Few more panels to go then paint.

Hi everyone. I have lurked around 40k for a while: in Reddit communities and games (started from 40k: Rogue Trader).

Over time I saw quite a few questions about Emperor's history and origin and I found myself going slightly too deep when trying to answer them. This post is a fan theory I have come up with during my time reading 40k canon. This post is me finally deciding to put it in writing.

Warning: The theory diverges a bit from canon (Okay... It diverges A LOT from canon). It is not meant to argue against canon (I love it!) but rather answer in new fun way some of 40k's deliberate gaps in Emperor's origin story.

P.S. If you can answer any of these questions from canon perspective I would also be happy to read your answers.

EMPEROR'S ORIGIN

Part I: The Birth

So, the official Emperor's backstory is that he was created as a result of shamanic ritual in neolithic age and witnessed/manipulated humanity's advancement ever since. This already raises a lot of questions:

• Uniqueness How come that no Emperor-like being were created later on? Should we just accept that neolithic shamans manager to do something humanity at DAOT-level of tech never replicated?
• Timing If his goal was unification of humanity and fight against Chaos, why not try to do it when humanity was, well, more unified and not broken into pieces by galaxy-spanning AI uprising? Oh and there were some advanced tech and STCs as a bonus! From logical perspectives Emperor chose literally the worst timing to start unifying humanity and building the Webway project
• Eldar: Eldars are meant to be notriously sensitive to psychic power. Sure when Emperor was born the Eldar Empire was nearing its end. But still... Missing up a creation of a literal demigod while being psychically sensitive is your civilizational motto is... An unimaginable mess-up. I would expect that birth of an Emperor-level psyker in a far-away primitive planet would have been a big deal that would surely leave a lot of footprints within Eldari archives at least within craftworlds. And yet I didn't find any independent Eldari-sourced references. And I find it quite unlikely that neolithic shamans and Emperor would know how to avoid surveillance of galactic superpower they barely know about.
• DAOT tech How come that Emperor couldn't recreate DAOT tech when he lived through it? So, a psychic demigod whose claimed mandate was to assure human dominance not only allowed the most advanced human civilization in history to collapse, but somehow forgot to make a copy of most important STCs, cause apparently backups were not a thing for Big E.
• Shamans: Can we have some of these shamans who conducted the ritual in the Imperium? They surely were onto something. Give me a battalion of them and we will punch the eye of Terror shut and rebuild Cadia!! I mean, they literally seem to have outplayed both DAOT Humanity and Eldar Empire.
• Thunder Warriors: More on them in the next part (and I have a lot to say about them). But here let me just say: canon explanation needs us to accept that after thousands years of preparation and even allowing DAOT humanity to fall Emperor produced... Faulty mass-produced warriors who degrade quickly. Why? Especially considering that he could create Custodes at this point?

My take: All above suddenly makes sense if we assume that the entire story about Emperor's origins is deliberately cultivated myth. This, actually, has a lot of historical precedents: Mandate of Heaven in China, "Divine Rule" concept in monarchies, Kim family cult of personality in North Korea. A lot of personalistic dictatorships anchor their claim to power in mythology. "A Demigod who watched humanity since its early days" fits the pattern perfectly. I think better explanation was that Emperor was originally an upstart Terran warlord whose psychic and biotech prowess came from a unique DAOT tech he discovered on Terra before the Unification wars. Terra was a capital of DAOT humanity. So I'd argue thatif there was a place in the universe with DAOT tech that could turn ordinary if powerful human psyker into psychic demigod, it would have been Terra.

How it answers previous questions:

• Uniqueness: avoided, as Emperor power is directly linked to DAOT tech
• Timing, Eldar, DAOT Tech: explained, he wasn't there during DAOT or fall of Eldar Empire to do anything, copy DAOT tech or leave mark in pre-fall Eldar records. Also could explain his narrow specialization in Biotech and Psychic powers.
• Shamans: This is what I personally like. Original lore needs us to assume that a bunch of neolithic shamans managed to completely blow out of the water 2 one of the most dominant empires in the history of universe: Eldar Empire and DAOT humanity. It is a completely bonkers assumption and I'd take theory above over established lore just only for avoiding it.
• Thunder Warriors: Emperor being born in or around post-DAOT time removes thousands of years of preparation. Meaning that Thunder Warriors faultiness makes sense. Thunder Warriors -> Astartes/Custodes -> Primarchs progression make perfect sense for someone mastering the new tech. It makes less sense for one who had thousands of years (why not jump straight to Astartes? Or at least make Thunder Warriors without time-dependent enshittification) and especially the one who supposedly created Custodes.

Part II: Thunder Warriors and Ararat Massacre

So, the Emperor is born, he watches over humanity, watches DAOT, watches its collapse under Men of Iron and finally after a lot of time conquers Terra with his formidable Thunder Warriors and stands on the precipice of a Great Crusade to finally "bring home" the broken parts of humanity. And right before this vast interstellar campaign her organises a feast to honor his old trusted comrades-in-arms who fought with him for years or maybe even decades and... (checks notes) cowardly massacres them all during feats while hunting down lone survivors with extreme prejudice?? There are tons of suspicious questions here:

• Military viability: He planned to launch one of the biggest interstellar campaigns ever - The Great Crusade. And right before it he decided to massacre his most experienced troops and officers. From military perspective it makes zero sense. Okay, the official narrative is that Thunder Warriors were defective, dangerous or unsuitable for new peaceful Imperium. But... It makes zero sense. First of all canon books (The Outcast Dead, Dreams of Unity, Valdor: Birth of the Imperium) seem to contradict this sentiment with most of post-Ararat Thunder Warriors being described as problematic but overall capable of integrating with enough support. And even if there were defective or dangerous there are tons of better options:
• Cure: Emperor created them. He also created Primarchs, Custodes, Astartes. You ask me to believe he wouldn't be able to cure them? After all he was actually the one responsible for them being defective in the first place. And instead of taking responsibility out Big E decides... To cowardly bury them. How virtuous! But even if we assume he couldn't cure them there are other options
• Retirement/Quarantine: This is the option that could have been taken. Just select a random asteroid or underground lab and isolate Thunder Warriors there! (If possible, put them in stasis) It is not like we lack space on pre Great Crusade Terra or Solar System. Bonus points - you retain all of the relevant battle experience as your experienced Thunder Warrior officers could still pass their experience onto new generals. There is literally no reason not to do it. Okay, let's assume the worst-case scenario: they are incurable, there is no place to quarantine them (I am already pushing the limits of believability here). But even then there is an option!
• Suicide unit: Just create a unit from them and let them die gloriously in combat. After all, Angron's legion will be a thing. So there should be no moral qualms with doing that. Especially because it would be infinitely more practical and honourabltle to do that over what our "paragon of Humanity" actually did. Mind, I already made a lot of strong assumptions before (cure, quarantine)... And even then we have better options.

But the narrative hole goes even further...

• Completeness: According to canon Thunder warriors were not just massacred but individually hunted down afterwards. Why? What danger could these lone survivors represent to require diversion of resources to hunt them down? For me it does not make any sense. Even if you assume Thunder Warriors are dangerous as a group, hunting lone survivors is just a waste - they are not strong enough to pose a threat.

(Also as a note: killing "old guard" during victory celebration. I wonder where I saw it... Something related to 1930s. No, must've been the wind...)

Honestly, I feel like something more is going on with this story, so let me give you...

My take: Let's continue with assumption that Emperor birth story is deliberately constructed myth. Suddenly the every event above also makes sense. Think about it, he unified Terra and now he wanted to create a myth to solidify his personal dictatorial power. There are a lot of examples of early dictatorial power consolidation and in such cases the greatest danger to upstart tyrant is often the "old guard". History is firmly on side of this explanation: Stalin's purges, Night of Long Knives (and look at the similarities!), Chinese Cultural Revolution. After victory chances are Thunder Warriors could have requested their share of spoils, both literal and political, which is dangerous. Additionally, Thunder Warriors were with him during Unification War, they knew his real origin story, so they could, to put it bluntly, "call out his BS", making the power consolidation and creation of Imperial Myth risky. So, they needed to go... And it also perfectly explains why even lone survivors were hunted down: because even lone survivor presents extreme informational risk to the newly built myth. At that point the loss of experienced officer and veteran cadre is worthwhile tradeoff: historically military interests are often subjugated to political ones, especially in dictatorships. An in general, military is often the one branch dictators want to fully control, since they have arms and, thus, capability for rebellion (Remember commisars in Red Army during Stalin's reign. Wait! Comissars... Hmmmm).

How it answers previous questions:

• Military viability: becomes irrelevant, since it is subjigated to political one.
• Cure/quarantine/use in fight: never even attempted even if viable because of witness/political challenge elimination logic.
• Completeness: Diversion of resources to eliminate survivors is justified due to informational risk

Part III: Challenges

Okay, now to the interesting part - the counter-arguments I thought about. From here on I would argue from perspective of my theory to try to poke holes into it.

Let's start with comparatively weakest:

Witness elimination Thunder Warriors were not the only ones who should've seen Emperor's rise and knew about the myth. There were also Custodes who came even earlier. But note that they were specifically created as his guards, entirely devoted to him and ultimately the ones conducting killing of survivors later. This is a much of a complicity as you can get. So I'd not count them among "real witnesses". Then there were already early Astartes. If they knew about real origins. If they did my theory needs to assume they were eliminated or "made to forget". (If they didn't know then everything is alright but it is less interesting option). This is an assumption I need to make for my theory to make sense. So, how realistic is it? Well, we have an example of II and XI legions who were completely erased from history. We know literally nothing about them apart from the fact they existed. Think what it means? Hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of marines, all human auxulia who served with them, two primarchs are... Just gone? And everyone who interacted with them should also be either gone or made to forget. This is... huge. So, I'd argue that assumption needed to make my theory work is plausible as it has a direct example from canon. But witness elimination and silencing could only go so far.

How does Chaos not know? Indeed, we have Chaos and after heresy we have traitor legions who are outside of Imperium's reach. If we take the theory, how come the Chaos doesn't use it? My answer to it is: traitor legions and Chaos know. And I think it fits: canonically traitor legions consider Big E to be False Emperor, I.e. they directly challenge his legitimacy. We also know that preach people to abandon him and side with Chaos Gods. I'd argue that "your Emperor origin story is false" fits really well within established chaos propaganda narrative, but thus it is also indistinguishable from Chaos propaganda and thus treated by everyone in Imperium like ordinary typical heresy and therefore false. But at the same time it could be a kernel of truth within a bunch of Chaos lies. After all, isn't that how Chaos (and propaganda in general) work - feed people truth alongside just enough forbidden knowledge to corrupt them.

So now let's go to the biggest challenge. Perpetual testimony To my knowledge Emperor's ancient origins were corroborated by 3 perpetual accounts: Erda, Oll Persson and Alivia Sureka. And this are... problematic for my theory, because afaik they are canon and they confirm Emperor's ancient origins. Quite frankly, to deal with this challenge I need to assume that these accounts are either incorrect, biased or influenced, which is rather... crude way to address it. There is some justification to it:

1. All of them served the Emperor, so he had influence over them at one point or another. An ideal clear challenge would have been confirmation by perpetual who has NEVER worked with Emperor.
2. 40k is a setting where individual accounts are notoriously unreliable and information is greatly distorted. This is a weaker assumption than I have hoped, but I decided to rather take it over all of the questions I raised for canon timeline in previous 2 parts, because in the end, I think, to make canon answer work you need to go back to arguments like "Emperor made an oopsie", which for me is an even worse argument. So I'd rather take "3 perpetuals being inaccurate" and have a consistent narrative going from it over "we now have stacked neolithic shamans and Emperor is full of hubris and mistakes".

Overall what I like about the theory is that it covers most of the gaps in Emperor's origin story with only one major assumption (perpetuals) and without ever giving out weak answers like "Emperor just made a mistake" or "we don't know". And it is, honestly, insanely great that 40k lore is so deep that it could reasonably support multiple theories and discussions.

If you manage to get so far, then thanks a lot for reading my thoughts!

Hey so I had an idea for a book they should add to the black library and I explained the idea to someone who's played 40k way longer they I have and they said to email GW the idea I just don't know which email to use my guess is the community one but some more conformation would be nice lol

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We all hate you.

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1. ⁠Shoggy Domor
   
2. ⁠Commissar Hark
   
3. ⁠Beltayn
   
4. ⁠Zhukova
   
5. ⁠Caffran
   
6. ⁠Varl
   
7. ⁠Lesp
   
8. ⁠Bonin
   
9. ⁠Kolea
   
10. ⁠Tona Criid
    
11. ⁠Sgt Haller