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He's a god! No, he's a psychic human! No, he's the mortal vessel for a space baby! No, he's the expression of a cynical view of religion expressed through the aesthetics of Romanticism and Protestant anticlericalism!

Stop! You're all right!

In this episode we take a look at the big man in the big chair, the Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40,000!

Comments

Anonymous

Great episode! At one point you say something along the lines of "He's a god -false", implying that he's not a god while also saying that there are gods in the setting. Which made me wonder: what is a god anyway? How about a being ten thousandfold more powerful than any other person, who forged society and is the maintainer of the thing that provides stability and prosperity to all of society? What is the definition of a god that we're working from?

monsterman

I would say that the Emperor in 30K doesn't meet the setting's (very rough) definition of a god, which I think implies a being that exists primarily outside of material space. So the Emperor at the time the Imperial Truth was being promulgated was not a god, but, like, Khorne is definitely a god.

Luke Slater

During the Illuminati and the Sensei period - although the specifics changed hard even between Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned - the overall theme seemed to be 'a being of near-infinite compassion, wisdom and power set out to save humanity and this absolute crapsack of a grimdark hellscape where millions die each day to prevent his apotheosis and his self-styled followers grind up his saviour offspring to make munitions was the best he could do.' Latterly, they're definitely going for a more basic feel of 'the Emperor... what an arsehole.'

monsterman

I haven't kept up with the modern stuff much, but some of it, like Guilliman's whole bit, does seem to suggest that the Imperium is a tragedy created with more-or-less good intentions.