# Why did the emperor wait so long?



## Sangriento (Dec 1, 2010)

We have in black and white that the Emperor has been present in pretty much all of mankind's history. That includes, of course, the Dark Age of Technology, mankind's zenith in power knowledgment and galatic expansion.

I dont understand why he didnt walk into the spotlight by that time, Im pretty sure he would have noticed it was the perfect timing for a true leader to reach all of his goals. Imperium's Age was but a shadow of mankind's former glory.

maybe he "knew" the Age of Strife was coming and prefered to wait?

even then, wouldnt it had been better if he was leading mankind by that point? 

After the Age of Strife he had to rebuild a civilization from its ashes, reunite a race that was on its knees.
I suppose that with the emperor at the helm, the age of strife wouldnt have been as devastating, more knowledge would have been preserved, the human race wouldnt have ended up so divided, and the Crusade-era comeback would have been even more unstoppable.

bad leadership right there?


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## Angel of Blood (Aug 18, 2010)

Sangriento said:


> rebuild a civilization from its ashes, reunite a race that was on its knees.


Is there more perfect a time reveal yourself to humanity and take control? How better to fully gain their loyalty, reverence and obedience than to save them from the brink and rebuild society into a golden age. 

He was always manipulating from behind the scenes long before he revealed himself, he was no doubt more in control that anyone realised in all but physical form.


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## Sangriento (Dec 1, 2010)

Angel of Blood said:


> Is there more perfect a time reveal yourself to humanity and take control? How better to fully gain their loyalty, reverence and obedience than to save them from the brink and rebuild society into a golden age.


do you think the most powerful, immortal, quasi-godlike being would have had problems attaining leadership whatever the age?

if anything, the post-AoS was even worse for his long term plans.

if you intend to create a secular state where the idea of divinity is abolished...when would you do it? when a scientifical society is at its peak, or when all you have left are a bunch of barbaric, uneducated techno-tribes?


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## Doelago (Nov 29, 2009)

Angel of Blood said:


> Is there more perfect a time reveal yourself to humanity and take control? How better to fully gain their loyalty, reverence and obedience than to save them from the brink and rebuild society into a golden age.


This.


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## kwak76 (Nov 29, 2010)

This does raise a good question. The emperor was playing some sort of role behind the scene during mankind time. 
Some where right after the dark age of technology you had that warp rift that caused the collapse and maybe this force the emperor to reveal himself. 

I think during the height of mankind technology achievement the emperor might of played a key role behind the scene and was waiting for the right time to show himself or possible he felt that the direction that mankind is going at the time was good enough. 

Again speculation ...I think it's possible that the emperor step in because mankind needed cohesion and leadership at that time.


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## SoulGazer (Jun 14, 2009)

Try being immortal some time. 38,000 years isn't all that long compared to eternity.


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## SolidusPRime (Aug 23, 2010)

In The Last Church, he goes on a bit about how he tried to unite humanity through religion, and other "good" ways first, trying to stay out of the scene, but eventually came to the conclusion that he had to do it the way he did.

I believe it was pretty heavily implied that he started a good deal of the old world religions, and he DID reveal himself, just not as "The emperor" as we know him. The preacher he's talking to, for instance, saw him as the god that his religion was based on.

Also, in Deliverance Lost

<Spoiler>

He tells Corax that he has no true face, and has worn a thousand in his lifetime. I think he DID reveal himself quite a bit, it's just that the "plan" that we know of wasn't decided upon until later.

Right?


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## Sangriento (Dec 1, 2010)

kwak76 said:


> or possible he felt that the direction that mankind is going at the time was good enough.


thats an extraordinarily good point.

I always thought that the Emperor becoming....well....the Emperor....was more a matter of "when" rather than "if". That he had always been plotting his ascension,waiting for the best moment to seize power.

I think its interesting to consider that maybe he was willing to stay hidden as long as things worked fine for mankind. Maybe he would have never taken the lead, had mankind been enough on its own to rule the galaxy.

Adds a new dimension to the character.


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## Old Man78 (Nov 3, 2011)

Also, mankind was on a role without the Emperor and he was in the background keeping track, then the Eldar lost the plot creating Slaanesh and the ensuing warp storms that messed up warp travel and inadvertantly brought mankind to its knees, thats when the big E HAD to step out into the spot light and save us from the nasty whiles of chaos who's threat even he didn't fully realize at the start.

The Emperor also grew in power, he didnt start off as the ultimate champ and there where other powerful humans knocking about aswell so he had to be careful starting off! Your question is very good but shows a lack of faith in the big E, Inquisitorial agents are en-route to take you to a re-education facility, please pack light and say farewell to friends and familyk:


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## Chompy Bits (Jun 13, 2010)

Also, Emperor or not, if the pre-Fall Eldar thought another Empire was rising up that could potentially challenge them they would have squashed mankind (the fledgling Imperium) into paste pretty quickly before we really got anywhere.

That's why I think post Age of Strife was the perfect time, as the most dominant civilization in the galaxy at the time had just been brought to its knees, leaving a power vacuum for the Emperor and mankind to fill.


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Pre-Fall Eldar preceded humanity's evolution from _mon-keigh _to man.


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## Rems (Jun 20, 2011)

The Pre-Fall Eldar by its very definition lasted until the Age of Strife. Which means that Humanity's various empires in the Golden and Dark Ages would have co-existed with the Eldar. It may have been in a state of decline for millenia but was still present.


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## Malus Darkblade (Jan 8, 2010)

Depends on your definition of pre-fall Eldar as it could mean anything from the start of their civilization to when they cast aside all forms of labor thanks to automated menials. I was referring to the early beginnings prior to the DaoT/GA.


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## Chompy Bits (Jun 13, 2010)

Well, I meant up until the birth of Slaanesh. Even in their decline they still numbered in the hudreds of billions if not trillions. Plus, I'm willing to bet that Eldar tech at its peak was still miles ahead of DAoT mankind. So yeah, if the intact Eldar empire thought that the Human upstarts were becoming a possible threat to them, I have no doubt that they would have exterminated us before we could really get our bearings. Especially considering how it was around this time that they really started getting off on the whole torture, murder and mass genocide buzz. 

From what I gather, though I could be wrong, DAoT mankind didn't act like one united race with one common goal but more akin to a bunch of colonies that interacted with each other. So it would have been much harder to organise a united, galactic-scale war effort if they Eldar did choose to attack us.

That's why I say that the end of the Age of Strife was the ideal time to set the Great Crusade in motion. The biggest kid on the block had just been taken out, allowing humanity to take his place with relatively minor effort. They already had the makings of the Imperium spread throughout galaxy and it was just left to the Emperor to put it all together.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Emperor had a hand in the manner of the human expansion during the DAoT, deliberately setting the foundation for the galactic sized empire that was to come. From what I gather, DAoT humans didn't expand their empire in the conventional way by slowly bridging out their area of control and consolidating and fortifying it before moving further, but instead tried to spread themselves as far and wide in the shortest amount of time.

Sorry for a bit of a jumbled post, but I'm too lazy at the moment to edit it.


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## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

A loose thought, but for those that have read Prospero Burns, the Space Wolves encounters a human remnant and purges them. They were human in the loosest sense of the word, having become so warped and bent by their machines that they were barely recognizable as human anymore. Considering the normal human form to be unnatural and not human.

Im thinking that remnant might be where the Dark Age of Technology might have led, had the greater human federation not collapsed. Or perhaps the Emperor engineered the collapse, seeing the danger of what the race was in risk of becomming by an increasing dependence and embrace of the machine


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## OIIIIIIO (Dec 16, 2009)

I think that the Emperor had very little intention of actually seizing power at all. I consider him more of a reluctant leader. It would have been far easier to seize power after he came to the realization of who and what he was during the first millennium of human recorded history.

I would think that he was sitting back and letting humans go about achieving what they would (with him nudging them once in a while) without his direct intervention. He waited as long as he did because, in my mind, he could wait no more. Things were progressing to wards a certain path and he had a choice: 
Take control and lead from the front revealing himself
stay in the shadows and let humanity go quietly into the night.


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