# The emperor for or against psykers



## xNoPityx (Dec 23, 2010)

There are many places in the fluff where the emperor shows downright hostility to psykers but Ive read some stuff that says the reason the monks offed themselves and made the emperor in the first place was to guide humanity until its full psychic potential is unlocked. Anyone know his official stance on this?


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## Dogbeard (Apr 15, 2011)

He was afraid of what untrained psykers might unleash on the galaxy. Even Magnus, second only to the Emperor in his ability to tap into the warp, ultimately caused untold damage. An untrained psyker who hasn't gone through the soul binding ritual is a tempting morsel for the daemons of the warp and a gateway through which they can enter the Materium.

To be honest, there is conflicting information as to the verdict and judgment at Nikaea. In _A Thousand Sons_, the Emperor decrees that "no Legion will maintain a Librarius department" and that no Astartes should ever again employ any psychic powers. Of course, we know this ruling doesn't seem to have ever gone into practice and for all his claims that only he can safely use the warp, the Emperor keeps Malcador the Sigilite as his right-hand man.

Other sources claim that the judgment followed a middle path, allowing Librarians and psykers to exist so long as they are trained and monitored, which jives better with the state of the Imperium.


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## spanner94ezekiel (Jan 6, 2011)

Against at first, but overruled himself when the Heresy happend, as he was scared of another Magnus-style incident. Plus humanity would have been fucked without them - no GK anybody?


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## NiceGuyEddy (Mar 6, 2010)

In Legion the Emperor states: "You have a fine mind John...we should talk and consider the options available to beings (psykers) like us." So presumably he had an early plan during the uniting of earth. The emperor realised the advantages of using psykers but probably never foresaw how much of a damaging influence the misuse of sorcery could be. Personally I've always thought that ultimately the emperor wished for humanity to reach it's full potential both psychically and territorially.


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

I think he saw them as a stop-gap measure. In the meanwhile, Humanity needs psykers to keep the Imperium running. Ultimately, though, he wanted to free humanity of its reliance on psykers (and the warp) by creating a human webway system.

It's like a drug to fight off a disease. Yeah, the drug has sideeffects, but it's no worse than the disease. The ideal would be curing the disease and getting off the drug. In the meanwhile, however, you need to keep taking the drug.


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## BlackGuard (Sep 10, 2010)

In my honest opinion, the Emperor not only supported psykers, but it was his ultimate goal to infact raise all of Humanity up from their current levels, and forge a psychic race beyond anything that the Eldar could imagine.

The biggest indicator to me is that the Emperor himself is a psyker. The greatest the galaxy has ever, and perhaps will ever, produce. He is virtually immune to the effects of the Chaos Gods and thus far he has not fallen prey to daemons or warp-agents. Therefore this is a clear sign that being psyker is not inherently evil, that there is a point when one can ultimately master their psychic gifts and raise above the petty temptations of the Chaos Gods -- who ultimately feed upon emotion.

You see the Emperor's Great Plan is vastly complex. Many claim that he united Earth and drove Humanity into the stars upon the basis of Manifest Destiny. To reunite the old Human Empire, but this is not the whole truth to me. You see the Galaxy offers endless oppurtunity and randomness. Even the Emperor did not truly comprehend what lay in the darkness of the void for so many times did Humanity face enemies it could hardly comprehend, but less prepare for. These creatures offered a variable to the Emperor's Great Plan, an unknown factor if you will. He could not permit Humanity to be tampered with by xenos and thus his ultimate goal was to extinguish as much xeno threat as possible.

Although even there it is but a small portion of his plan. For his unification of Humanity was to ensure that as few human worlds as possible lay outside of his domain. If too many were beyond his reach or too far from his light, his ultimate plans could face unforseeable problems. For to me, the Emperor's plan was to make ever human an echo of himself. That is not to say each man would be the Emperor Incarnate, wielding swords of fire and their children being primarchs -- not quite so much. The Emperor had found the secret to resisting the temptation of Chaos and perhaps it was knowledge that Humanity would be required to slowly consume ... slowly come to terms with.

Remember, he was building the Human Web-Way per-say. He did this so that Humanity would have no need to travel into the Warp and therefore would no longer be so harshly exposed to the vile threats that lurk in those domains. No more Geller Fields, no more daemons scrapping at the hulls -- they would be safe during travel. This lack of exposure, combined with the Emperor's desire to maintain Humanity's ignorance of the Warp Gods was all apart of the ultimate design. Humanity would travel in their own web-way, free of taint, they could never be tempted by knowledge or curiosity for they would never know.

Now the minor warp disturbances, the occasionally rifts, and hell even Slannesh's afterbirth (half-formed Eye of Terror) could be countered with relative ease. If Humanity was brought to heel, each man's individualism quietly snuffed out, and their minds shielded by the slow indoctrination of mental defenses from birth -- they would never be tempted or tainted. They would naturally, by instinct resist Chaos. The occasion rebel who broke from the ranks would be quashed, he would be declared a madman and killed. The Imperium would never know the truth.

Ultimately the Chaos Gods, perhaps in the Emperor's mind, would be starved. The xeno races would could never be trusted to comply were now virtually extinct, every day the Astartes Legions and the Imperial Army rolled ever onward crushing whatever limited resistance remained -- being led by Warmaster Horus the Great, Favored Son of the Emperor. Humanity would travel by means of web-way within its own realm, only permitting the most battle-hardened and mentally tested of its species to travel via the Warp for military purposes only. The Chaos Gods would eventually become weakened, they would never die but with the Galaxy's largest and most dominate species reigned in and controlled harshly -- yet of their own free will, they would at best become whispers in the darkest cave, upon the most tainted of worlds. They would be nothing.

In short -- the Emperor's opinion of psykers was a double edged sword. He hated them during the Great Crusade, for they were too vast and too uncontrollable, but he ultimately saw in them the salvation of Humanity.


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## raider1987 (Dec 3, 2010)

What is the soul binding ritual?


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

Blackguard, I'm still not buying the Emperor wanted the entire human race to become psykers.

The webway was a clear indication that he wanted to rely less on psykers and the dangers of traveling the warp.

He also struck down Magnus's use of psykers within his Legion.

If the entirety of humanity became psykers that would only increase the likelihood of feeding the Chaos gods. Normal humans barely register in the warp. Psykers are bright flares that draw attention to them.


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## Giant Fossil Penguin (Apr 11, 2009)

The Emperor wanted all Humans to become Psykers because that was the evolutionary path Humanity was already on. The huge increase in Psyker numbers and their being so widespread throughout the galaxy makes them unaviodable; no matter how many the Black Ships hoover up, there are still millions of them out there.
The Human Webway is, Ithink, a bit of a red herring when it comes to the Emperor's intentions for Humanity. I think it was a stop-gap measure, a way for him to break the hold Chaos could have on Humanity by making a seperation from its reliance on the Warp. Had the Webway project worked, then Human galactic travel and communications would have become massively easier. Without Warp travel the Astronomican would not have been needed, freeing up the Emperor's strength for new projects. This is what he was working for, I believe, the trying to buy himself time and space from the influence of the Warp in which he could shepherd Humanity through the traumas of its full psychic awakening.

Raider: The Soulbinding is when a Psyker is exposed to a fraction of the Emperor's psychic power, by connecting them briefly to the Golden Throne (not directly, but to an offshoot somewhere in the Imperial Palace on Terra). This exposure confers a measure of protection from Warp predators and the touch of Chaos; these are the Sanctioned Psykers and Astropaths found throughout the Imperium. The Human body isn't able to cope with the power of the Emperor, however, and in most cases the Psyker will lose their sight/smell/taste/hearing, a combination or all of them.

GFP


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## Dogbeard (Apr 15, 2011)

I'm with hailene on this. I don't think the Emperor hated psykers, but he was afraid of them stirring up Chaos. His mind had traveled the warp and he knew what lurked there and what could yet come to be through humanity's actions and emotions. Ultimately, his goal might have been to unlock humanity's psychic potential, but in 30K, he seemed to look on them as children who needed to kept from sticking their hands in the fire. And, of course, with an Imperial Webway system, the Imperium would no longer be reliant on and beholden to a caste of hereditary psykers, the Navigators.

BTW, good description of Soul Binding, GFP.


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## BlackGuard (Sep 10, 2010)

*!!POTENTIAL SPOILER FOR A THOUSAND SONS BOOK!!*

Mind you all, in _A Thousand Sons_ when Magnus broke through the Emperor's Throne Room and his body of light was presented he saw a vision, given to him by the Emperor himself presumably. That vision was of Magnus upon the Golden Throne, ironically the very thing he just half-destroyed, guiding Humanity's psychic future. That was his purpose, not to merely be the Emperor's psychic persoanlity, but his ultimate design was to guide Humanity into psychichood as a species.

Why did the Emperor stop Magnus then? The answer, to me, is simple. Magnus reached too far, too quickly. Beyond that the Emperor did not nessecarily want Magnus to stop, if you remember in the book Magnus himself stated that the Emperor was being pressured into this decision by the narrow-minded in the Imperium. The Emperor, if there was a part of him that wanted to outright sanction Magnus, then it was out of fear of what Magnus may find within the Warp -- not because the Emperor feared psykers in general.


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## Dogbeard (Apr 15, 2011)

BlackGuard said:


> *!!POTENTIAL SPOILER FOR A THOUSAND SONS BOOK!!*
> 
> That vision was of Magnus upon the Golden Throne, ironically the very thing he just half-destroyed, guiding Humanity's psychic future. That was his purpose, not to merely be the Emperor's psychic persoanlity, but his ultimate design was to guide Humanity into psychichood as a species.


*[Spoilers Below: Click to View]*


That's not exactly what it says. It says, "He saw himself atop the Golden Throne, using his fearsome powers to guide humanity to its destiny as rulers of the galaxy. He was to be his father’s chosen instrument of ultimate victory."

Destiny as rulers of the galaxy and instrument of ultimate victory doesn't necessarily mean that humanity would become psychic through Magnus. It could simply mean that Magnus would be the one to utilize the Golden Throne for the purpose of creating an Imperial Webway network for humanity, thereby making them rulers of the galaxy. Later in the book, the mirror daemon/god shows Magnus a vision of himself as nothing more than a withered husk sitting on the Golden Throne, presumably regulating the Imperial Webway.


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## forkmaster (Jan 2, 2010)

The funny thing is that even after Nikea, the Dark Angels keep their librarians. Fallen Angels takes place 203rd or 204th year of the Great Crusade, 2-3 years after the decree was installed. And wasnt there psykers fighting in the army in the book Legion?


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## Serpion5 (Mar 19, 2010)

BlackGuard said:


> *!!POTENTIAL SPOILER FOR A THOUSAND SONS BOOK!!*
> 
> Mind you all, in _A Thousand Sons_ when Magnus broke through the Emperor's Throne Room and his body of light was presented he saw a vision, given to him by the Emperor himself presumably. That vision was of Magnus upon the Golden Throne, ironically the very thing he just half-destroyed, guiding Humanity's psychic future. That was his purpose, not to merely be the Emperor's psychic persoanlity, but his ultimate design was to guide Humanity into psychichood as a species.
> 
> Why did the Emperor stop Magnus then? The answer, to me, is simple. Magnus reached too far, too quickly. Beyond that the Emperor did not nessecarily want Magnus to stop, if you remember in the book Magnus himself stated that the Emperor was being pressured into this decision by the narrow-minded in the Imperium. The Emperor, if there was a part of him that wanted to outright sanction Magnus, then it was out of fear of what Magnus may find within the Warp -- not because the Emperor feared psykers in general.





Dogbeard said:


> *[Spoilers Below: Highlight to View]*
> That's not exactly what it says. It says, "He saw himself atop the Golden Throne, using his fearsome powers to guide humanity to its destiny as rulers of the galaxy. He was to be his father’s chosen instrument of ultimate victory."
> 
> Destiny as rulers of the galaxy and instrument of ultimate victory doesn't necessarily mean that humanity would become psychic through Magnus. It could simply mean that Magnus would be the one to utilize the Golden Throne for the purpose of creating an Imperial Webway network for humanity, thereby making them rulers of the galaxy. Later in the book, the mirror daemon/god shows Magnus a vision of himself as nothing more than a withered husk sitting on the Golden Throne, presumably regulating the Imperial Webway.


I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that they showed the future as it actually happened. Magnus saw the decaying form of the Emperor howling on the throne, and assumed it to be himself. 

It would not be the first time the servants of Chaos have showed a twisted version of the truth to manipulate mortals.


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## Dogbeard (Apr 15, 2011)

More Potential Spoilers



It probably was a deception. It could well have been the Emperor on the Golden Throne. On the other hand, part of the vision was: "All was chaos, but for a slender corridor of stillness, through which Magnus felt the passage of many souls." This is presumably a vision of the future Imperial Webway, to which Magnus would be bound.


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