Emperor of Mankind (Warhammer 40,000)
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The Emperor of Mankind is a fictional character from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. In that universe, he is the leader of the Imperium, the largest human organisation of the time.
Early history
According to some canon works by White Dwarf, this is how the man to be called Emperor came to be. In the beginning, man was aware of the warp and lived in co-existence with it. There were certain gifted individuals who could communicate with it and use it for many purposes. These men were the healers of tribes and spiritual leaders. They had many gifts including the ability to, after death, flow through the warp seamlessly and return as a new person. But a time came as man gained more knowledge their secret desires began to grow and began their corruption. The spiritual leaders began to notice the changes as their gift diminished and re-incarnation became harder and called a great council. It was decided that not one of them could stop this but perhaps together they could. At this council they would all take their lives in the hopes and intentions of returning as one man. Almost a year later, a child was born. The original name of the Emperor is not known, although there are some references in canon that he was born approximately 8,000 BC in central Anatolia (Priestley and Ansell, 1990; Abnett, 2006). He grew up in an isolated and meagre area, and it was rumoured that he had the power to stop his own aging and numerous other psychic abilities. After many years, as the Emperor became more wise and focused, he intuitively knew of the corruption of mankind's behaviour and set out to correct it. He always remained in the background, facilitating some of mankind’s most important changes and generally guiding and protecting humanity through its evolution.The first mention of the Emperor in Imperial records is when he conquered Terra after the Age of Strife (sometime in the 29th Millennium). The Emperor's use of genetically engineered warriors enabled him to reunite the people of Earth and to set his sights on the stars. With the assistance of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars the Emperor created the first Space Marines and fleets of interstellar ships to carry his armies to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The Emperor also created the Primarchs from whom the Space Marines' gene-seed was developed, but an event of unknown cause scattered the Primarchs across the galaxy. It is unknown if this scattering was caused by the Emperor; who wanted his children to develop by themselves, by the forces of Chaos; seeking to undo the Emperor's work, or by the Primarchs themselves. (It is now known that the event that scattered the Primarchs across the Galaxy was caused by the Chaos powers, and event witnessed by both the Emperor and Horus)
The Great Crusade
The Emperor had a grand vision: to reunite the elements of humanity who had been scattered across the galaxy and isolated from each other during the Age of Strife. In the initial years of the Great Crusade, the Emperor was at the forefront of the fighting, leading his genetically-engineered soldiers into battle. As more worlds came under the control of the fledgling Imperium of Mankind, the Emperor rediscovered the lost Primarchs, whose genetic template was used to stabilise the creation process of the Space Marines.As time passed, the Emperor returned to Earth, to his underground laboratories to work on projects unknown, leaving his trusted 'sons', the Primarchs, in control of the Crusade. The foremost of these, and the Warmaster of the Imperium, was Horus, the first to be rediscovered by the Emperor.
The Horus Heresy
The Great Crusade came to an end with the events of the Horus Heresy, when Horus turned on the Emperor. Under Horus's leadership, nine Space Marine Legions and innumerable Imperial Army regiments turned to Chaos and started a galactic civil war.Even as Horus's armies laid siege to Earth, the Emperor still believed that Horus could be redeemed, and he maintained this belief even as he faced Horus in single combat. However, The Emperor had underestimated the power that Horus had gained from the Chaos gods. This, coupled with his unwillingess to hurt the man who had once been his closest son, meant that the Emperor suffered grievous injuries in the battle. As Horus stood over the Emperor's shattered body, a Space Marine in Terminator armor entered the room and Horus flayed him alive with a single look. The Terminator's sacrifice convinced the Emperor how far fallen Horus had gone into the clutches of Chaos, and he mustered a psychic attack of unparalleled power against Horus. For a split second, the Emperor sensed the return of his son's sanity as the last vestiges of Chaos were wiped away from his mind before Horus was no more, his soul utterly destroyed.
Imperial Fists primarch Rogal Dorn found the Emperor and took him back to Terra where he recieved instructions on how to construct the Golden Throne (the work to be done by the Adeptus Mechanicus) where the Emperor rests to this day.
For more information on the clash between the Emperor and Horus see Horus's perspective article
Present day
The Emperor's broken body was discovered by Rogal Dorn who, following the Emperor's instructions, oversaw the building of the Golden Throne, an arcane device of technomagic, to sustain his spirit. The Emperor has remained in the Golden Throne since his 'ascension' to this day, neither fully living nor dead. The Golden Throne is a complex life support device located in the Imperial Palace. The Golden Throne itself lies in the Sanctum Imperialis, which is guarded by the Emperor's Custodian Guard, also known as the Adeptus Custodes. The Emperor's physical form is preserved and his life functions are carried out by carefully maintained machinery.The Golden Throne is also connected to a massive Warp beacon known as the Astronomican that generates the system of signals making faster than light travel in the Imperium possible by providing a beacon with which astropaths are able to navigate. The Emperor himself generates this signal, also known as the Ray of Hope or the Golden Path, but much of the power behind it is supplied by a "chorus" of ten thousand human psykers. The life force of the psykers is consumed within several months (Priestley, 1998), which forces replacements being constantly brought to Terra on the infamous Black Ships of the Inquisition.
Religious aspects
The Emperor, commonly known as "The Immortal God Emperor of Mankind", is worshipped as an omni-present deity by most of the denizens of the Imperium. Belief and worship is taught and upheld by the Imperium, and disobedience is almost universally punished by death. Imperial citizens believe that the Emperor guides and watches over them, protecting them from the greater horrors and evils of the Immaterium. The most notable exception to this worship are the Space Marines, who know the Emperor's origin more clearly and venerate him as a supreme warrior and leader, but generally do not consider him a god in the same sense that the average Imperial citizen does, though there are chapters that do worship him as a god. While there are rumours that the Emperor is long-dead and the Golden Throne is nothing but an empty shell of machinery to fool the countless billions, these are instantly dismissed as heresy by the Inquisition. It is known that astropaths need to be specially bound to the Emperor's spirit in order to have the power to communicate across interstellar space, so it is argued that if astropaths still exist, so must the Emperor.It is implied in the opening story text of the Inquisitor rulebook that the Golden Throne was originally only a temporary measure intended to allow the Emperor to recover from his wounds, but that elements of the Inquisition and the newly formed High Lords of Terra conspired to keep him locked inside the throne, supposedly feeling that the Emperor's return so soon after the Horus Heresy would destabilize the Imperium and lead to another civil war, which the Imperium could not survive. They also are believed to fear any possible changes to the Emperor's psyche and powers may have taken place as a result of having his body place in stasis and his psychic essence separated from it. And finally a belief held by those who know the true origins of the Emperor from Anatolia believe that he must be allowed to fully die in order to be reborn again. Interestingly the Chaos god Tzeentch one of the most knowledgable creatures within the Galaxy is concerned what will occur if the Emperor dies.
Yet even after this disturbing facets remain, The Golden Throne was designed to give the Emperor time enough to heal. Rumors abound that the Emperor walks among his people. On countless worlds he is worshiped as a God: In a universe where all Gods are only as real as we believe them to be, drawing strength from worship. It is highly posible that the Emperor is truely in two places at once, as the man who once was the Warior-Lord of the Space Marines, and yet still seated as the Half-Death God of the Imperium.
References
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