IMHO I think that they say that like we say "God help me" or ask whatever deity we wish to worship and ask for guidance and salvation and safety in general. They may believe that if they are saved from a particular instance that they were saved by the emperor like we would say we were saved by God. The Imperium, on the whole, view the Emperor as a god or god-like figure.

 

The Imperium, on the whole, view the Emperor as a god or god-like figure.

I, worship the Emperor as a god-like figure!

Seriously, people are always looking for an answer to a question that has no answer. They'll take any excuse to explain something supernatural or weird, and the Emperor as a god seems as good as any.

(If this dosn't make sense, destroy my post)

 

In game, yes he does. The Sisters of Battle have Acts of Faith that they can test for and use to bolster themselves. Fluff-wise these are prayers to the Emperor. In game one of them, Spirit of the Martyr, gives the unit an invulnerable save equal to its armor save. So, I guess the emperor protects zealots in form fitting power armor but doesn't care about anyone else.

 

In game, yes he does. The Sisters of Battle have Acts of Faith that they can test for and use to bolster themselves. Fluff-wise these are prayers to the Emperor. In game one of them, Spirit of the Martyr, gives the unit an invulnerable save equal to its armor save. So, I guess the emperor protects zealots with tits in form fitting power armor but doesn't care about anyone else.

Fixed it for ya. :grin:

Seriously, I'm not kidding, you have to be some ultra-badass guy like Gaunt to attract the attention of the Emperor as a male. Hell, even his sons, the Space Marines can't even light a cigarette with their faith, and then there you have some crazy nuns with guns who can summon a shield of WTF that protects them even from the Demolisher Cannons of DOOM. And I don't remember him minding the existence of the Brides of the Emperor either...

 

in one of the early HH books,

One of the characters uses psychic powers to defeat a beastie, however it is unclear if they are protected by the emporer or just a psychic beastie killing machine.

John

 

i suppose its just a comparison to real life in that sense sort of in the same notion of 'is there really a god' the only difference is that the emperor is an actual person. but if u think of it in historys sense how many times has a story been told and passed down so that the story changes and distorts over time. i dont know how clear it is but just a few things to think about.


sorry guys if u dont agree with my thoughts here

 

On some level, I believe the Emperor DOES protect, but with billions of humans in the galaxy, his protection is spread QUITE thinly. Only if the need is truly great will the emperor interceed, and that might be to only deflect a bullet (6+ invuln save that some armies get)...

As for the Sisters, I believe it's a mix of a tiny bit of the Emperor's power and a BIG helping of their own faith/psychic abilities. Otherwise, why not call them "Emperor Points" instead of Faith Points? :wink:

 

I think that over time he became a god through people worsippg him. I mean he was the most powerful human in history and he defeated horus. So you could say that they latched onto him because they needed something to believe in after all that happened.

 

The emperor is in fact a star god so in a way yes dependent if you feel that the star gods are actually gods or if you feel they are just another xenos form. GW have been talking about bringing the emperor back in full star god form which would be intresting. In terms of protection mosy units which have the "emperors protection" are either really zealous i.e the sisters of battle whose faith can literally deflect bullets lol or physkers who just use physchic powers!

War is simply the galaxys hygene>>

Fulgrim wears make-up. Roboute Drinks wine. Jagahti runs Tut tut what pansys!!!

 

Yes. Defnitely. (IMO ) even if he doesn't protect himself, the amount of faith in him that has given men and women courage to fight on is tremendous, even if he doesn't actually protect people, as such, but if there is someone you can have faith in, a reason for hope, it's definitely an advantage.

 

OK, thanks. As I said I've never understood if the the Emperor is a god or whatever, or if the Imperium is just diluting itself, and the Emperor is actually GW poking fun at religion. I forgot about the Sisters of Battle's faith points, so I guess that is really my answer.

 

Isn't the main point of the Emporer (fluffwise) the psychic beacon he projects that allows astropaths to guide spaceships through the warp?

If this was lost, then Man would lose interstellar space travel. So yeah, the emporer does protect and the Imperium is dependent on him (or Him).

 

Man wouldn't lose interstellar space travel, that is given to them via technology, but if the Astropath were to go out, the Imperium would just lose it's way of navigating through the warp and so on and thus space travel would become incredibly dangerous. The Astropath is not the Emperor's main purpose, just one of his many functions.

 

since its warhammer 40k, people's belief in min as a god, could also give him the powers of a god,

 

It may be irrelevant but I'd say the Emperor is -not- a god so it is unreasonable/irrational for him to have such a god-like power though if you think about him as an inspirational figure and his inspiration being a beneficial factor then you could say he inspires people to better defent themselves which could in a round about way be him protecting?

 

remember that in the fluff thoughts and beleifs manifest in the warp and take form, perhaps over 10 millenia somthing similar has happened, ie that sentinents 'create' their own gods within the warp similar to how the chaos powers came about

 

again, I relate it to reality. People assume God is all powerful, but that's only because they worship him as a deity. Often, people will imbue their chosen deity with certain abilities to make them seem even more worthy of such a position. The Emperor is in no way a god at all, he is just viewed as a deity by the society over which he rules.

 

Personally I believe there are two entities; The Emperor and the God-Emperor.

The Emperor is the physical remains of the great warlord who conquered the galaxy, and by his sheer force of will and psychic might is powering the Astronomican and keeping the Imperial Webway gate sealed.

The God-Emperor on the other hand is a god. A warp entity formed by the untold trillions of humans who worship it. It is a ruthless and tyrannical god, and is so because that is the environment from which it was born. The Ecclesiarchy dictate and regulate the Imperial Cult and thus the worship of Trillions across the galaxy, thus the God-Emperor acts just how the Ecclesiarchy wants it to act. It is this entity, the God-Emperor, who 'rewards' and 'protects' some of its followers via divine intervention, (the Imperial Saints for example), not the smouldering corpse upon the Golden Throne.

The two may or may not be linked...

Thats just my thoughts anyway

 

in fluff terms the emperor is basically an alpha plus psyker an my take is that combined with the astromnomicon he is able to extend a portion psychic capability within its range, basically creating a 'pool' in which humans are able to tap into occasionally ie the 'miricles' and 'saints', it would be interesting to see if the sisters of battle were able to use thier 'acts of faith' outside the astronomicons range.

 

In fluff, he does protect. In the Gaunt's Ghosts novels, especially the Saint series, Gaunt seems to be guided by a higher power. There are several other novels where, while not stated out right, it is hinted that the Emperor has taken a hand and protected his faithful.

 

Why is their being women a factor, apart from the terms of the Decree Passive? The vast majority of Space Marines, his "sons", don't regard him as a god, but instead, the greatest man who ever lived. The unfaithful are hardly likely to receive the blessings of faith, are they? And those that do, such as the Black Templars, get their rewards - visions from the Emperor marking out Emperor's Champions, and (in the Armageddon codex, though I don't know about Codex: BT) the ability to get a 6+ ward save instead of a cover save, and so on.

In contrast to the Astartes, the direct representatives of the Ecclesiarchy - yes, it's understandable that these get those blessings, isn't it? It is the Emperor's fault that the soldiers under arms most devoted to him religiously are forbidden from being "men under arms"?

Faith, in 40k, manifests its own rewards. The only thing that changes with different super-powerful warp deities is the type thereof.

 

I know this'll be seen as heresy, but what better place? Looking back over the history of the game as well as some of the 40k novels I've come to the conclusion that the Emperor is a Chaos god. Just as Slaanesh was created by the combined decadence of the Eldar, the Emperor has been awakemed to godhood by millenia of human worship and devotion.
In game terms, early incanations of the Chaos army lists required players to field squads in their god's sacred number:
Slaanesh: 6
Nurgle: 7
Khorne: 8
Tzeentch: 9
IG/SM: 10
Coinicidence? I think not!

 

Of course it isn't!

Though I prefer the theory that His number is 5. It's a count-down, see, with Slaanesh being 6, and the Star Child, the God of Order, to be 5. After all, a fist has 5 fingers...and you OBEY the fist. Who, then, will eventually be 4?

 

the God of Order

Can I ask your reasoning behind why he would be a God of Order?

 

I've been believing the same thing about him that's he just a Chaos God on the rise. I mean there were the early stories of the 12 powerful shamans who became The Emperor, but once he was broken during the fight with Horus and placed in the Golden Throne they said he part of the Immaterium also. I mean he's only reason the beacon works that allows ships to travel over large areas of space. So he has to exist. I think like with the Eldar one day he's going to have a birthcry, Terra is going to get swallowed and thus will begin the reign of the Emperor/God/whatever.


Also I agree what's the nuns getting all the love. I mean what about the Inquisitors? Hell even Commissars? Ok maybe these two are more faithful to power and dishing out pain, but still.

 

Per Saint Sabbat, she received strength and speed beyond human capability from the Old Man.

Though I guess this reinforces Empy likes Tits theory.

 

edit: double-post. Oops.

 

Counting Imperial Saints in the most complete list that I could find (on Lexicanum), male saints predominate heavily. There were 13 male saints and 10 females - including the 6 Sisters of Battle founders, who were sort of a lumped-in group and didn't crop up at random like the rest - and 22 more unlabeled (which I hazard at a 12/10 split, in male favor). As a whole, then, given the available resources, I am inclined to believe that the Emperor doesn't care which gender he picks as the instrument of His will. And also, who was the most famous of all saints? The one that made Sabbat look like a backwater girl in a dimly lit corner of the galaxy? Ah yes, Sebastian Thor.

Child: It's just a theory that I was impressed enough with the first time that I saw, that I was convinced. I'm trying to find the document somewhere around the web and to get permission to post it from the original author, but it looks like it was (possibly) almost entirely lost when the BL forums went down.

 

Child: It's just a theory that I was impressed enough with the first time that I saw, that I was convinced. I'm trying to find the document somewhere around the web and to get permission to post it from the original author, but it looks like it was (possibly) almost entirely lost when the BL forums went down.

I wasn't so much questioning the theory, rather just the idea that he would be a god of 'order'?

I think there's still a good case for the Emperor not being a god of 'Order', but a god of 'Obedience and Ignorance'. Ignorance as a virture, blind obedience, dedication to duty no matter what...this is almost the definition of the loyal Astartes, the Arbites, the Ministorum, the Custodians.

Worshipping the Emperor isn't about love or devotion; it's about doing as you're told and not questioning it.

That, as a core 'concept', is very distinct from the Chaos Gods, but it's not exactly order, 'O'rder, perhaps, but order vs chaos...nah. It's all still chaos.

It also begs the question is order as a concept even possible in the warp?

By my personal theory is that the God-Emperor (a seperate entity to the Emperor) has been created in the warp by 10,000 years of being worshipped by Trillions. This worship is dictated by the Ecclesiarchy, so the God-Emperor is an entity which is exactly how the Ecclesiarchy percieve the real Emperor and worship him. In this sense the God-Emperor is another warp entity, a bleak and terrible god that represents Obedience and Ignorance, and does exactly what the Ecclesiarchy (unconsciously) tells it to do. In my view the God-Emperor is a warp entity and thus born of Chaos, and cannot resemble Order.