Good anti-Imperium of Man fappery essays.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:26 pm

These sorts of arguments are why I love If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device. Reminders that the Emperor really fucking hates religion and would find all the shit since the Horus Heresy completely and totally idiotic, especially the backwards slide into barbarism and refusal to innovate.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:47 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:These sorts of arguments are why I love If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device. Reminders that the Emperor really fucking hates religion and would find all the shit since the Horus Heresy completely and totally idiotic, especially the backwards slide into barbarism and refusal to innovate.

To be fair, Emperor Worship seems to work better than the atheistic secular humanism that the Emperor was pushing, at least in terms of results. The fact that all humans have some psychic potential means that pushing that collective potential in directions that you want it to go through enforced shared belief produces actual miracles.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 2:04 pm

It should be pointed out that Horus Rising opens with the visit to sixty-three nineteen* where Horus starts off by being perhaps excessively patient and reasonable. Not only does he send envoys to discuss the possibility of peacefully joining the Imperium, when the first set is killed for suggesting that the local ruler was not the supreme Emperor of Mankind, he sent another ship to try to talk to them again and resolve things peacefully, and only attacked when the locals tried to kill them too. Then he employed his signature tactic of taking an elite strikeforce and dropping it as close as possible to the primary enemy command center, leading most of the defending forces to surrender, and like two weeks later the bulk of the fleet was preparing to leave, with a garrison force and a substantial civil engineering group to repair the damage sustained during the attack on the capital left behind.

They also were not particularly Exterminatus-happy. The fleet carried a substantial supply of the Life-Eater, but the only point where they discuss Exterminatus is in orbit over Murder, where the entire ground element of an expeditionary fleet and the first fleet that arrived to reinforce them dropped through massive artificial storms and never came back up. The Imperium is still not particularly Exterminatus-happy, because planets are expensive. Hell, even when they think they need to kill everyone on the planet they usually don't bombard the place. They generally only use it in cases where a ground assault is a hole with no bottom. Admittedly, there isn't much in the way of oversight on the guys who get to authorize it, so there are crazy exceptions. There was also Kryptmann's large-scale Exterminatus, but that legitimately did slow down the Hive Fleet and deny it resources.

To be fair, Emperor Worship seems to work better than the atheistic secular humanism that the Emperor was pushing, at least in terms of results. The fact that all humans have some psychic potential means that pushing that collective potential in directions that you want it to go through enforced shared belief produces actual miracles.

Well, I think the Emperor's plan was that if he made everyone stop believing in gods and daemons all of them would die. I am not convinced that would actually work, because I think they'll still be powered by the concepts they represent even if they aren't personified, but it's possible that pushing belief in a mechanistic universe would significantly alter the nature of the manifestations and make them less problematic.

*The replacing local name with a number thing wasn't standard practice; it was a nine-planet system with an inhabited third planet calling itself Terra.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 2:05 pm

RelentlessImp wrote:These sorts of arguments are why I love If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device. Reminders that the Emperor really fucking hates religion and would find all the shit since the Horus Heresy completely and totally idiotic, especially the backwards slide into barbarism and refusal to innovate.

Except that the emprah:
-Demanded blind fanatic obedience to his word.
-Created a race of servants based on his own image.
-Exacted extreme punishment in all those who displeased him.
-Had god-like powers and used them all the time.
-Imposed a bunch of dogmas for the lulz.
-His last order was to be enshrined in a giant golden monument and to be offered daily human sacrifices to the end of times.

So really, the emprah was spreading religion with just a different name.

As pointed below:

hyzmarca wrote: Logar was misguided because he was raised in on an extremely religious world and integrated the Emperor in his own theology, but his theology was wrong.

The emprah appointed a religious fanatic as one of his main generals to lead his armies.

Then there was also the space wolves furries with all their shamanism tradition and wolf gods worshiping, which the emprah was 110% ok with.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:15 pm

Yeah, dealing with the Primarchs in general is the thing that the Emperor indisputably totally fucked up. Not an understandable idea that probably wasn't going to work in practice, not a measure that was effective but too extreme, not even an extreme overreaction to a problem that did exist. He just plain put twenty people in command of his armies and made no real attempt to make sure they were in any way appropriate choices or even slightly with the overall program. The most spectacular known screwup was of course Angron, where rather than come to rescue him and his allies with a rain of drop pods the Emperor teleported him away and flew off and never got around to uninstalling the aggression boosters. Then he told Magnus to stop poking at the warp without explaining why, and Magnus assumed that was due to superstitious foolishness and proceeded to trust Tzeentch. Plus he let stuff like the Iron Warriors-Imperial Fists rivalry get out of hand. And most of the rest of them were loyal but weren't really with the program, and less than happy when the Emperor put the High Council and Senate of Terra in charge of civilian government. It seemed like Sanguinus and Horus were the only Primarchs who would actually be happy with succeeding, and even they thought that the High Council was incompetent.

Honestly, the only not-stupid thing the Emperor did with the Primarchs was designating Horus as Warmaster, since he was literally the only person who could actually get the Primarchs to cooperate.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 2:55 am

maglag wrote:You just said what I said with different words. Lorgar developed an efficient and non-violent method of getting planets to join the IoM, and the Emprah replied "No, KILLMAIMBURN is the only true way."

Plus, notice how the Emprah "punishes" his sons by murderizing the people they liked by the millions. Worst daddy ever? Worst daddy ever.

No, Monarchia was burned to the ground not because it was conquered using non-violent means. It was burned to the ground because Lorgar kept spending all his time turning the populations he conquered/diplo'd into religious fanatics instead of conquering more planets.

This was specifically why the Ultramarines were sent to do the burning - as an abject counter-point to Lorgar's style. Ultramarines also do diplomacy and also spend a lot of time with the populations they conquer, but the smurfs by and large create prosperous secular empires instead of planets trying to outdo each other in cathedral building.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 3:50 am

name_here wrote:Honestly, the only not-stupid thing the Emperor did with the Primarchs was designating Horus as Warmaster, since he was literally the only person who could actually get the Primarchs to cooperate.

To be fair, the Primarchs that really go off the deep end are the ones who actually adored the Emperor the most. Lorgar loved him so much that he considered the Emperor to be a God. Horus loved daddy so much that he feared every little failure would disappoint him.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 10:54 am

Zinegata wrote:
name_here wrote:Honestly, the only not-stupid thing the Emperor did with the Primarchs was designating Horus as Warmaster, since he was literally the only person who could actually get the Primarchs to cooperate.
To be fair, the Primarchs that really go off the deep end are the ones who actually adored the Emperor the most. Lorgar loved him so much that he considered the Emperor to be a God. Horus loved daddy so much that he feared every little failure would disappoint him.

On the other hand, Angron was the one who most hated the emprah right from the start, and Cruze hated him pretty much as well, but then the night lords primarch was super emo and hated pretty much everybody and everything.

Doesn't change the fact the emprah went and put a bunch of clearly mentally disturbed people (including one that is taking orders from his "talking" sword) in charge of his super elite troops. "Hmmm, I forced this dude watch his best friends getting killed while preventing him from doing anything. Also he's got rage chips in his brain. There should be zero problems in making him one of my main generals right now just like that."

Zinegata wrote: This was specifically why the Ultramarines were sent to do the burning - as an abject counter-point to Lorgar's style. Ultramarines also do diplomacy do try to minimize collateral damage and also spend a lot of time with the populations they conquer, but the smurfs by and large create prosperous secular empires slave factories instead of planets trying to outdo each other in cathedral building.

Fixed that for you. Ultrasmurfs were probably the least KILLMAIMBURN legion after the Word Bearers I'll give you that, but only because they were basically the greediest marines. A dead man is no good, but a living slave can rack in quite a bit of profit. Or serve as a meat fodder. The ultrasmurfs are infamous for loving to use PD and guardsmen as expendable troops to minimize their own casualities. Also notice how in the whole Horus Heresy, they're the only legion who "fails" to get in any big fight, meaning when the dust settles, they were in the perfect position to call the shots. Gotta hand it to them, they're probably the smartest marines.

But Lorgar was still the primarch who did try to go for zero casualities, while Girlyman was more of "Stop shooting when they drop their weapons, start begging for mercy and swear unwavering loyalty to me, I mean us, I mean the empire."

Heck, the emprah only sent the smurfs to Monarchia probably because he believed they weren't meeting enough of their KILLMAIMBURN quota either. A good way to check how much of a loyalist Girlyman was (not loyal enough to actually help the emprah when he needed the most turns out).

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 5:36 pm

Okay, I am admittedly working from the Lexicanum for most of this because I only have the first four Horus Heresy books myself, but so far as I can tell very few of the things you said were true. When Fulgrim was installed he didn't even have the talking sword, and in fact he only acquired it fairly late, I think after the Emperor went back home. Also, I gather that most of the Legions did actually attempt to negotiate, though admittedly mostly in the form of "submit or be destroyed!" And as mentioned Horus Rising opens with Horus sending a diplomatic mission led by one of his best friends, and when they're murdered on the spot for suggesting the local ruler might not be the divinely appointed Emperor Of Mankind, Horus sends another delegation. And the Word Bearers would conquer places by force and then convert them.

The Ultramarines are known for actually coordinating with the Guard and PDF instead of treating them purely as disposable meatshields. And their participation in the Heresy opened with the Battle of Calth, in which the Word Bearers caught them completely by surprise and pounded the hell out of them.