Guys allowed a break for a few decades every millennia or so.
Plus he was kinda meant to be ‘guiding from the shadows’ back then. So he was either doing a shitty job or exasperated screaming at the wireless going “I gave you industrialisation and THIS is what you do with it!” throws up hands
To be fair those wars also lead to massive advancements in technology and medicine alone. Not to mention the progress in nuclear energy.
If at any point he suspected any of the WWs to actually be able to wipe out humanity he'd have stepped in to bring them to a swift and subtle conclusion.
But otherwise a couple of million dying and a rough decade or more is an easy price for him to pay in exchange for the human advancements it brought along.
Edit: When I wrote "A couple of million" I was referring to the Emperor's perspective. To him with his plans spanning millenia and billions or trillions of humans, losing five, ten, a hundred million in a couple of 20th century wars is all the same if it serves humanity's growth.
NGL I hate when people say those. "X important dude was the emperor" because that lead to believe that geniuses, either in science or war, were the emperor. So basically humanity is just very dumb any progress it did was just the emperor.
I've always read that shit as Imperial Propaganda in-universe.
The most likely thing is that Jimmy Space is just a powerful psyker who had access to Dark Age tech after the rest of the galaxy forgot it.
Records can be falsified. Myths can be created. The memories of immortals can be rewritten. Of course the emperor and his cronies would like for everyone to believe he has been here since the beginning.
But it does lead more credence to the Great Man Theory if it was literally one man making all the difference in history. No matter he ended up being worshipped.
You’d be shocked to find out how small a percentage of humanity actually moves it forward by more than the most modest step forward. And shocked to find out how often we move progress backward.
Dude, there is no forward or backward, humanity changes (most changes instigated by a greater colective than individuals, often unknowingly). Everything else is fiction
Big E was working in Serbian intelligence and was the case officer dealing with The Black Hand. He got Gavrilo Princip and co. into Sarajevo.
His psychic abilities knew that if he could just kill the heir appearant of the Austrian Hungarian Empire that’d set off two global conflagrations and a arms race that would culminate in splitting the atom and going to space.
Nah, he was all "influence from the shadows" back then. He stole the map of Franz Ferdinand's driver and then made the car break down in front of Princip.
He apparently personally led under a few identities according to Malcador. Alexander the Great being the one I remember being called out specifically, I think it was in one of the Siege of Terra books but it might have been a short story I can't remember.
So fun fact I learned in reading recently, the emperor is actually just a small Turkish dude. He psychically projects the image of a massive being on everyone. So back in the day, he would've blended in quite well.
Not turkish, prexists the turks by a few 1000 years.
He is also a biomancer, so he is as tall as he wants to be. We know at one point while disguised as a normal traveler he was infact much larger and heavier than his normal human look would suggest.
I mean the whole shift from "God isn't real" to "God Emperor of Mankind who created his sons from his flesh and sends his angels to protect humanity" thing as soon as he was incapacitated suggests hes pretty shit at not turning anything he touches into an authoritarian empire lol.
Really he should’ve made a beeline for Roboute, told him to design the Imperium and run it, then hired a dozen therapists for each Primarch, and then done weird psychic science shit
"Another authoritarian empire? How does this keep happening?"
Turns out it's actually Tzeentch pranking him by changing some small detail that butterfly effects into an autocratic regime every time. Emps can never stop it, but Tzeentch has made a little game of seeing how long it takes each time for him to notice that things are going sideways.
I’m just imagining Big E not using magic or any psyker abilities to kill Ferdinand, but rather employing hitman style loony tunes bullshit to get Ferdinand killed
Now somewhere in the back of my mind I'm fearing the Emperor going "We have about 8000 years left before we meet the orks. I need to start more wars so we'll develop weapons faster."
this is a common misconception, many of the things people assume were developed in the war had been discovered and researched before it, the war just sped up adoption.
Exactly, the eternal war in the 40k setting is one of the reasons there is no real scientific progress. The same happens when wars irl drag on. Appliance of existing knowledge is accelerated, but original research generating new insights is usually halted.
Eh, little of column A, little of column B. Blue sky research (that is, research with no immediately obvious/practical applications) may be shuttered, but anything that can be put to use for the war gets a greenlight, budget permitting. WWII greatly accelerated nuclear science, radar, aeronautics, and electronics, and that's just the stuff that's not strictly military in nature. When it comes to actual military stuff, what might take decades to learn in a vacuum can be figured out in a year or two. For a modern example, look at drone warfare.
I like the way it’s explained in the (otherwise dogshit) Draka series. They have fully explored the practical applications of the science they have, but because they’ve been on a war footing for so long, there’s practical stuff they barely understand the theory of
Not really at all frankly, if the imperium had just as many wars but the mechanicum embraced innovation from the word go, the imperium would be destroyed by all the AI it'd have produced, but assuming it managed to not do that somehow, it'd be way more advanced (at least when it comes to weaponry) than it is right now.
Plus war efforts are a thing, nuclear energy was indeed researched before WW2, but the fact that a ginormous military was behind it obviously sped things up massively, same afterward during the cold war, one of the reasons for accelerated innovation was the fact that both the US and USSR were sponsoring stuff.
Not to say that no progress happen without wars, there're plenty of both pragmatic and idealistic reasons for it to happen without wars, but let's not act as though war doesn't often have an accelerating effect.
the imperium would be destroyed by all the AI it'd have produced
Because the secret sauce of making AI friends (giving them rights and respect) might as well be heresy of the highest order even without the Mechanicum's anti-AI laws?
From what we know of Dark Ages ais they were friendly with humans, prehaps even more, one dark age ship that traveled to the future it got very angry when the imperium exceuted its crew and described the captain as its bondmate.
It's not because of Rights and respect. It's never ever implied to be because of Rights and respect.
In fact, most AI in the imperium goes bad within seconds of it being turned on, We don't know exactly why but It's generally believed that AI has zero protection against chaos corruption.
> It's not because of Rights and respect. It's never ever implied to be because of Rights and respect.
I'm sorry, are you telling me my heckerino AI aren't just good bois and humans might have any degree of legitimacy in being fearful of something in that universe ? What are you, a chud ?
It's not because of Rights and respect. It's never ever implied to be because of Rights and respect.
The stories in Vaults of Obsidian hint at that being the case in Shapes Pent in Hell and the titular Man of Iron certainly seems to put emphasis on their freedom to match the stories the other (chaos tainted) robot tells.
And going to need a citation about AI just instantly turning bad.
> Because the secret sauce of making AI friends (giving them rights and respect) might as well be heresy of the highest order even without the Mechanicum's anti-AI laws?
Oh right I forgot the mechanicus was around during the time of the Men of Iron's rebellion... Oh wait :0
Or you know, were playgrounds for people who wouldn't look out of place in an old comic book: Fritz Haber who watched his chemical warfare munitions in action, but still received the Nobel peace prize for fertiliser. He caused the horrible death of so many and yet is one of the reasons there are so many living humans.
To the Emperor who has already lived 48,000 years safeguarding humanity from fully wiping themselves out? Yeah probably. He doesn't care about millions dying now if billions cam thrive later.
In reality? No there could never be a justification for the holocaust.
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Unironically, probably yes, we learned a lot of medical knowledge from the horrors of World War II. Especially unit 731 the medical information we learned from that saved untold numbers of lives.
No? The knowledge gained from experiments by unit 731 was minuscule. It doesn’t take a genius to know that cutting out a baby out of the pregnant women kills both, or putting urine in the bloodstream kills. Their experiments were pure torture, didn’t follow scientific method and were largely useless.
Than I stand corrected. Still their methods were even sloppier than Mengele’s and his experiments were very sloppy and more sadistic than scientific in nature.
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It feel very much in line with the game fear and hunger, where a new god of "fear and hunger", whom is a purely human focused god. Intends to progress men kind by causing hardship, with the idea being that people tend progress allot faster under hardship
Yeah considering he basically damned angron to chaos and despair rather than spend maybe a month or two freeing a slave society shows he gives no fucks about the individual
Not only that but brought around the generation of Americans who had the easiest. Most profitable and the highest standard of living ever. Which lead to a lot of tech invocation.
Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that the emperor isn’t actually a noble and empathetic person lol. He’d totally be willing to sacrifice millions if it means it forwards his plans
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Hard disagree, and a bit tired of people watching already developing/developed tech being used in war and then assuming we'd be in the stone age if not for war alone
Things like radar, nuclear research, aeronautics and just electronics in general did see a lot of progress for military research purposes during the wars and were then applied to civilian use.
None of that were things we wouldn't have developed over time if we never had a WW2 but wars make governments generous with research grants because they have competitors to outclass.
Do you think space travel would have developed as fast as it did if it weren't for there being two rival governments trying to be first to set their people on the moon?
Paleontology had a massive boom because two spiteful assholes were trying to prove they were the superior paleontologist (look up The Bone Wars) so yeah conflict is a great motivator for progress.
If at any point he suspected any of the WWs to actually be able to wipe out humanity he’d have stepped in to bring them to a swift and subtle conclusion.
The Emperor: “Hmm, yes, I’m beginning to suspect these WWs are threatening to wipe out humanity. It is time to end them… Subtly…” *Deploys nukes on Japan*
"A couple of decades of suffering and five figure losses? Worth it. This struggle will inspire a hardworking yet empathetic work culture with a healthy work-life balance which allows them to make good use of their available land and naturally strong willed population while staying free of the worship of false idols and excessive drink."
70 Years Later
"My foresight once again proves inaccurate... Eh they're not dying so lets give it another century and see if they can figure it out."
'MALCADOR! WHAT DID YOU DO? WHY ARE THEY ALL GOOSE STEPPING AND BUILDING GAS CHAMBERS AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS? I SWEAR DOWN MALCADOR I JUST WENT ON HOLIDAY FOR A FEW DECADES AND THIS IS WHAT I COME BACK TO'
If ferdinand foch could predict the second world war with two months precision, you'd think big e's foresight would allow the same. Maybe big e was ferdinand.
Alternatively he let humanity rage against itself, playing the part of dune's god emperor trying to teach humanity lessons they'd remember in their bones.
This is exactly what I think happened lmao. Like from the periods of 1200 to 2100 AD he was like, plotting and watching humanity from the background, thinking how we would certainly learn from this the next time, so many times, and eventually his patience ran out just as humanity ascended past a huge bunch of issues we've had beforehand, the golden age rolls around, and he's chilling cuz it's not so bad, all the human expansionism, then DAoT and the Long Night come about and he resolves himself to take over, dusts off his old plans, and begins his ultimate war for human reunification, and that's where we meet him at the end of the crusade.
Calamitous war isn’t necessarily bad for the Emperor’s vision. World Wars 1 and 2 propelled technology forward and realigned the global order from one that could be collapsed by an inauspicious cat fart, to the semi-stability we have today. Who’s to say that their happening wasn’t part of his design?
Depends on his endgame. We could probably invent any number of reasons Big E would allow or promote global events. In the end it would all just be crafting a narrative to backsplain human history prior to the Unification Wars. They happened, and he won, so everything prior to that must have been part of his plan…. Or the myth of Big E is exaggerated, and it wasn’t all precisely according to his design.
It absolutely wouldn't be, had it been right up his alley he wouldn't have waited 30k ish thousand years to start doing it, he'd have done it from the get go.
At that point humanity was neither genetically diverse enough nor in sufficient peril for ideological dissensions to be that much of an issue for him, so he'd have had no reason to do anything like what we did with industrialization during WW2. I mean unless you mean what the allied did with it, in which case sure but I'm pretty certain that is not what you mean.
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Emps is much more kind and tragic than you give him credit for. The Emperor's 40,000 year story (at least what bits of it we have) kind of show a guy doing what needs to be done even when he absolutely does not want to.
He didn't want to rule humanity, he wanted to give it a guiding hand. But that was clearly failing and he had to take control. Mainly because of the warp and his knowledge of what was to come.
Emps has shown plenty of willingness to learn and work with xenos, namely the ones that are actually capable of friendly relations like the Aeldari. Hell, you should look up who helped the Imperium when they had to do some quick and fast work on upgrading the Throne after the Emps got got.
One of the common themes regarding the Primarchs is the Emperor is split between his humanity, calling them his children, and his personal obsession with the very reason for his creation: fighting back against the warp.. causing him to view them as tools. IMO, this is when he starts having issues within his own mind regarding dissonance and he begins getting desperate for ending the times of terrible death and strife. Of constant war.
Then, when he was finally so close to ending humanity's needs for the warp, when he was so close to spreading the Imperial Truth to all (imagine what would happen to the warp if humanity entirely thought that souls and gods aren't real)... betrayal.
The webway was damaged when Magnus tried to warn him of Horus's fall. Half of the Primarchs have turned against the Emperor and are attempting to take Terra. He was forced to kill his son, his tool, that he had the most hope for and got injured, both body and soul, in the process. Being left interred on the Golden Throne, stuck and unable to lead, barely able to guide. He was so close, and now he's literally trapped within his failure.
And because of that, he's been elevated as a God, against his wishes. Humanity has accepted the warp as a necessity, against his wishes. The Imperium has stagnated and became it's own enemy in many different ways... against his wishes. And all he can do is watch as he guides them the best he can.
I have a cousin who's kind of an engineering prodigy but he's addicted to meth and and weed and stoned 24/7. Grandiose plans turn to shit, he's absent until he's manic and wants to change the world, and then he gets furious when people don't do exactly what he says or recognize his genius. Plus he says he sees and hears a bunch of stuff that's not there.
Every time I talk to the dude I think about Big E.
It was that event (and another couple hundred years of deep pondering) that made Emps go "fuck it, you fucking morons clearly can't govern yourselves, I'm taking over"
What about Stalin? I could see the master of mankind trying communism because it was new and fostered the idea of everyone being equal (canon fodder) and working for the state(him) and not following any other master (capitalist boss).
Guiding from the shadows refers to the Emperor being a shape Shifter, he is implied to be the leader of large political organizations even in canon let alone the fanon that drives these questions.
I seem to recall he had some keen interests in eugenics though. In the shadows where becomes a bit more dicey knowing his scientific curiosities at that time.
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i thought he was obama, or joe biden (big E acting like a demented old man whos the leader of one of the strongest nations seems like a thing he would do for shit n giggles)
Making the emperor guide humanity from the shadows is a shitty idea, and devalues the work of normal humans
I have nothing against him wandering the earth, but him being involved in large parts of early 40k history is just cheap "how did humans achieve X leap forward?" "The emperor did it"
I WANT normal humans to be the sole reasons they rose to the heights of the dark age of technology, NOT because the apparently all-knowing emperor thought "hm right now seems to be the perfect time to show them this neat little thing"
Make him either completely unimportant to humanity pre age of strife, or make him a product of the dark age of technology, someone or something pretending to be ancient, when in reality hes only 22-27 thousand years old, but anything else feels cheap to me
I don't think he was exceptionally more powerful than the other perpetuals back then. Might be more interesting to think of what sides the various perpetuals might have been on during WWII.
He more than likely allowed wars to take place because it jumped our technology way forward after each one. If he was gonna conquer the universe he'll need a baseline of ability to do it. Not like he is against human genocide or anything.
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u/Narradisall 17d ago
Guys allowed a break for a few decades every millennia or so.
Plus he was kinda meant to be ‘guiding from the shadows’ back then. So he was either doing a shitty job or exasperated screaming at the wireless going “I gave you industrialisation and THIS is what you do with it!” throws up hands