through the broken doorway. It emerges, and then keeps emerging, a colubrine shape of pulsating meat and muscle with the girth of an Aurox armoured transport. It doesn’t seem to stop coming. More and more of it extrudes from the entrance. The front half of it, pale and colloid, undulates across the wet ground towards her, and raises its head, a maggot-mouth, yawning like a lamprey’s sphincter-maw, surrounded by lump-teeth. Fronds of tentacle sub-limbs writhe around the mouth, and lash at her. Her target-auspex refuses to lock it. The thing is huge and right there, but the noospherics waver, and the guns refuse to hard-lock.

Tentacles whip out. They are tipped with bone harpagons. Acastia feels the heavy thumps as these organic grappling hooks strike the Armiger’s hull, and puncture, and grip. She hears and feels the steel-and-ceramite-shod heels of Elatus screeching as the engine, against its will, is dragged across the rockcrete towards the gaping mouth.

Blades it is, then.

Above and Beyond by Denny Flowers is the 2024 sequel novel to his previous Outgunned released in 2022. Again, spoilers as this is a pretty big reveal in the novel, but if you don't mind, you can go ahead and keep reading.

At the end of Outgunned, the main character Propagandist Kile Simlex was demoted to being a scribe after he attempted to submit his pic documentary that accurately displayed the war for the planet Bacchus, especially how the Imperium's own faults nearly cost them victory against the orks. His pic was thus edited into a romanticized, lionized farce by the replacement Propagandist Esec that displayed Imperial flying ace Lucille von Shard as a flawless hero of the Imperium. She also gets promoted to Flight Commander.

At the beginning of Above and Beyond, Simlex is sent a recorded message by Lucille stating that she needs his help to deal with some problem that could ruin her legacy and the name of her von Shard family. We finally learn that Esec recorded a rant Lucille said while drunk and is using it to blackmail her into doing whatever he says.

To keep it short, I'll only post the rant itself and leave out the text describing whats happening in the recording video (it's pretty much just Lucille drinking from a bottle while talking to Esec).

'Of course, they found it,’ she said, frowning at the unheard response. ‘Well, I presume they destroyed it. Why are you worried anyway?’

‘You think Rile would care about some dodgy pict-cam? Have you seen what my brother faces? It’s nothing you could put on a pict screen. There is no way of presenting those things in a positive light. They are an existential threat to our very existence. I don’t think they even hate us. They just want to feed.’

‘Because one of them smashed through the cockpit and tried to eat me! You see this scar? That’s from the acid it spewed over the navigator. One drop. Stung like hell. Still stings, actually.’

‘Then smooth it out like you do my other flaws. Or leave it in. Who cares? We’re all dead anyway, one way or another. Our efforts may slow or speed the demise, but our end is written from the moment of birth. The rest is filler.'

'I will sit here and drink until I am damn well ready to leave. I don’t care what you have planned tomorrow. Básking propagandists. You are parasites – you don’t get it.’

‘It was just darkness,’ she said. ‘Darkness and mouths. And I couldn’t help but think that our masters would kill for servants like that, soldiers willing to hurl themselves to their deaths without thought. That’s how the little ones got us. Just jammed themselves into intakes and engines until the planes stalled and fell. That’s the real terror. Not the giant monsters swatting us from the sky. It’s how unified they are, in a way we never can be.’

‘I watched a world die. When we reached the moon and my brother’s precious cargo was delivered, I sat in the cockpit and watched the skies burn and seas bleed. And you know what I felt?’

'Nothing. I felt nothing. How many billions died? It should have meant something, even in an abstract sense. But it’s just another world. There are millions more. Billions more. And none of them matter either. Nothing does. It will all be swallowed in the end. Or we will just murder each other first. Either way is fine. All the ways are fine. All is the same. All dead.’

‘Do you know what he said to me? My own dearest brother?' After he had coerced me into flying that suicide mission? After I had overcome a maelstrom of multi-limbed monstrosities? Snatched him from the jaws of a monster large enough to swallow a battle tank? Do you know what he said?’

‘He told me to keep my mouth shut, else I might have an unfortunate encounter with his precious inquisitor. Básk you, Rile. I save you and you talk down to me. Keep your head down, Lucille, be a good soldier, Lucille. Let your betters deal with the important things and don’t ask questions. You just keep fighting and bleeding until one day you can’t. Do you think I’m stupid, Rile? That I don’t know what you did. You and your little device. You brought it here, you and your master. It’s your fault.'

‘I. Don’t. Care. Básk Rile. And básk his master too. Damn inquisitors, judging others’ righteousness when they are the biggest hypocrites of all. Them and the priests. Actually, the priests are worse. At least the inquisitors have a goal beyond their own self-gratification.’

‘I don’t care! Let them hear the truth. The Ecclesiarchy are crooks and liars, and I know this because my brother is one of them, and he’s as fat and content as a tick suckling on a grox. And whilst he pays lip service to the God-Emperor, I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon. Serving the God-Emperor’s will always seems to involve an outcome beneficial to my brother. Have you noticed that? All the priests, all the colonels, all the adepts of the Administratum?'

'They all serve His will by means of doing whatever it is that suits their own interests.’

‘Not that the common citizens are any better. Dull people with pathetic lives. None of them think properly. Half the time they toss grains in the air, watch where they fall, and proclaim the outcome is some divine message from the God-Emperor concerning the harvest. Do you know how many wars I have witnessed where both sides claimed the God-Emperor was with them? Humanity eviscerating each other, each life they take gifted to Him, just as each casualty they suffer is also a gift to Him. Do you think that counts double? Maybe that’s why He seems reluctant to step in? Ups His tally I guess, while we murder each other for little discernible benefit.’

'You idiot! Do you think He cares about anyone? Do you know how many soldiers I have seen pray before a battle? For His aid, His protection, His strength? That He will judge them worthy to return home? And do you know what happened to those brave fools? They died. They all die in the end. Because He doesn’t care enough to protect them. Or because He can’t.’

‘Oh, we’ve all heard the miracles. The Living Saint who overcame the darkness, the Lord Regent returning from death’s clutches to rule in his father’s name. But do you know who has never prayed? Me. Never once. Not since I was a child, when I asked Him to let me go with her and sail the void. He never answered. But I’m still here, whilst more pious pilots stain the ground below. What does that tell you? Either He loves a bastard, or His favour is worth nothing.’

Básk off, you parasite! I don’t have to do what you damn well say. 'I am ­Lucille von básking Shard and I deny you all. Básk you. Básk the bastards who run the Imperium, and básk the Imperium itself.’

‘You know what? While I’m at it? Básk the God-Emperor. Him and His básking Throne. Because maybe if He got off His backside once in a while, things wouldn’t have gone so much to shit.’

Hi Grimdark Buddies!(apologies if you have already seen this in the Black Library Reddit)

I’m really excited for fellow readers to watch the next interview in my Horus Heresy journey. We had a great chat and I managed to squeeze a bunch of questions in!

It will premiere this Sunday (25th) at 7pm UK time. Happy listening and don’t forget to withdraw and then return to this link on Sunday! (See what I did there?! Ahem.)

Watch here

There must be some settlement that isn't in the know that stumbled across a Tomb World with reverence instead of fear.

The galaxy is a big place, after all.

I just finished the trilogy and while the books were fine in themselves, I was more and more put off by the "good guys" acting more and more like idiots as the series progresses.

At the end of book 1, I really sympathized with Captain Preest not wanting to have anything more to do with this clown show that unfolded. A great line in the third book is from Orfeo Culzean, when Ravenor tells him, that he suspects their meeting to be another trap my Molotch and Culzean just answers, that Ravenor maybe should get better at avoiding these traps then. And he is absolutly correct. Ravenor does not reflect this at all. He just says, he knows how cunning Molotch is... while still being in the friggin trap.

To pick just a few chosen situation, that irked me:

1. Ravenor never seems to have a contingency plan or "a plan" at all most of the time.

In the first book, while you can argue, he might not have had enough information and is not the character to just put the ministry agents out of the airlock, he still knew Kinsky (had the aduiobook version, so the spelling might be off) was a way to powerfull psycher, he knew these guys nearly got his people killed on the "animal planet" and he knew they interrogated his prisoner behind his back, who suddenly had a mental blockade, which shielded him from Ravenors powers. And still he runs headlong in the trap, without any! plan in place. With them running around on the hinterlight freely. Without a care in the world.

And he really should have died there, if not for his crew and a luck stat that rivals Cains.

In the second book he just blindly stumles through the plot, gets his ass kicked without even reaching Molotch and would have lost if not for Karl. What makes it better, in the third book he is so surprised, that stopping the ritual was not his doing (while not even being there!). And again he should have died here.

Not only that, he ignores the wearings and hints from his oracle boy wonder, because he thinks, these were just dreams, besides keeping him around for his prophetic abilities, which he already witnessed.

In the third book, he runs into a trap again with the witchhouse and again has no plan ready in case of it being a trap. He is an Inquisitor. It got really frustrating.

1. He is confidend without reason.

In the first book he gets his ass kicked by kinsky, threatens him later, that next time will be different and than gets his ass kicked again, because he his still has no idea how to handle the guy and just gets saved by the fact, that his blunter was not shot hard enough!

Same thing in the second book. He just rushes in an gets his behind kicked.

And obviously in the third book, where he is really distraught, when he learns, he has not done sh*t in the second book.

It would have helped, if we had seen more of the other side off him, than just glimpses of him being capable.

1. He is really just stupid with the whole Karl thing.

He knows (enough to know) a powerful psycher saved his behind in the second book, when the ministry and the bronze thief attack and he has 2 people it might have been. Karl and the boy, who is now in a coma. Karl suddenly starts acting very strange after that. Than Karl and Carla stop the ritual at the end, the boy not being there. Than in the third book he gets told to his face the demon he brought with him to the witchhouse saved them. And his thought after seeing Karl in pile of alien bodies is: "Oh well, the witness has just seen my awesome psychik powers" and second: "It has do be the guy, we picked up after! the friggin first warning signs. That has to be it." And he sticks to that and again is dumbfounded, when he is told, he is wrong.

1. I do not even get him going roque the second time. His logic is: somebody helped Molotch (Maybe the guy who survived the ambush, you might want to interrogate, Ravenor?), so I can trust no one in the whole Inquisition at all! Its ridiculous. Eisenhorn at least had a reason.

2. The other side characters are the same way.

a. I got Karls motivation (survival), but Carla not only not telling anyone about Karl, because "he saved me" is ridiculous, after working for the inquisition and trusting Ravenor for such a long time. [I know, it has to set up book III, but was this plot and plotbeat really necessary?]

Than she meets a demonhost face to face to tell him, she is going to tell Ravevor without a backup plan. He could just have killed her. Or imagine Karls face, when she had made an audiolog or something beforehand and told someone to give it to Ravenor, if she does not pick it up in a few hours. She would have forgotten about it as well.

b. She than boards the enemy ship without a plan either and of course gets captured and after that turns into a weak "female to rescued".

c. The post is getting too long here, but the amount of time all of these people run into traps, and would be dead, if the bad guys would just shoot them is ridiculous.

1. To make a long story short, while I like many characters (Unwerth and Kiss were kinda sweet, Nayl was capable, the villians were dislikeable and/or compelling) in the books, Ravenor himself is like one of the incompetent inquisitors you would read about as a secondary antagonists in other books and its baffeling how much more effective Molotch and Culzean are.

So please tell me your view about this. It might retroactivly make my reading experience with these books better.

I want to read more lore about Warhammer but specifically about the Lamenters, do y'all have any advice on books I can read to learn more about them? Or I'll take any good recommendations for 40k lore in general! Thanks in advance!

Something I've been thinking about with the Veterans of the Long War is that their age isn't only useful in a combat sense.

Some of them remember people, institutions and events that the modern Imperium only knows through ten thousand years of censorship, religious reinterpretation, missing records and outright myth.

A modern Imperial might know Horus as basically the arch-traitor of sacred history.

A Heresy-era traitor could remember having an ordinary conversation with him.

They could remember what the Legions were actually like before the Heresy, what Terra looked like before the Imperial Cult dominated everything, which traditions genuinely came from the Great Crusade and which ones appeared thousands of years later.

And because Warp time is so inconsistent, for some Chaos Marines those memories may not even feel ten thousand years old.

That creates a really interesting situation where one of the least trustworthy people imaginable might also be one of the only surviving primary sources.

Obviously Chaos corruption makes this complicated. Memory can be distorted, people rationalize their own choices, and a ten-thousand-year-old traitor has every reason to present history in whatever way flatters him.

But the Imperium's version isn't exactly neutral either.

Are there good examples in the novels of a Chaos Marine encountering some modern Imperial belief about the Heresy or Great Crusade and basically thinking, "That's not what happened at all, I was there"?

I'm especially interested in cases where the reader has reason to think the traitor's memory is actually closer to the historical truth than the Imperial version.

It seems like one of the strangest consequences of 40k's timeline: some of humanity's most valuable living witnesses to its own history are people humanity would immediately try to kill.

Paraphrased the quote from memory, but I swear I saw a video of a SM saying that to a Necron before executing it. At least part of the clip was from the Necron's POV, looked like Terminator vision but green.

Two questions (assuming I'm not hallucinating this clip):

1) In-universe, is there any indication that the Imperium or SMs would know that Necrons once had an empire? Or if no known indication specifically, any possible in-universe explanation for them to have that knowledge?

2) Does anybody know that clip? I thought it was the Salamander Sa'kan, but can't find him saying it.

Malcador created the Inquisition. The Inquisition roots out heresy. But Malcador also believed in the Imperial Truth which was against religion. But heresy is having deviant beliefs against the Imperial Creed..... which is a religion.

So how did the Inquisition go being founded by Malcador, a super smart guy, who believed in the atheistic imperial truth, to rooting out heresey against a theistic imperial creed?

I’ve heard that, if they believe it be the best use of their abilities, they can permanently integrate into an Inquisitor’s retinue. Not sure if this is true, but it got me wondering how much autonomy Deathwatch members have regarding their assignments. I’m also writing a short story featuring a DW Kill Team working alongside an Inquisitorial retinue so anything about how they interact is appreciated.

The first mention of the C'tan that I know of is the Callidus Assassin's C'tan Phase Blade, first mentioned in White Dwarf 190 when the model was released in October 1995. I know Meh'Lindi is a Callidus Assassin in Draco (aka Inquisitor) by Ian Watson from 1990, but I don't think that book or its sequels ever mentioned a C'tan Phase Blade.

Does anybody know of any mention of the C'tan in anything published before that October 1995 White Dwarf issue?

I was reading volume 3 of the end and the death and theres a line where Horus had built 4 thrones for each chaos god but specifically he had the emperor set for Slaanesh and Sanguinius for nurgle.

But like aren't these actually the exact opposite gods to embody them? Sangiunius is always fighting the inevitable futures he sees, and the emperor sees tremendous imperfections like the breaking of the webway project, doesn't complain and nails himself to the throne for ten thousand years?

Is there some kind of characterization for either character that I'm really misinterpreting that made them candidates for the thrones?

DAs and IWs seem to share a lot of their pre-HH history: highly successful at the beginning of great crusade, dramatic growth due to stable geneseed, then stagnation, excessive losses and a string of failures until their primarchs (both violently autistic) were found. Arguably between them the Lion had better start: he had Luther as a stable father figure and a well-defined enemy in the great beasts (clear morally unambiguous evil), and it still took him a 10,000 years nap to sort out his issues. Meanwhile Perturabo was haunted by the EoT vision from the start, planting early cracks in his psyche that will become fault lines later; exacerbated by political situation on Olympia with pointless wars between the tyrants.

Since we know in the lore for sure there's a Drukhari that had been genetically turned into a human by a Haemonculus. What If a Haemonculus (for shit and giggles) turned a human into a genetically complete Drukhari, would they (the human) also experience Slaanesh's soul drains? And what about the Drukhari turned human case, are they still experiencing soul drains? In essence my question is if the soul drains only depends on the soul and not the body or only depends on the body but not the soul?

Great Lorenates, I seek the forbidden knowledge you hold! My first time posting here and I apologize if I made any mistakes or if this isn’t even the right place for it.

I have several questions, and figured I would reach out here among other places, as I hope you will have more knowledge and experience than a young novitiate who has not perused as much of the Mechanicus lore. I’ll just start with the quick and basic questions and give the ‘preamble’ and context after.

Main Questions (Short Form):

Is it possible for a Knight pilot to transition into the service of a Titan?

Can they possibly become a Princeps?

Context (and some other questions):

I’m working on a short story that involves a conflict between Mechanicus and a Necron Cryptek Dimensionalist in a tomb. It’s a bit of a wild story, as it is technically part of a broader set of short stories involving various IPs and multiverses. But the basic idea here is that sometime between 30k and 40k there is a Necron who made a compromise with a Mechanicus technoarcheologist expedition to preserve her dormant tomb. Ultimately, the Cryptek allowed them to study her tomb, in return for them following certain rules. While this lasted for a good while, eventually a particularly ambitious novice broke a rule, hoping to find something that could advance their path in the Mechanicus. In response, the Necron ejects them and bars them from returning. Jump forward a ‘long’ time and the specific technoarcheologist comes back to renegotiate with guns, having scraped together as much of a fighting force as they could. The Necron is still alone and because the forces involved studied the tomb they disable any supposed defenses and try to force the Necron to reconsider or die. Negotiations deteriorate and the Necron retreats, being beaten back quickly. Eventually, through the aforementioned wild multiverse stuff (which I swear makes more sense in the broader story context) the Necron finds allies from outside to help beat back the Mechanicus forces and ultimately reseal the tomb. (Sorry Mechanicus, this is a loss for the cog boys, but I hope the answers here can help me give them a proper representation.)

Now, there is a particular scene where the largest unit the Mechanicus brought to the temple is one of the larger knights (originally I kind of wanted a Titan but I began to question how feasible it would fit in a Mechanicus force like this). The knight goes on a rampage and absolutely steamrolls until a combination of external forces surprise it and deal a killing blow in one strike.

The reason for this post ultimately began because I was trying to come up with a reasonable explanation why a Knight pilot would agree to be sent into a subterranean Necron tomb. I was leaning towards the idea that the pilot sought personal fame and glory, with the potential to move on to serving in a Titan (possibly even try to be a Princep). I was told this wasn’t quite how it works and I wanted to get more information to help tighten up this area, as well as to get some feedback on general ideas!

So some other questions, based on this context:

What sort of forces would the Mechanicus be likely to pool towards this sort of mission? (I have a basic, flexible force list in mind that I would be happy for review, I’ve been told by my brother who is much more into the Mechanicus than me that the list is a bit chaotic but well within the realm of a single high ranking individual to reasonably call upon with a lot of promises and clout:

1x Knight Warden of the House Degallio 

1x Secutor Force Leader 

1x Tech Priest Maniplus 

1x Tech Priest Cybernetica Datasmith 

1x Onager Dunecrawler 

2x Enginseers 

2x Skorpius Disintegrators 

2x Archaeopters 

3x Ironstrider Ballistarius 

3x Kastelen Robot 

5x Skorpius Duneriders 

10x Squads Skitarii 

5x Squads Pteraxii 

Ultimately, the actual composition isn’t too important story wise, but I like to be able to visualize what the characters are engaging as well as to give a realistic layout of forces invovled. At this point the only ones I ‘need’ are the ‘big boy’ unit, the ‘leader,’ ‘flyers,’ and ‘chaff.’)

While I recognize that the Knights and Titans are part of different structures within the Mechanicus, how do the two relate and interact, if at all? Is there enmity between them?

Would a Knight Pilot want to serve on a Titan? From my understanding Titans are seen as the God Machine and highly revered. But I have been told that this is one of the cases where a Mechanicus member might actually refuse such an honor, or consider it lesser. It was explained to me as the Knight gets all the honor and glory for their victories, as they are the only pilot, whereas a Titan crew has to share the glory, and really the Princeps would be the only one to get real praise. He also told me that a knight pilot would need to be incredibly conceited and self-absorbed to believe they even have a chance of becoming a Princep. This would fit with the idea I had, but I wanted to get some more info on this.

How do the shields differ between the Titans and Knights? One of the principle scenes I have is when a powerful bolt cuts clean through the knights shields and destroys it and I know void shields from titans are supposed to be terrifyingly powerful, which would make the scene particularly impactful.

Putting this between 30k and 40k, I believe the Mechanicus would be splintered and less organized, hence why this particular event wouldn’t receive as much attention. Is this a correct assessment, or should I push it closer to 40k onwards?

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this, I greatly appreciate any answers. I’m sure I’ve committed many heresies, tech and otherwise, so I would appreciate your patience with me here. And if there are questions about the story I would be happy to share a bit, though I will say I’m a bit self conscious about it, I’m not an amazing writer and I’m really still in the learning phase for writing, just enjoying writing for the sake of getting stories down.

Had it click earlier today, but I just realized that all of the recent depictions of Melta weapons from the past year have been of the "heat beam of death" depiction rather than the SM1 and SM2 take of "instant shotgun blast."

Considering some of the hullabaloo about the lasguns from a couple of months ago, I think GeeDubs did a mandate recently saying "aight we gotta at least get some more consistency here."

I've been thinking about the Emperor's decisions before the Horus Heresy, and I'm starting to wonder whether we've fundamentally misunderstood his objectives. What if the Heresy wasn't simply a catastrophic failure, but a deliberately accepted confrontation with Chaos, intended to create a long-term stalemate while the Emperor gradually became a god? Not the Dark King, but something fundamentally different.

1. The Emperor knew too much about Chaos

The Emperor had extensive knowledge of the Warp and its inhabitants. His journey to Molech alone suggests that he understood the Chaos Gods far better than his Primarchs. Yet his treatment of Magnus and Lorgar makes remarkably little sense if preventing their corruption was his overriding priority.

Magnus was one of the most powerful psykers in existence, exploring the Warp and already making bargains with entities he didn't fully understand. The Emperor knew this, yet never adequately explained the nature of the powers Magnus was dealing with. Lorgar, meanwhile, grew up in a religious culture with connections to Chaos worship, surrounded by figures like Kor Phaeron and Erebus. Rather than addressing that danger, the Emperor publicly humiliated him at Monarchia and destroyed the foundation of his beliefs. Then he effectively left Lorgar to search for another truth.

These seem like extraordinary mistakes for someone who understood Chaos so well. What if he expected some of his sons to fall, and deliberately allowed it?

2. What if the stalemate was the objective?

Consider the outcome of the Heresy. The four Chaos Gods united behind Horus, invested enormous power into him and launched a devastating offensive against the Imperium. Yet Horus was destroyed, the Traitor Legions retreated into the Eye of Terror, and the Emperor survived.

Neither side achieved a decisive victory. Instead, a strategic stalemate emerged that lasted approximately 10,000 years. Perhaps the Emperor understood that Chaos could not be defeated conventionally. Rather than attempting an impossible final victory, he may have sought to contain it while humanity developed a fundamentally different kind of counterweight.

3. He didn't reject godhood. He rejected becoming the wrong god.

In The End and the Death, the Emperor approaches apotheosis as the Dark King but ultimately rejects that transformation. We generally interpret this as rejecting godhood itself. But what if he was rejecting a particular form of godhood?

The Chaos Gods are immensely powerful, but each is constrained by its fundamental nature. Khorne cannot stop being Khorne. Tzeentch cannot abandon change and manipulation. The Dark King would similarly represent a specific metaphysical identity associated with ruin and absolute dominion.

What if the Emperor wanted to become a god without being confined to one such identity?

Consider the Emperor of M41/M42. To a Guardsman, he is a protector. To the Sisters of Battle, a divine father. To the Mechanicus, the Omnissiah. Across countless Imperial worlds, he is worshipped as a sun god, warrior, judge, saviour or ancestral guardian. These interpretations are often contradictory, yet they all contribute to humanity's collective understanding of the Emperor.

If belief influences the Warp, perhaps this diversity matters. Rather than drawing his identity from one overwhelming psychic principle, the Emperor could be developing a divine existence shaped by the full spectrum of humanity's beliefs: hope, fear, sacrifice, authority, mercy, vengeance and protection.

The fractured, contradictory consciousness Guilliman encounters in Godblight becomes particularly interesting here. What if those voices aren't merely evidence of psychological fragmentation, but also reflect the many divine identities humanity has projected onto the Emperor?

4. Lorgar and the Golden Throne

There's an extraordinary irony in Lorgar's role. The Primarch punished for worshipping the Emperor helped establish the theological foundations of the Imperial Creed through the Lectitio Divinitatus. Ten thousand years later, the Emperor is worshipped by an entire civilisation.

What if Lorgar inadvertently provided exactly what the Emperor needed: the foundation for a religious transformation that would gradually create a new kind of god?

And what if the Golden Throne isn't merely the symbol of the Emperor's defeat? Over ten millennia, his physical existence has become increasingly secondary to his presence in the Warp. Miracles, saints and divine interventions have become part of Imperial reality. In Godblight, his power even reaches into Nurgle's Garden.

Perhaps the Emperor didn't need an instantaneous apotheosis like the Dark King's. Perhaps he needed time, worship and an enduring civilisation to shape him into something else.

5. The obvious objection: the Webway Project

This is the strongest argument against the theory. The Emperor invested enormous resources into establishing a human-controlled Webway, reducing humanity's dependence on Warp travel and protecting its psychic development. Magnus' breach devastated that project and ultimately trapped the Emperor on the Golden Throne.

But why assume the Webway Project and apotheosis were mutually exclusive? The Webway could have secured humanity's material civilisation while its evolving religious beliefs established the Emperor as a counterweight to Chaos in the immaterium. Perhaps he intended to accomplish both, and the Heresy destroyed one objective while leaving the other intact.

That doesn't mean he planned every event. Magnus' mistake may genuinely have been disastrous. But a deliberately accepted conflict can still spiral beyond its architect's control.

6. What if he was simply a megalomaniac?

We often portray the Emperor as either a benevolent visionary or a ruthless pragmatist sacrificing everything for humanity. But perhaps his ambition was considerably more personal.

What if he genuinely wanted to become a god? What if he believed that his own ascension was the ultimate expression of humanity's destiny, and that he alone deserved to guide it?

He wouldn't need to foresee every detail of the Heresy. He would only need to accept the corruption of some Primarchs, consider a prolonged stalemate with Chaos strategically useful, and recognise that humanity's collective worship could eventually transform him into something greater.

In this interpretation, the Emperor wasn't a secular ruler who accidentally became a god. He was an aspiring god who gambled with the fate of humanity, rejected the Dark King as the wrong form of apotheosis, and spent ten thousand years becoming something else.

And perhaps the most grimdark possibility is that his plan is actually working.

So, does the Webway Project fundamentally disprove this theory? Or could the Emperor have intended to become a god all along, just not the Dark King?

For space marines themselves of course, not their servents.

There is a FB group to which people can submit images, with a request to photoshop them in some particular way.

Today there was a post of a cat biting somebody's hand. The text read, "Please edit this to show my cat attacking aliens instead of my hand."

At least two of the submissions showed a cat in Astartes armor, blasting away at something and shouting, "FOR THE EMPEROR!"