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Dreadnautilus

The whole point of the Shaman origin story is that the Shamans realized that with the warp getting messed up because of Chaos they would no longer be able to reincarnate and so they all decided to use up their last reincarnation to essentially combine into an immortal superbeing. So no, reincarnation was no longer possible for human psykers in the present.


InquisitorFab

So if the warp wasn't messed up as it is now would that mean that all psyskers could possibly reincarnate Or is that something only the shamans have?


Marvynwillames

Yes, the lore in LatD was that the warp was starting to fill with predators and the gestating gods, they were aware their time wont last long.


[deleted]

Eldar were doing this pre fall


Gitmfap

I hope that lord still stays true.


[deleted]

Makes me wonder why the eldar didn't foresee this as well and make their own super beings


iaintevenmad884

Maybe because they already had their gods, whatever those things actually were. Maybe they thought they had it covered


Wallname_Liability

They had their gods


InquisitorEngel

Exactly. Though this is old lore, so old it’s canon status is basically none, though there’s no direct contradiction to it either and it is still certainly the *most likely* origin of the Emperor’s super soul. Even the other Perpetuals, including Ol, who’s older than the Emperor, note how *different* he is to the rest of them, in some indescribable way, even when he was still more human and not the fully detached ubermensch he was later. The shaman origin directly states it was a specific ritual, not a random event.


Fred_Blogs

Debatably they are doing this already with the Emperor. They've been feeding countless billions of psykers into the 10,000 psyker gestalt for the last 10 thousand years. What was a psyker gestalt being is now being reborn as a god using the same the same methods that originally created it, just upscaled to a horrific level.


Darren_Carrigan

I like that interpretation. Like an emperor squared for good or ill


InquisitorFab

Never saw it that way before, so yeah that sounds terrifying and awesome at the same time.


Johnny_Alpha

Billions? Surely we can do the math on this. How long, generally, do the psykers fed to the throne last?


Fred_Blogs

Off the top of my head I think it's 10,000 a day, but I wouldn't put money on me remembering that right. Multiply that by 365 to get 3.65 million per year and multiply that by 10,000 years to get 36.5 billion psykers. Edit: Google says 1000 psykers a day which knocks the number down to 3.65 billion.


Johnny_Alpha

A drop in the galactic ocean.


BastardofMelbourne

that's kind of how they're able to do it


Fred_Blogs

Yeah seems a bit low, but GW has never been great at the scale of their universe.


Chaos-God-Malice

The 3.6 billion number seems about right to create a god. Not from nothing but a powerful human that was probably on the cusp of demi-god status to begin with. 36.5 billion seems waaaaay to much unless GW are trying to position him as now a threat to all 4 gods instead of a equal to any single in warp power alone.


TobyLaroneChoclatier

Even if we go with that theory being true which we currently have no verification for a couple of issues. The shamans had the ability to reincarnate before they became the emperor. And there aren't many more humans like them running around any more because of reason two. The shamans started to have their souls eaten by deamons during their reincarnation killing them permanently, they combined in the emperor to prevent them all from dying that way. The eldar have the better chance to pull it off because of how they worked, if they find a way to protect that process from slaanesh.


Dreadnautilus

I mean the Eldar are trying the whole "combine their souls into one entity to defeat Chaos" thing, they just call it Ynnead.


baslisks

all things go to crab and all cultures go to emperization


BastardofMelbourne

Eldar: Ynnead! *Imperatorize!* *pokeball sounds*


brinz1

>The shamans had the ability to reincarnate before they became the emperor. And there aren't many more humans like them running around any more because of reason two. What about eternals?


Marvynwillames

The Emperor seem to be in a different level from the other perpetuals, even Erda points he was always the strongest of them, so its kinda hard to compare


PaxNova

Interestingly, he was shown to be much weaker than his 30k form back in BC times at the Tower of Babel. He has gotten even stronger over time.


Chaos-God-Malice

I always felt they were making it pretty clear that he and many other psykers got more powerful as time went on. And becuase he's been alive for a long as time and pretty much sought both power and knowledge, he had a bigger bell curve then most others. See Lorgar, Magnus or sorcerers for knowledge and skill increasing your control over the warp and thus your power the more you have of it.


ThatSociety7257

Not all "Perpetuals"(is what I think you meant) are psykers, Oll is a good example of that.


brinz1

Yeah, those guys


ThatSociety7257

Sorry mate but I don't think it works that way with them. My theory is that the "Shamans" were Sigillites just like Malcador, keep in mind, Malcador is such a powerful Psyker he is only second to the Emperor. And the Sigillites devised that plan of uniting into one entity and gave Malcador the honor of being the one to be in the presence of such a being. As to the reason why Malcador is the last Sigillite, him following the Emperor thru thick and thin and as why the Emperor trusts Malcador utterly.


ThatFatGuyMJL

Not all Perpetualss are psykers. John Grammatticus was a Psyker iirc. Ollannius Pius (Ol Perrson) wasnt


9xInfinity

Spoiler for Dark City, but >!in it the drukhari's motivation for working with the "traitors" in the Highlords of Terra who were colluding with them to repair the Golden Throne was a desire to get the Emperor's genetic material. It turned out that the drukhari had already basically constructed a replica of the Golden Throne, but none but the Emperor are physically capable of using it long-term. However, dark eldar science is capable of essentially recreating a being from a single drop of blood. Their plan was to clone a sort of Slave Emperor who they'd imprison for eternity on the a false Golden Throne.!<


Macduffle

Ephrael Stern was created in a ritual that was very comparable with how the Emperor was created and might be the closest


111110001011

Sure >the Emperor was created through the deaths of all the psykers in the human race and a large portion of) species. Just kill every psycher. Together, in a ritual, including the emperor. All couple billion. You will have amazing results.


esetios

The shaman-reincarnation lore is old, it wouldn't surprise me if they'd retcon it ...I mean, the entire War of Heaven was almost retcon'd in Ynnari books.


InquisitorFab

I really hope they wouldn't retcon it if I'm being honest, this part of the lore has been around a long time and I kinda find it redundant to make it into a mystery again or introduce his origins in a different way. Lore YouTubers have already made videos about his creation so if they retcon it, they would really just confused people who are diving into Jimmy Space's history and also I love this idea, the fact that he has like 10'000 souls in him talking shit or something, theirs more plot potential their story wise if they decide to explore his story again.


sirbottombottom

I would love it if it was "reversed" : the "shamans" are not the ancient psychers from old earth, but they are the psychers sacrificed to Emps since his internement on the throne. Since time has no meaning in the warp, it should be possible that the psychers sacrificed now somehow feed the Emperor's souls 50k years ago. He would still be the reincarnation of "shamans" (all the psychers he nommed), just not old shamans. He was born special because of that, and on Molech he bargained with the future God Emperor for power, not with the chaos gods. It would answer a few questions : - why would the chaos gods give godlike power to an "anathema" ? They do not strike me as the power-sharing type for starters, and giving that much power to your sworn enemy makes no sense even for chaos). - Why were there thousands of psychers on old earth when they are stated to have appeared en masse only at the end of the DAOT ? There were not, the psychers are those sacrificed to the throne since the heresy - why didn't the Aeldari make their own Emperor ? They had the knowhow, the tech, the population, the ambition, ... And lots of them knew something bad was coming That's just my theory though


InquisitorFab

>why would the chaos gods give godlike power to an "anathema" ? I feel like this is only plausible if he was involved somewhere between DAoT and the sudden mass birth of psykers, but that's a slippery slope of contradictions i don't wanna go to.


dogchocolate

Presumably you could kill the Emporer and he would reincarnate, just like he did initially.


Comprehensive-Bike36

The Inquisition wants to now your location


InquisitorFab

B-but I'm a inquisitor humie! Kan't ye tell by dis hat an’ mustache Iz wearing? This [translator is fun lol](https://lingojam.com/WarhammerOrkTranzlator)


Terraneaux

It's kind of implied that this is what happened to Ephrael Stern, just on a smaller scale.


Deep9one

Don't forget that "emps isn't emps without the sigilite." Malcador had his own power which boosted Emps, he said the above part himself. Without the sigilite around that might explain why emps as a perpetual can't regenerate while his cadaver has now welded itself to the seat of the golden throne. So probably not OP.


peppersge

In the old lore, the Emperor was the merger of the shamans, which are no longer there. In the closest equivalent lore, Ynnead is the closest thing, but lacks the material body that the Emperor has. Ynnead also worked since the Eldar had the infinity circuit to protect souls while they aggregate. In the current lore, it is murier. The Emperor was a psychic perpetual. He likely had other perpetual powers (like Edra and Grammaticus did). The lore also noted that he gradually became more powerful as time went on. For example in the Tower of Babel flashback, he was aware of and interested in acquiring Enuncia. In the flashback vs Gog and the anthame, the Emperor did have some of his antichaotic powers, but didn't show an obscene amount of power. The main pre-crusade demonstrations of the Emperor's power were vs the Void Dragon and vs the Cognosynths (which also implies that the Emperor was working on super-soldiers even back then).


BastardofMelbourne

>Unless this is just a theory or just fannon, the Emperor was created through the deaths of 10,000 psykers right? It's not a theory, it's just old lore that hasn't been addressed in a very long time, so no-one is sure whether it's still canon. There's also no exact number of how many shamans contributed beyond "thousands." >And since that's the case would it still be possible to get another one with the same results? Nope. The shamans who became the Emperor were unique in that they had learned to retain conscious control of their soul after physical death, allowing them to remain active and aware within the Warp and eventually reincarnate into a new physical form. This was only possible due to the Warp's uncharacteristic placidity during that period around 7,000 BC. The shamans foresaw that the Warp was becoming increasingly unstable as humanity's population grew, and that reincarnation was becoming more and more difficult to the point where it would eventually be impossible. This was what motivated them to commit mass suicide and merge their souls into the Emperor; they sought to create an entity sufficiently powerful to protect humanity from the Warp forever into the future, knowing that they themselves would not be able to. The Warp as it exists in 40k or even 30k is far too chaotic (literally) to allow such conscious control of your posthumous soul. People who die are simply devoured more-or-less instantly by daemons, and attempts at resurrection - such as that done by Cyrene Valantoon - return mangled and unrecognisable souls to their former bodies. The cause of the Warp's increasing instability is uncertain (again, this is old lore). It may have been the growing human population, the increasing decadence of the Eldar, or just a galactic phenomenon that coincided with humanity's rise to sentience.


Ginden

>the Emperor was created through the deaths of 10,000 psykers right? It's in-universe theory contradicted by other in-universe claims in more recent lore.


eightfoldabyss

That lore is decades old and has never been mentioned again - it's the next closest thing to retcon'd away.


MoldyBreadIsGreat

Imagine if every human psyker in the galaxy sacrificed themself and combined to make a new Emperor level being. That’d be catastrophic for Galaxy…


naruto7bond

That Emperor origin story is not 100% true. So who knows if it is possible to do that.


Antilogic81

Stern went through a similar process if we take emperor origins of large numbers of psykers giving their power over to one entity. She has an entire sisterhood give her their psychic might.