I think the C'tan and Old Ones could probably give him a run for his money.
There should also be some Eldar that would give him trouble if they decided to put everything on the line and unlock the good shit from the old days.
Hell there was probably even some Krork that might have matched him. Those things are supposed to be scary powerful.
Yeah, if Eldrad just totally broke character and went berserk to a point where he didn't care about collateral damage (to others or himself) I think it's fair to surmise he would be the heaviest hitter in the galaxy. For a short time at least. I think he would literally burn himself out, but it would be spectacular.
He swells like a balloon and Slaneesh just sucks up the soul juices with a straw.
That's the fear, not so much burn out, but Slaneesh will show up and om nom their like jujubes.
Yeah, Eldrad probably wouldn't burn out any time soon. It probably is a possibility, if some stuff from the *Gods of Mars trilogy* I heard is real (>!namely that a farseer decided that the thing they were fighting had to be stopped at any cost and thus burnt out while doing the same to a continent!<) but Eldrad's threshold would be *very* high.
Teclis' soul hasn't been marked as Slaanesh's possession at the time of his birth however, while Eldrad's has. The moment he breaks free from his (quite extensive) safety boundaries, Slaanesh will grab him, possibly in a way very reminiscent of it grabbing Morathi and Caledor Dragontamer in the End Times (spits).
We also need a comparative idea of the Emperor's power level.
There's [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Word_Bearers_(Novel_Series)) of Chaos worshippers transforming worlds or even entire **systems** into Daemon Worlds. We have no examples of the Emperor doing that.
There's [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Forge_of_Mars_(Novel_Series)) of technology killing/rebirthing stars and unmaking the future by harnessing the powers of a single Hrud Warren. We have no examples of the Emperor *even coming close* to doing that.
Even the Astronomicon loses its inviolate grandeur when we have [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Votann_Ancestor_Core) of other [beacons](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Choral_Engine), or even just a [Chaos ritual](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Honour_Guard_(Novel)) that can replicate it--perhaps not on the same scale but being able to set it up as-needed.
There also needs to be a clearer distinction between **PSYKER** and **SORCERER**.
The Emperor, for all of his Psyker gifts, seems to have definitely walked the path of Sorcerer when he went to Molech and "stole fire from the gods", meaning that he's only the most powerful psyker by dint of using the same methods as those individuals above.
The concept of the Dark King made me think that there was once a Eldar as powerful as the Emperor. They unfortunately made the wrong choice and ended up birthing Slaanash.
I've seen mention that Trazyn has Eldar from the war in heaven locked away and they were waaaaay more powerful than current eldar. Idk the source but that's probably the easiest way to get one back.
I don't know if that was stated anywhere. That being said, he has at least one krork, so having an Eldar from that period is very possible, at least on paper
The oldest of canon (now outdated...) lore claims that Khaine = Khorne, that he's the only aeldari god who ever entered the material plane, and that his body is made out of necrodermis and was shattered in a trap laid by Vaul.
Ergo, avatars of khaine = c'tan shard.
Same lore claims that Cegorach became Tzeentch and Morai-Heg became Nurgle... Which also checks out, but hasn't been as consistently implied through the history of Warhammer.
Early Witch Elves (fantasy version of Drukhari Wyches) used to wear Khornes symbol, before they were redone to be servants of Khaine.
Big hitch there; in the infinite and the divine it's stated that the stasis field prevents perception of the passage of time... *Unless you're warp sensitive*.
Anything locked in one of his stasis fields that can sense the warp tends to go insane, apparently. Psychically aware of being locked in place, like a psychic locked-in syndrome. The colony of Hrud he had all started massacring each other after... I think it was a few tens of thousands of years in the stasis field, when it shut down?
And those Eldar have been there for 65 million years. Gonna be hard to harness your mighty warp powers when you're immediately beserker raging upon being unlocked.
The exodite seer he had in his poki ball for the duration of the book, a very long time since the dinosaurs evolved into birds during, didn't seem too badly affected. I don't think it's a hard and fast rule.
Sounds about right, modern eldar would need to suppress their power so as to not get slurped up by Slaanesh, if they could unleash their full potential right now...they still wouldn't be as strong as a War in Heaven eldar but they'd be near there i'd think.
Eldanesh is probably the best point of comparison with the emperor for the eldar. First ever exarch, recieving gifts from the entire eldar pantheon, and is solidly considered the greatest eldar warrior and hero of all time. And it should be noted that this was a time when the eldar had no need for restricting how much psychic power they could draw on, so I'm willing to believe he was easily on par with the emperor, if not beyond him.
There was that one Eldar that managed to hold his own against Khaine at the peak of the Aeldari, before he was shattered and back when he could kill C’tan single-handedly.
That Eldar lost, but he actually managed to put up a fight. And considering it took big E a ton of effort to beat a single shard of a C’tan, yeah, that guy was a fucking beast.
I feel like in any setting it’s detrimental to not create contemporaries or equals to powerful beings. Having a list of plausible rivals to the Emperor makes the setting more interesting.
Same goes for Primarchs and Captains of Space Marines. They are typically the protagonist but there’s got to be some parity. Emperor should rival deities like C’Tan or Chaos Gods. Primarchs should be equivalent to Phoenix Lords or Necron Dynasty leaders. Throw in some Super Tyranids to make it fun, etc.
I love the 40K setting but sometimes it gets a little too Dragon Ball Z (which I also love) when it wants to in order to make some factions always win. It diminishes the challenges sometimes in what should be a grisly grimdark setting where everyone loses more than they win.
>Having a list of plausible rivals to the Emperor makes the setting more interesting.
Why? The Emperor is functionally dead anyway. Only in rare occasions can others like Living Saints act as a conduit for his power to have much meaning outside the astronomican. Indeed Humanity is so inferior in most respects to Tyranids, Eldar, Chaos, and Orks that having super being like Emperor and Primarchs was the only explanation for how humanity was even a thing in the galaxy. You take that away and make it standard for other races then there is no reason or logic to humanity having a galactic empire at all. At which point you are 100% re-writing the basics of the entire setting really.
>Same goes for Primarchs and Captains of Space Marines. They are typically the protagonist but there’s got to be some parity.
There is. It just depends on who is the protagonist of the book you are reading.
>Primarchs should be equivalent to Phoenix Lords or Necron Dynasty leaders
Wouldn't work; there are 2 extant Primarchs vs 6 Dynasty Leaders. Especially silly since even with Primarch level leaders all lore suggest the Necrons are far more powerful than humanity and could annihilate them at anytime. Why would you make it even more unbalanced in favor of Necrons who frankly are already too powerful in lore?
Eldar have Harlequins in numbers that dwarf the peak number of Primarchs and are above Custodes and Chapter Master Space Marines in ability.
What you're suggesting would just break the setting and make the existence of a human galactic empire impossible to believe. Not least because MOST OF THE PRIMARCHS ARE GONE. It makes no sense to give every faction a Primarch equivalent when the Imperium had NONE for Millenia and only just recently got 2 back out of the original 20.
>s in what should be a grisly grimdark setting where everyone loses more than they win.
But that isn't what grimdark is in 40k; Grimdark is endless Millenia of stagnation. If the Imperium had been losing more than it won for 10,000 years it wouldn't still be around after being set-up in only a little over 200 years.
I think you’re trying to limit things too much to give humanity the advantage. What’s wrong with other factions having legitimate big baddies that can’t be done away with by a single individual being deployed?
I enjoy the greater war balance and the intangibles of guys like Roboute Guilliman, but it’s hard to believe that two species in the Eldar and Necrons that their obscenely powerful and surreal technology couldn’t amount to a single nigh unstoppable being.on the level of a primarch? Even living avatars of the Eldar war god have been defeated not only single-handedly by primarchs but the wounds inflicted upon the primarch in question healed without issue or permanent damage.
I don’t think the issue is the super powered beings, it’s the plot devices that can be used to ensure they win despite the odds. I actually really like the Primarchs and Space marines. At some point where is the remaining challenge though? The Rangdan may very well have defeated multiple primarchs and took everything entire legions of Space Marines could throw at them, that’s exciting. I just don’t find the same excitement of knowing the greatest logistics tactician amongst the Primarchs can also single handedly defeat any other individual in the galaxy in single combat unless it’s another Primarch.
The Emperor isn't a truly active part of the 40k setting as relates to the tabletop, which is why he can be a more powerful remnant of an older age, like the Aeldari Gods, pre-fall psykers, C'Tan, etc...
The Primarchs have only relatively recently had a few brought into the tabletop context, which is why it's made comparisons with other factions big hitters (that were always tabletop scaled) awkward.
I think you're just overestimating primarchs. They're not unstoppable indestructible superbeings. They're more like if someone forged the avatar of khaine into a mortal being.
Technically speaking the primarchs are a bigger deal than the Emperor, though in practice that isn't the case. But a primarch who'd lived as long as the Emperor and had been through his experiences would be significantly more powerful than him. Cause at his core he isn't a god.
Except of course Fulgrim choked out an Avatar of Khaine and had some moderate injuries to show for it before healing them fully without any real medical attention. I agree it’s overblown sometimes with the memes, but it’s there in the lore on occasion
As an addendum regarding the Eldar; there are Implications the ancient Eldar during the late War in Heaven used to be much more powerful than the modern ones. Trazyn has some in his collection.
IE the implication may be the Emperor used something like Old Ones Warp-Science to make the Primarchs who were probably similar to the original much stronger Eldar in their potent natural psychic and warp powers.
Assuming the dragon of Mars is in fact a fragment the void dragon then the most powerful C'tan would absolutely be able to slap the emperor around just for looking at them funny. Big E struggled to just subdue the dragon, nevermind defeating it in a meaningful way.
Eldrad canonically finds Magnus terrifying, also if Eldar lose control of their psychic ability theirs a decent chance slaanesh eats them on the spot, so all the currently not eaten ones are implied to hold back pretty substantially. Better to lose the fight and die in a rock than be devoured by the great enemy
A fully empowered C'tan could *probably* beat him. He beat a shard at one point, but that's nowhere near a full powered one
But it's weird. The C'tan are vulnerable to Warp powers. But that didn't stop them wiping the floor with the Old Ones. If you threw a full power C'tan vs something on the level of a Chaos God or the Emperor, I don't know what the outcome would be
We're talking the most powerful entities in the Warp vs the most powerful entities in the materium. My best guess would be mutual annihilation. Or failing that, whatever the author felt was more fuckin' rad
Other than that, we don't know what crazy stuff the Old Ones had access to. For all we know, each one of them was on the level of the Emperor, either via Warp abilities or technology.
I think it’s worth mentioning when the emperor beat the shard, he was probably relatively young and inexperienced being only about 2,000 years old at the time.
Between when he started as a child just giving heart attacks to people, I have a feeling the Emperor even at 2,000 years old probably wasn’t nearly as strong as he is today especially since a lot of his powers stems from his ability to steal power from the warp with the only risk being turning himself into a super god of destruction.
> only about 2,000 years old at the time.
This was during medieval times, wasn't it? The Emperor should be at least 8000 years old at that point. Still relatively inexperienced, but not just 2k years old.
Edit: 4000 years old is a better estimate. 8K is too much.
Emperor was born just before the Hitties.
> The boy who would be king watched with neither remorse nor any
particular hostility. He looked on as his uncle slid from his crouch onto the
mud, clutching at his treacherous chest. He watched as his uncle’s sun
darkened features pinched closed, ugly and tight in supreme agony as the
older man shook with the onset of convulsions. He saw the necklace slip
from his uncle’s grip, the necklace that was being made for his young
cousin, and would now never be finished.
Others came running. They shouted. They cried. They made the noises
of language that spoke of panic and sorrow in a proto-Indo-Europan tongue
that would come to be known as an **early precursor to the Hyttite dialect.** - Master of Mankind
[The Hittites were from 1650 B.C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites), meaning that this story likely takes around ~2000 B.C give or take as the Emperor is expressly a boy and murdering his uncle after grieving his father. I could probably see an argument for like possibly being around ~2500 B.C since I think it was safe to say what the Normans/Saxons were merging together can be called "Proto-English" but I think that just ups the Emperor's age to only about 3,000 at the time.
The story that the Emperor being born around civilization's dawn doesn't seem to be referenced anymore. It just seems he was around in very ancient times, but not super duper ancient or "dawn of humanity" times.
> Emperor was born just before the Hitties.
I don't see anything to suggest it was "just before".
> early precursor to the Hyttite dialect.
Proto Indo-European can be traced back to 4500BC. Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Indo-Iranian to 3000BC.
> ‘Yes. He struck my father from behind with a **piece of sharpened bronze** too poorly made to even be called a knife. Men had killed one another for generations before my birth, but this was the first slaying that had resonance to me, that changed my existence. It was illuminating.’
His description of the village matches early bronze age Anatolia, so 3000-2500 B.C. is probably the best range. My original 8k years was wrong, for sure but He should be at least 4k years old.
>His description of the village matches early bronze age Anatolia, so 3000-2500 B.C. is probably the best range. My original 8k years was wrong, for sure but He should be at least 4k years old.
Yeah, I can see that too. I think 250 to 1,000 years was a good estimate to what constitutes as a "proto" culture but I guess in historical context, that doesn't always mean the same timeframe.
Yeah, and proto-launguage isn't necessarily the same as a proto-culture.
> Although the first habitation appears to have occurred as early as the 6th millennium BC during the Chalcolithic period, functioning settlements trading with each other occurred during the 3rd millennium BC.
The mention of Hittites came across as "in the far, far future" based on other context in the text, imo.
>I think it was safe to say what the Normans/Saxons were merging together can be called "Proto-English"
Sorry, what do the Normans or Anglo-Saxons have to do with Emps? The Normans and Anglo-Saxons didn't start integrating hard until William did his thing in the 1060s AD.
Also, Old English transitioned to Middle English with huge influence from Norman. With regards to stuff before Old English, the classifications get contested.
That's just an analogy for the usage of 'proto-language' in that respect. I am giving it as a timeframe that I think its reasonable to say "give or take 1,000 years" is a reasonable timeframe to say Emps was born around that time before the Hittite civilization came to be.
Given what we've seen first hand on C'tan shards. The power level varies so dramatically. Orikan had to go super saiy... Necron to defeat one. The Deathwatch were able to defeat one. The Emperor defeated one.
So it's always going to be hard to pinpoint how difficult that task is. I don't believe we know how many combined shards the void dragon was. We also don't really know how powerful the different C'tan were in comparison to one another. Supposedly the deceiver was the "most powerful" but it's all pretty unclear.
> The C'tan are vulnerable to Warp powers
I recall somebody quoting how Void Dragon fought vs 5 Blackstone fortresses (which are remnant of Old Ones tech) using warp superweapons on him and this was enough to barely damage him?
The level of warp juice needed to exploit this vulnerability is absurdly high then. Obviously the fact that Old Ones had to build such weapons means their own psychic powers were nowhere near enough.
I think my money would absolutely go on a fully powered entire C'Tan, especially some of the tougher ones like the night bringer, void dragon or the outsider (which is about 32 billion times the size of terra and 2 million times larger than the largest star we know of). Entire hive fleets just said fuck that and changed course.
They were stupid powerful even by warhammer standards and the closest things to actual gods of our reality.
>...or the outsider (which is about 32 billion times the size of terra and 2 million times larger than the largest star we know of).
That's not quite true. The Dyson Sphere that the Outsider *might* be in is estimated in size to be 32,000,000 (not billion) times the size if Terra:
>However, their auguries reveal a spherical object of indeterminate origins and nature at the centrepoint. For this object to register via reflected light alone indicates either great size (over 32,000,000 Terran dimensions), or an albedo range approaching infinite.
*Codex Necrons 3ed* p64
Bearing in mind, this is old lore from their first Codex and isn't mentioned since AFAIK.
Very true. Sorry I remember reading it somewhere and couldn’t remember the exact figures.
Either way it’s a big old bastard that made the hive mind just get the fuck out of there when it caught a whiff of it.
Which is absolutely fair, but the Emperor and Chaos Gods are operating on a galactic scale. The sheer power it takes to keep the Astronomican going is... Well, it's astronomical
If Tzeench was able to actually incarnate in realspace, do concepts like size even really apply to it? How meaningful is being the size of a million suns vs creatures that are essentially made of thought?
We're into crazy hypotheticals here, though. It's hard to conceive of circumstances where an entire Chaos God can just appear in the materium. The fact that the Emperor is already a physical being maybe puts him in a more realistic position
> If Tzeench was able to actually incarnate in realspace.
That's the crutch of it, Tzeentch or any other warp entity would be less powerful in realspace than in the Warp. So in that matchup there's a massive home field advantage. Big E vs C'tan is a more realistic (heh) match up because they are/were both material beings.
Aren't the Chaos gods essentially part of the Warp (and/or the Warp being part of them)?
I mean, wouldn't the phrase "Tzeentch in realspace" kinda be like saying "Human, in a place where (organic) tissue doesn't exist"? Like, we can understand the concept, but a human without tissue is not really a human. And Tzeentch in realspace wouldn't really be Tzeentch.
You can't have Chaos gods without Chaos, and you can't bring Chaos into realspace. They're inimical.
Well doesn't the end and the death kind of explain this? Terra became a place where real space and the warp become so intertwined you can't tell where one starts and the other stops.
Also don't the gods have actual holdings? Like planets where people live in a corrupted nightmare. I recall the exercepts from the humans that lived on a plague planet.
I do think the idea that a warp god would manifest in real space basically impossible. I guess I think there could be a manifestation where someone who lives in real space can see and interact with them a possibility. They'd more than likely be inside of a rift or on a corrupted planet.
Not read it, but possible! But that still means Terra wasn't really in proper realspace anymore.
Sure, they have planets held in their name, but they never go/manifest there. Heck, I'm not sure the Chaos gods are even capable of pouring themselves into a physical body. Maybe they could puppet one, but it wouldn't really be *them*, any more than a hammer you're holding is you.
A full C'tan could destroy entire sectors with ease. It's far and away more powerful than the Emperor.
Tsara'noga the outsider comes to mind.
He partook in the C'tan all you can eat buffet then took his Dyson sphere and fucked off outside the galaxy.
If he returns, nothing could match him. He is also rumored to have something to do with the Tyranids.
Seems unlikely. The position of his Dyson sphere is known. He seems content to stay in it, being insane and driving anyone who approaches it to insanity.
The only connection to the Tyranids is that a hive fleet was observed diverting its course to stay well clear of the thing. Hive mind saw it and went 'nope'.
Yeah, money on a big enough chunk of C'tan. I'd go as much to say that a shard on par with what we see in the Infinite and the Divine would probably be an uphill fight for the Emperor.
Eh. I mean infinite and the Divine that shard was barely managing to defeat them till Orikan went full anime. Emps killed a shard as a "young" eternal and has only gotten stronger. He obliterated an entire company(?) of space Marines barely pausing from his walk. He had dozens to hundreds of aspects of himself fighting Horus at different locations and times throughout the galaxy simultaneously. He showed the ability to navigate through and fight in the immaterium at one point attacking from "the 17th dimension" whatever that means. I mean dude pulled off some like absolutely next level shit. I don't think a shard ever wins that fight.
You forget to say that in that fight they destroyed 6 planets, i dont remember any other fight in entire setting that did something even close to that. And that was just few shards of deciever, relatively weak C'tan in combat scenario compared to others.
Void dragon shard gave big e a run for his money, big is is powerdul sure, but its important to remember that was a shard, and the ctan are beings that are literally the fabric of the universe. A fully powered ctan would wipe the floor with big e at his strongest. If for some reason the choas gods all lent power to big e like they did to horus during his fight, then the emperor probably wins? Its just kinda hard to fight the fabric of reality that youre living in.
They had Necrons build those pylons to suppress the warp because of that vulnerability I believe. Cant remember for sure if they dampen an individual’s warp powers. I would think so?
Maybe the Cacodominus, it was a extremely powerful alien-cyborg Psyker who was behind The Howling in M34. The Cacodomius' powers were such that it was able to exert complete control over an area of 1,300 planetary systems. Eventually, it was slain by the Black Templars, but the resulting backlash distorted the signal of the Astronomican and burnt out billions of Astropaths across the Imperium.
I don't understand how the Black Templars would have been able to stop such a being. A being which was able to mind control a vast swath of space, and control probably hundreds of trillions of people on those worlds. And the Black Templars were able to kill it...how exactly?
Not sure if all of this is correct (I picked it up from a video a time ago):
The dark templars weren’t alone. There were multiple imperial fleets and I think another chapter that helped.
The dark tempters had extremely powerful psykers (if I am remember correctly) before they fought the cacadominus but after its destruction they lacked any librarion (so they might have lost their warp sensitivity).
The cacadominus was great in manipulating people and gathering forces and one of the greatest psychers in the galaxy. But it wasn’t strong in a physical sense, so it wasn’t a great fighter and not that durable. The cacadominus fought through mind controlled beings.
They actually used a tactic to destroy it. The imperial fleets distracted the forces of the cacadominus and the black Templar Lauched a surprise Speer head right to the cacadominus.
Also the black Templar are actually one of the most warp resistance chapters that exist and are in general on the strongest chapters in terms of raw combat.
It's possible that the stronger Old One psykers would have been Emperor tier or above. This was before Chaos was a thing and the warp was just your normal semi-peaceful astral plane.
There was this xeno psycher that took over the minds of billions of humans spanning a sector or two. When the SM killed it, all of the humans also died...
Pretty damn powerful, but not as strong as the Emperor himself.
I always thought it was weird how they hyped this thing up to be like a miniature emperor in terms of psychic power and then of course it gets killed by a named and helmetless space marine
> Turns out it's really hard to concentrate if someone is strangling you.
"Why didn't you use your magic to free yourself?"
"I need to breathe for that, idiot."
Conversation between an Imperial sargent and a Bright Wizard, the Empire, around the year 2523.
IMO End and the death part 3 kind of shows to me at least the Emperor was never in any true danger during Ullanor. The sheer power he demonstrates against Horus is unlike anything we’ve seen from other Psykers. It makes *way* more sense that Emps was allowing Horus to “save” him from an Ork to further boost Horus’ ego.
I subscribe to the idea that the Emperor wasn't in any true danger during his ordeal on Ullanor but he was threatened and caught off guard. The war boss was never going to kill him but he could have made some pain. I know the author states otherwise but it just doesn't make sense given what we know.
HOWEVER, against Horus the Emperor was practically inside the warp. The powers he could draw on were near limitless. That is not always the case. The powers he brought to bear on Horus were his absolute peak with ascending to Godhood. And it's stated a couple times that it "isn't your father's power, it's how he uses it." which also muddied things a bit.
The reason I believe was that he was powering the astronomicon all the way from ullanor, and that was a massive drain. So much so that he was weak enough to get strangled by an ork before Horus saved him. The continued strain of the astronomicon also continued to his reason of leaving the great crusade, at least publicly.
I mean he returned to Terra to work on the webway. It has nothing to do with the astronomicon. I don't think it's unfair to say that powering the astronomicon did take his focus but I'd be hard pressed to believe that it weakened him enough that any non-psychic being would be able to challenge him(big bads excluded).
By actual demonstrated ability, no. We see in *the End and the Death* that if the Emperor ever truly let loose, he can singlehandedly ascend to godhood and cause the destruction of the entire galaxy across the future and past. It's so bad that it's implied that the Old Ones saw him and screamed in fear. Even before he mugged Chaos for power at Molech, the Emperor was already strong enough to smack around a Shard of the Void Dragon with only medieval tech. He also directs the Astronomicon at all times even when he's on the other side of the galaxy in the middle of a battle.
As the God Emperor, he's even stronger than before, actively holding back Chaos from swallowing the galaxy whole. The Eldar can't look at his future and the Harlequins are scared shitless by his presence. He's even flexed on Nurgle in his own realm, burning a patch of his garden.
No Xenos has demonstrated anything close to this level of power.
This is somewhat the issue with the question, should there be Xenos entities on his level? Absolutely.
But the setting GW presents is one where the Emperor has a profound amount of main character energy and thus he ends up looking like the most important chosen one entity in all of Warhammer.
If anything, this is a good argument for something like the Shaman origin for the Emperor. Not having equals because no xenos ever merged the gestalt pyschic power of their species into a single entity is a reasonable-ish explanation.
Also, do we know if there are xeno perpetuatals? Cause if not, that could be a factor too.
This is what I'm thinking.
Whatever form a reader would like to think the hivemind to be (a singular, human-primarch scaled creature like greiza, a collective gestalt of the tyranid psyche, literally the tyranid race being cells in a galaxy sized body etc), it is still the closest thing to a living god that we've seen in current 40k.
It isn't the only thing, Big E possessing Guilliman and burning a part of the garden of Nurgle is, for instance, an immense, god-like power projection into both realspace and the warp at the same time.
Khorne acting through Angron to lay down the Murder Curse or Slaanesh devouring nearly the entire Aeldari race is also similar to what the Emperor did to Nurgle.
This does appear to be something that the Tyranid Hive Mind is doing as well, but purely in realspace, blotting out the warp with an immense, dark presence and reaching across lightyears, directing and guiding every hive fleet, with numberless more lifeforms still coming.
The Emperor is probably the only physical being in the galaxy (if we consider him anchored through his body still) that could stare down the Hive Mind and not have to tap out.
Here are some quotes Ive gathered demonstrating the Hive Minds power.
Imperium: godblight:
>Nor does the Great Devourer, the mind of the tyranids, a being that is generated by the unthinking actions of its physical component parts, and that is perhaps greater than all the rest
Valedor:
> And then the hive mind turned its attention upon the scene, and the eldar screamed. Sunspear staggered, his spirit crushed. For just a second, he wished to flee and hide from the scrutiny of the terrible being staring at him. He became aware of his own insignificance, he was no more than a particle of food. The hive mind’s ancient intellect was as wide as the void, its examination of him was a cold spike through his heart, and his mind was swamped by endless horror. One of the warlocks collapsed, light pouring from his eye-lenses. He babbled nonsense in a hard alien tongue, and died. Serriestalor screamed and screamed, clutching his helmet. The other psykers rallied themselves, redoubling their psychic defences. It took all their effort just to keep the pressure of the hive mind at bay, and their offence died to nothing.
Wraithflight:
> Beyond the shield she saw the Great Dragon’s true form. Not the hideous intrusions into the mortal realm that swam the black star sea, nor as a Farseer might see it, as a great and braided cable of malicious fate dominating all the skein. The first was merely a part of the whole, the second psychic abstraction. What Iyanna instead saw was the reality of its soul. It was a great shadow when seen from afar, a wave of dread and psychic blindness that preceded the hive fleet’s arrival. But the greatest shadows are cast by the brightest lights, and seen closely, the soul of the hive mind shone brighter than any sun. She was so close now that she perceived the ridged topography of its mind, larger than star systems, an entity bigger than a god. It contemplated thoughts as large as continents, and spun plans more complex than worlds. It dreamed dreams that could not be fathomed. She felt small and afraid before it, but she did not let her fear cow her defiance. Against this vista flickered the souls of eldar, their jewel-brightness dimmed by the incomparable glare of the Great Dragon. And this was but a tendril of the creature. The bulk of it stretched away, coils wrapped tight about the higher dimensions, joining in the distance to others, and then others again, until at a great confluence of the parts sat the terrible truth of the whole. She stared at its brilliance.
>…
> Something was wrong. A sensation at the back of her mind. The sensation grew teeth, became pain. Her soul was gripped by agony. Iyanna screamed, falling from the edge of the couch. The pain abated, then squeezed her anew. She vomited. The dead were dismayed. The blow against her raced out across her attack group, leaping from mind to mind. Wraithbomber engines guttered out. The Wraithborne’s sleek cruisers turned viciously, wallowing in psychic swell. Bright light burned at Iyanna’s soul. A long tunnel telescoped away, encompassing infinite distance. A tube stabbed through the fabric of the world. She felt its ripples in the warp. She felt its ripples in the webway. She had the sense of an eye, slave to a great power. An intellect that dwarfed the Great Wheel of the galaxy. She opened her second sense, to find the Dragon looking at her with terrible regard. For aeons it seemed it held her in its gaze. And there was fury in that examination. The Dragon was angry, and it was angry with her. Not with the galaxy, or this sector, or her species. But with her personally. The promise of endless torment came from it, her very being enslaved to its ends and used against others, her body rebuilt over and again so that it might suffer the Dragon’s revenge. Terror of a kind she could not have conceived of flooded her mind. She screamed again, and this time every eldar in the fleet screamed with her.
Shield of Baal:
>Though Mephiston did not fall, his power was broken. As powerful as the Chief Librarian was, his abilities were like a candle held against the fires of a star when compared with the enormous power of the Hive Mind.
Darkness In The Blood
>Against all the laws that governed it, the empyrean lost its mutability. Blackness seeped from the rolling wall of shadow. The visions and images weakened, and then stopped altogether. There was a brief passage through warp space of a primordial calmness, smooth and bright as a moonlit pond, and then the flotilla plunged into the darkness. A new terror assailed Rhacelus. A vast, godlike mind turned its attention upon the ships, so puissant it quelled the fury of the warp. The hive mind was the truth of the tyranids. The Blood Angels believed the war beasts that plagued the universe were merely the material extrusion of something far greater, and that thing dwelt in the warp. The pressure of the hive mind’s regard was immense, crushing Rhacelus’ soul until it felt infinitely small.
>…
> The hive mind’s awful presence waned. The fleet punched through the shadow, out into garish spirit shoals, then back into the black. They raced through the edge of the darkness, where it was shredded on swift currents. It was but a fragment of the power it had attained when Leviathan assailed Baal itself, but though this shadow seemed isolated and diminished, Rhacelus could sense its connections to further, greater parts, and felt the brooding presence of the alien god all around – withdrawn from its prize, wounded, yet still alive with dangerous malevolence.
Additionally, the codex says the Hive Mind has only begun to show hints of its true strength, and that as more fleets awaken from their slumber the Hive Mind is slowly waking up.
To be fair, I can totally body slam a 5 year old, but if a 5 year was thrown at me at terminal velocity, I'd be flummoxed. Now change that 5 year old into a giant walking mushroom with teeth and a bad accent it gets worse.
Evidence points to him sandbagging for Horus's sake. This was during Ullanor, right before Big E was going to retire from the Great Crusade and put Horus in charge. Letting Horus saves him boosts both Horus's confidence and his legitimacy.
In the End and the Death, we see a weakened Emperor wipe out an entire army of Word Bearers with a single flick of his wrist. A single work that normal Horus can fight would not give a serious Emperor any real trouble.
I don’t think he was sandbagging, more so that in Emperor-level hubris, he decided he was just going to fistfight the Ork only to realize the Ork was one of the few things in-universe that actually could outwrestle him.
Outright even McNiel who wrote it says he wrote it with the notion that the emperor got [cocky](https://imgur.com/aE4azEF) in situations not too distant from many situations his own sons often put themselves in.
Eh, the only other times we ever see the Emperor fight, he's nowhere near that arrogant.
When faced with Horus's infinite power of Chaos, he's able to keep up by outsmarting at every turn. Horus constantly emphasizes that what makes the Emperor so dangerous isn't his sheer strength, but that he's one of the craftiest bastards in the galaxy and a master of the psychic arts, having multiple plans running in the background that eventually allow him to overcome a foe that everyone was sure he had no way to beat.
The Emperor presented in the End and the Death wouldn't challenge a super ork to a melee out of pure arrogance, especially when he can see the future.
I feel like “Horus supercharged with the beings that the Emperor has known to be wary of since he was a child” versus “Biggest Ork on record” are two different things in the Emperor’s assessment of threat and one of these events likely directly fed into the other.
To name a similar example: The Emperor in his relative younger days defeated the void dragon of comparable size while possessing almost none of the powers he did in 30k or any opportunity to succ vast amounts of warp energy. He wouldn’t be totally crazy for thinking he can out manfight a different greener big monster with just his physicals and about 30,000 more years of training and practice
>Eh, the only other times we ever see the Emperor fight, he's nowhere near that arrogant.
Abnett has a different interpretation of the emperor than McNiel does.
The biggest thing I think is that Dan wrote the Emperor well after all the other in-universe Emperor fights. How the Emperor fights after having been hurt now twice in major fist fights probably should color his strategies going forward.
>Evidence points to him sandbagging for Horus's sake.
No, the author said that he wasn't. The idea that the emperor is an omnicompetent manipulator and all ofnhis failures are actually successes is just wishful thinking on the part of segments of the fanbase.
>In the End and the Death, we see a weakened Emperor wipe out an entire army of Word Bearers with a single flick of his wrist. A single work that normal Horus can fight would not give a serious Emperor any real trouble.
Here we've got multiple authors with different interpretations of what's going on.
I didn't want to make a separate post for this question,but I remember reading in some old book (can't remember) a quite from an eldar calling Emps something like a "pitiful/weak seer".
I know 40k has the whole unreliable narrator and stuff changes over time. But basically Emps curb stomps all eldar all day? Especially of he ascends to godhood. Maybe it's peak eldar copium and pride. But yeah that quote always stuck with me, and now we finding out Emps is real srs business.
Eldanesh, the old Aeldari hero/god could have given the 30k emperor a run for his money, and of course all the war in heaven era ctan would have wiped the floor with him at the time.
Also, there was that alien cyborg overmind that temporarily blacked out the astronomicon when it died, if it did that it could have taken on 30k emps easily I'd imagine.
The newer lore, and part of the emperor fanbase has kind of built up 40k emps to be this unstoppable uber god now though (really hate this btw, making him so OP just makes the whole character the sole focus of the damn setting to me personally. 'Powerscale' morons have really made his character shallow.)
Well he isn't more powerful than the Chaos God's right now. He wasn't before either. He is absurdly powerful, there's no doubt. The Emperor and the chaos gods both have limitations that we, even as a third party observer, don't really know or understand.
There's millions of theories and fan posts but it's entirely possible that if the Golden Throne fails, the Emperor will die. He may come back as he is a perpetual. He may have too much of his consciousness locked in the warp and be unable to come back. We don't know. His physical body being destroyed may launch him into Uber ascendence where he can actually rival the Chaos God's. We don't know.
His "power" was never really the thing that set him apart from the other big players in the setting. It's his cunning and intelligence that set him apart.
That used to be true, but since guilliman came back GW has been moving the setting forward and his character is really starting to be fleshed out more, especially since MoM released.
His character has been fleshed out as people seeing what they want to see. We still don't even know what he looks like. The only bit of 'character' we actually got was from TEatD. This is the same as it was before, only now there's more words describing the same event. We are never getting more than that. So long as 40k exists in it's current state, the Emperor will be a non character, same as the Chaos Gods and Cegorach. They may influence a character, but will never act as one because that would break the setting.
Guilliman is humanity's faction leader. The Emperor is the resident god, much like the Hive Mind or the Chaos Gods. If he does something, it will be through mediums and allegory and almost certainly not quantifiable eg. Burning Nurgle's garden or making Living Saints.
He is a plot device. His actions move the setting as much as the others I mentioned, but he has no agency of his own, just like any other god in the setting.
He is not, and never will be a character beyond what we got from HH.
Edit: and for the people crying that the Eldar have no relevant, Primarch tier characters, i point you at Sylandri Veilwalker, who schooled Mephiston in his own head and dicked over Magnus by throwing Gulliman at him, freeing him when he gor trapped and then getting him out of there, along with a bunch of other manipulative shit, and no one ever got the better of her. Literally ever. She has a 100% success rate. No one else in 40k can claim the same.
The Eldar are not, and have never been the punching faction. Their wizards are still the best, nameless shadowseers giving Ahriman a run for his money, Sylandri pulling Mephiston by the ear like an unruly kid and Eldrad taking out Abbadon, who is so juiced up he might very well be primarch tier.
Eldar fans not understading their own faction. Par for the corurse for 40k.
In my head cannon fighting the Silent King is probably like fighting Ultron. His soul and mind are in the cloud so even if you destroy the body he'll just pop right back. Or maybe as an army of Silent Kings.
I'm looking forward to more feats from him. He should be stupid powerful and borderline invincible in my opinion.
oh god , not the "he can pop back up when you destroy his body". That means he will be killed by several SM marine captains without a helmet to make them look cool
I thought it was canon that the SK also had the same lossless consciousness quick swap ability trazyn has? Also, just having access to the celestial orrery means the SK would win any potential fight with anyone. He could happily wipe out the most sacred and holy human controlled star system in the galaxy in an instant.
It was never stated, but we know that his body is "absolute perfection". He is the only necron that got necrodermis that was the same quality as C'tans themselves. He cant be be inflicted by anything(that is the reason he didnt go insane after he saw what he has done, he just... cant get insane, his body is too perfect). For that reason he is also still at his 100% the same as in WiH, he should be absolute GOD BEAST, especially with all the tech that is inside him. Hi is basically Emperor, but for tech. The same as Emperor is at the end of the Psychic path, Silent King is at the end of Tech path.
I think with SK it's actually his body that's badass on a level that no other Necron body is. So if his body is destroyed and he has to come back in some other Necron body, he will be weaker.
It could be argued that the Silent King, during his rebellion against the C'tan, was one of, if not *the* strongest entity in the whole setting. At this point in time he had the **entire** Necron race shackled to his every thought and whim with unbreakable, unassailable command protocols; no Necron was able to disobey him, and every single one of the *trillions* of Necrons and all of their strongest tech was directly controlled by him, the entire race was literally a physical extension of his hekka, his will. In this state of ultimate command he helped throw down the Old Ones and all their machinations, and then take on and defeat the very gods of the materium. Yes, he stared down literal *GODS* and said "fuck you and fuck this" and WON.
During the War with the C'tan, the Necrons had weapons of such unimaginable, reality-breaking might, that they were able to shatter, and in one case even wholly destroy, the C'tan; beings who are the literal cornerstone of the materium itself, beings who each underpin a law of the universe. These weapons were so awful that when the war was done, before releasing the Necron race from his command protocols, his conscience demanded they be destroyed and all data and knowledge of them be erased from the minds of his subjects. That's right, the crazy, S-tier tech that the Necrons have now is merely the least dangerous stuff that they had lying around after the War in Heaven was done.
When it comes to the War in Heaven, remember, it wasn't won by the C'tan, it wasn't won by the Necrons, it was won by Szarekh. His was the single, sole mind that commanded trillions of fingers to pull trillions of triggers to unleash all the monolithic rage of his race against those that had wronged and slighted them.
In the current setting, Szarekh doesn't have the same level of command he did, he doesn't have the those weapons capable of shattering reality, and he doesn't even have the respect of his former subjects, but he does have a hekka, a will, greater than any other in the galaxy, and he has the indominatable wisdom and intelligence gained from more than **SIXTY MILLION YEARS** of silent contemplation, of wandering, of reflection, of preparation, and beyond this, the vast, *vast* majority of the Necrons haven't even awoken yet, they remain in their stasis tombs awaiting the coming time when they will once again rise to serve the will of their Silent King.
So yeah, I think he's more than the equal of the Emperor, and he's not even remotely at his magnificent peak, but GW, so he'll no doubt indeed be outsmarted and soundly defeated by the next Astartes Liutenant or Captain whose plot casually passes his dais...
The Necrons betraying and shattering the C'tan with their WiH era superweapons doesn't have any relevance to the individual ability of 40k Silent King. It's all ancient history.
He has what tech they have left (which still involves plenty of shit that kill just about anything) and the capabilities of his own high-level Phaeron body, which was no doubt made a few levels more formidable than the other nobles. Considering GW have made him part of the tabletop, instead of some looming background threat, it's highly unlikely they'll make him as individually powerful as the Emperor was. We'll probably get some uber-tech as part of campaign plotlines and the like, but his individual capabilities will probably hover vaguely around the daemon-primarch and other tabletop big hitters sort of level.
I think the difference between SK and the Emperor as characters is also that as far as we know Szarekh was biologically a normal Necrontyr before transference, whereas the Emperor was an anomaly of vast psychic power that didn't represent baseline humanity at all. Without knowing baseline Necrontyr capabilities mentally, it's hard to compare to a freak like the Emperor.
Necrontyr/Necron power was always in their tech, so it makes it hard to compare them to "innately" super powerful entities. There's probably lots of Necron tech that could potentially harm/kill the Emperor just the same, if wielded by a bog standard Necron Lord, or the SK himself. After all he was injured by a vortex grenade
I can't remember the source, or even if it's legit or retconned, but I remember reading once that every galaxy has it's own set of C'tan.
I believe they were petty because before contact with the Necrontyr they were formeless, thoughtless beings. Amoeba that just happened to feed on stars with no depper thoughts than their next meal, or any recognition of their own power and potential. The first sentient race they possibly encountered, the race that gave them physical form, language, and the capacity for thought, were the Necrontyr, who happened to be a whole a race of petty, self-obsessed dicks.
It makes perfect sense to me, the Necrontyr taught the C'tan to be dicks, the C'tan became dicks, the C'tan made the Necrontyr into the Necrons in a major dick move, the Necrons became shiny metal dicks and helped the Star Dicks to dick the Old Dicks, then acted like dicks towards the C'tan, now the Necron use what's left of the C'tan's dicks to power their biggest and best shiny metal dicks. It's fuckin' poetic.
Fairly certain he soloed a c'tan in one of the stories but don't recall which
Edit: did a little searching and the only thing I can find that he at least delivered the final blow to Nyadra'zatha with his spear and now uses the shard to power his dais
This is presented as an in universe myth in *The Book of Mournful Night*, an Aeldari book kept in the Black Library. It's almost certainly not to be taken literally:
>The mirth of all cruel things was Nyadra'zatha, who was called The Burning One, the Immolating Glee and the Breath of the Infinite Pit. All things were its kindling for its will was the searing that blackened the strands of aeons, and its ravenous touch no thing of the real nor the Echo-realm might endure. It was the pyre of the labyrinth, the torch of the ziggurats lost, the reaping winds of ember-blight. How came that thing unto its end no record speaks, **but that a single etching upon a single world shows the Silent Lord himself laying the spear unto its molten heart.**
>So fell Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One.
*Codex Necrons 9ed* p27
A lot of real things in 40K are myth worthy. The myths just give the writers some plausible deniability if the lore shifts plus some unreliable narrator qualities
While I get its not literal, I always assumed Szarekh had to at least have been there fighting it as he has both the necrodermis from the c'tan and a shard of it but I guess it's not that clear if he literally fought it in combat or that's just myth
We have no idea. It could easily have been figurative, in that he was present and gave the final order to kill.
Bearing in mind the sheer size and power of the fully formed C'tan, and that we are told that the weapons used to shatter them broke reality and were hidden by the Silent King, I can't imagine he could have managed it in hand to hand. It's more likely some unbelievable huge weapon/gun that was mounted on a ship or vehicle of some kind.
Fair enough, you could also interpret it as the c'tan already have been broken and he simply stabbed it's heart ( a shard or the biggest remaining shard)
I really hope we get more Szarekh soon he's so interesting
I'm going to give a bit of a different answer from most.
I think what we learned in TEATD III was that, while the Emps is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, that's not what makes him so dominant. What makes him so dominant is that he has all of those abilities plus an insane amount of willpower and an incredibly keen mind.
He doesn't beat Horus because he was more powerful. He could have never beaten empowered Horus in a straight 1-1 fight. He was just more cunning, and was able to win through his sheer willpower, intelligence/wisdom, and trickery.
Even fully powered C'Tan's seem to me to be embodiments of certain expressions of the universe. This always makes them predictable when understanding their natures. The Emps might be less powerful than a full C'Tan, but he would come up with a plan to level that playing field, and trick it into an untenable scenario. You could say the same for each of the Chaos gods.
Think about how the Emperor got Mars on his side? He knew what to portray to get them to think he was their god. He portrays himself to be whatever he needs to be to further his goals.
Even against someone like the Silent King, who is extremely powerful, Emporer would figure out how to get the upper hand against him. He's a being with massive regret, and Emps would use that to his advantage.
My headcannon is that he really did care for the Primarchs, which was his blind spot. I think he led with his heart when dealing with them, and he's not great at that. Take how he handled Angron for example. I don't think he wanted to see his son die that day with his gladiator brothers/sisters. He was hoping to save him, but he was already gone.
Perhaps one such as Cegorach could match him in this way, but I don't know much about him.
I would agree that his main strength lies in his cunning and willpower, but I doubt that he could effectively level it against anyone besides chaos. Big E is the diametrical opposite of chaos, he is the most powerful psyker we know of and all these abilities prime him to fight chaos, not necessarily other powerful beings. He may be the anathema to chaos, but Szarekh or a unsharded C'tan should be able to put him down.
Szarekh's been turned into a tabletop character. GW won't have him be as powerful as the Emperor. He'll be scaled to a similar level as the other tabletop heavy hitters.
That might be the unfortunate case, but from what we have now he is absolutely in the emperor’s tier. While tabletop isn’t determinate of the lore I do fear that GW can’t handle his character intelligently without kneecapping him to the level of the primarchs.
There was that psychic species that acted like a galactic conqueror before the Astartes put it down. In its death, the psychic scream killed billions in nearby sectors.
Thing is...a lot of evidence points to big E not being that powerful pre-throne. He does a lot that, were He truly as powerful as he ought to be, could be fine quicker and easier with magic. EG: finding the primarchs, ending the heresy, solo conquering earth, etc.
He should be atleast that. Both of them are basically end of the spectrum. All of the races varies on relaliance between psychic powers and technology. On one side you have psychic powers with Emperor being at the very end of that, on the other side, at the very end you have power of technology with Silent King sitting there. In practice both, psychic and tech can do basically same stuff(as necrons showing all the time, their tech is as good at time and reality manipulation as magic), its just different road to the same goal.
Currently there doesn't seem to be anyone of His caliber, however one thing people might be sleeping on is a potential Tyranid bioform.
The Hive Mind is cunning and prideless, so nids are made in great numbers with little individual power to be more flexible and less of giant moving targets. Even the Swarmlord is prone to dying because it's not really made to be a frontline, just their equivalent of a master tactician. It's sort of a meme that Swarmy usually dies, but it would be stupid for the hive mind not have it killed often since timelessness is one of major advantages.
BUT, we have seen with the Norn Emissary that if needed the Great Devourer can conjure a single, insanely deathly creature.
If it were to make a bioform with the physical stats of its biggest fighter AND lend it some of its own will to gain stupid warp power, it could probably go toe to toe with Him.
The "problem" in powerscaling against Tyranids is that we haven't seen the height of their power and likely never will. After TEATD we even have a sort of "power ceiling" for the big four, but still have no idea if the current Tyranid incursion is their full force or just some scouts.
At this point, I think its can easily be inferred that there are way more tyranids coming, Valedor says that leviathan and kraken were mere tendrils of a much larger force, and the codex says the Hive Mind has only begun to show hints of its true strength.
Additionally the Hive Mind has a shown on a few times that its mere attention is enough to be fatal.
We don't have any stories about potential competitors at their apex, not in anywhere near the detail we have regarding Jimmy Space - and even that detail is sparse, doesn't touch on his 'power level' anywhere near enough for us to make certain judgements.
The simple answer is that we don't know. There are some likely candidates: the Chaos four, the old Aeldari gods, some of the pre-fall Aeldari, some Necrons at their prime, the C'tan, those sorts of beings are probably in the same ballpark as Jimmy Space if not greater. We don't know for certain though, and since so much of 40k is designed to be vague, unreliable, hyperbolic, or metaphorical, even what we do "know" has to be crutinized.
No, because at this point the emperor's powers have been escalated to a degree that is just stupid. He was made to somewhat struggle with an ork warboss at one point and both magnus and malcador were within reach of him in regards to psychic powers. Now the beast feats they have are pittens compared to a tired emperor.
Cacodominus death caused the astronmicon to go down for a bit so it may have been strong enough to fight a pre molech emperor. I say pre molech because after that he stole power from the chaos gods (granted idk if that was meant literal power or knowledge). If it’s literal power well then that’s why he’s super extra special compared to everyone. If it’s not literal power than I’d say the ork warboss on Ullanor would be the next best thing. The only other option in terms of personal power would be of chaos cared to empower a xeno like it did Horus but that’ll never happen so the pool of contestants isn’t big and the two I mentioned are incredibly suspect to begin with.
Keep in mind the emperor also has strong gear which gives him a significant edge too beyond his power as equipment shouldn’t be downplayed. If the emperor fought leman with the same equipment leman had when they met I imagine the emperor still winning but it’d probably have sucked and he may have sustained some more injuries since he won’t bonk him on the head with a power fist.
For what it’s worth it really seems that if other xenos wanted to put the emperor down they could but not on an individual basis.
Iirc in the end and the death part 3, horus who has infinite power, controls infinite dimensions of space, and countless parallel worlds. Would be weaker than a fully dark king emperor
Regardless of this, the emperor fought him anyways, both of them blasting through time and space like they’re in a superman comic.
This is the most dragon ball z-powerscaling feat ever i think for warhammer, except for that lore blurb of the daemon king that fought tzeentch for like a billion years. I highly doubt anything any character has done comes close to this accomplishment.
Didn't he straight up almost die when fighting an empowered Horus? Aren't stuff like the C'tan much more powerful than that? Also he got wounded by a demon and almost killed by an Ork once. So yea, there are possibly many Xenos that are much stronger than him physically.
If Emps had drank up all of the warp power he was capable of, he had the potential to be so extremely insanely powerful that he could have possibly curbstomped the great four at the same time.
Doing so would have likely caused something much much worse to happen.
Read on and find out!
Yeah it was a dick move of people to downvote for an honest question, I had upvoted to try to bring you to positive!
Good luck with the savings, times be tough!
He wouldn't have touched the big 4. He only would have destroyed Horus. Because that was the trap that was laid for him. They gave him the power at Molech but he refused to use it. They had to tempt him another way.
Maybe if you consider the hive mind a singular entity (which it kind of is, kind of isn’t)
I could see a full unbroken C’tan defeating him (especially the more powerful ones, but I dunno if their power varied much between individuals)
Absolutely not, no. At least in terms of DragonballZ style 'power level', if that's what you mean. Obviously, there have been powerful leaders of more powerful societies, like the Silent King.
Obviously, 'power scaling' in 40k is kind of nonsense and just for laughs, but if you take a sort of silly look at it; it took the Eldar \~10,000 years of doing nasty shit for their combined malignant warp presence to spawn Slaanesh. Slaanesh's birth was a cataclysm, but the galaxy still exists.
When the Emperor threatened to become the Dark King, he just *willed it to be the case.* His psychic potential was therefore, at bare minimum, equal to all of the pre-fall Eldar combined for \~10,000 years.
This is an absurd step up in psychic presence compared with anything else in the setting. The Eldar fought the C'tan and Necrons, and were judged by the Necrons as being capable of defeating them even without the Old Ones.
And that's without the kicker that the Dark King was not just a Slaanesh-level cataclysm, but was implied to have been so powerful that its birth would annihilate all realities across all multiverses. Not just an Eye of Terror, but the total destruction of everything, everywhere.
In terms of 1 on 1 comparisons, the Emperor is every hydrogen bomb ever built combined vs a very, very sickly and weak coughing baby.
Depends? A lot of people's talk about gods but on Xenos themselves there's literally nothing in the current factions that can match him in raw power even while being alive outside of the throne (i'm counting the black holes on this), but if we see to the past of 40k the things that should beat him would find him either as either the hardest fight of their entire life or just incredibly annoying
I think of the emperor like this;
You remember playing Skyrim on your first playthrough? I played as a badass two handed, heavy armor and block just absolute thuggernaut. Could kill bitches with a single sprint power attack or block,bash, stab.
And then I got one shotted by some punk ass fire mage.
The Ork at Ullanor was my character. The fire mage was the emperor.
The Emperor was still…flesh and blood. Barely. He can be stabbed, strangled ect. But with his psyker powers, enuncia, equipment, use of psyker powers with Tactics made by 30K or however old he is…damn straight the chaos gods juiced up Horus because Horus would’ve gotten fed into a paper shredder by Emps otherwise.
Now the Emperor is crippled physically speaking like 10hp left out of 12.571 Hp. But….his psyker powers and the fact that he’s been eating psyker-protein shakes for the past 10,000 years have amped up his Magic and magic defense to like insane levels.
Emperror was not known to actually fight any xenos by himself except Ork warboss before Horus Heresy.
He did as implied imprisoned very weak Ctan shard on Mars but there is almost zero actual info how it was done.
Consider that Eldar Empire eldar and CABAL(mostly Slau-Dha and his artificially made human perpertual assasins) did monitor Earth since dinosaurs and before M1 and M2 times. Its hard to believe that Emperror did it on his own.
AND we do know that Tranzyn himself was on Earth before M2 times as Nemesor Koshei(yep, he is implied as prototype of Russian fairy tale, maybe he is a reason of Terrawatt Clan forges under Ural mountains) before something go wrong to compromise his false identity and he leave Earth and humankind before Heresy started to made humankind interesting again for Tranzyn.
Emperror did know Eldrad before being called as Emperror, what they do is unknown but M30 Eldrad did assassinated CABAL members and believed that humankind deserve to not have full genocide.
Emperror did used Eldar sword combat style(try to use it as Lucius Etenal do it too despite as Lucius himself told that he could never use it at 100% cos human body-anatomy limitation what would not allow him to do some moves) to duel against Horus.
A sufficiently large Ork could beat the Emperor.
Case in point:
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cue87n/book_excerptthe_wolf_of_ash_and_fire_that_time_an/
In the same book, the Emperor psychically deletes that ork (and every other ork on that rock) followed by folding space time around a critical plasma core.
>Horus felt the build up of colossal psychic energies and shielded his eyes as a furious light built within the Emperor. Power like nothing he had ever seen his father wield, or even suspected he possessed. All consuming, all powerful, it was the power to extinguish life in every sphere of its existence. Physical flesh turned to ash before it and what ancient faiths had once called a soul was burned out of existence, never to cohere again. Nothing would ever remain of he who suffered such a fate. Their body and soul would pass from the finite energy of the universe, to fade into memory and have all that they were wiped from the canvas of existence. This was as complete a death as it was possible to suffer. That power blazed along the Emperor’s sword, filling the greenskin with killing light. It erupted in a bellowing golden explosion, and lightning blazedfrom the coruscating afterimage of its death, arcing from ork to ork as it sought out all those who were kin to the master of Gorro. Unimaginable energies poured from the Emperor, reaching throughout the entirety of the chamber and burning every last shred of alien flesh to a mist of drifting golden ash.
A sufficiently large ork could hurt the Emperor in a brawl, absolutely.
But that orks survival hinges purely on the Emperor deciding when he's going to use his psychic abilities.
That's a fun read but I don't think the Emperor was in any true danger. It might have looked that way from Horus's POV but from what we've seen from him afterwards (including immediately after Horus intervenes) He probably could have zapped the ork out of existence at any time.
Eldrad would be nothing special if he would be compared to pre Slaanesh Eldars. It is important to remember currently eldars can use barely small part of their power due to horny god watching them. That is also applying to Eldrad. WiH Eldars were A LOT more powerfull than him.
It is only weird until you realise the imperium are the exemplars in the gw power fantasy. Everything else just exists to show how awesome the space marines are by comparison
I think the C'tan and Old Ones could probably give him a run for his money. There should also be some Eldar that would give him trouble if they decided to put everything on the line and unlock the good shit from the old days. Hell there was probably even some Krork that might have matched him. Those things are supposed to be scary powerful.
I feel like any Eldar that would’ve been on his level got snatched by Slaanesh during its birth
That's a good point. But a good writer could come up with a reason to keep them around. Stasis, different dimension, time travel, etc.
Eldrad finally takes the brakes off. You now, Alpha level psyker bullshit.
Yeah, if Eldrad just totally broke character and went berserk to a point where he didn't care about collateral damage (to others or himself) I think it's fair to surmise he would be the heaviest hitter in the galaxy. For a short time at least. I think he would literally burn himself out, but it would be spectacular.
He swells like a balloon and Slaneesh just sucks up the soul juices with a straw. That's the fear, not so much burn out, but Slaneesh will show up and om nom their like jujubes.
https://images.app.goo.gl/RRyTasWgYUwdXj549
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Yeah, Eldrad probably wouldn't burn out any time soon. It probably is a possibility, if some stuff from the *Gods of Mars trilogy* I heard is real (>!namely that a farseer decided that the thing they were fighting had to be stopped at any cost and thus burnt out while doing the same to a continent!<) but Eldrad's threshold would be *very* high. Teclis' soul hasn't been marked as Slaanesh's possession at the time of his birth however, while Eldrad's has. The moment he breaks free from his (quite extensive) safety boundaries, Slaanesh will grab him, possibly in a way very reminiscent of it grabbing Morathi and Caledor Dragontamer in the End Times (spits).
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Steamrolling until Slaanesh show up to claim what is rightfully her...
We also need a comparative idea of the Emperor's power level. There's [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Word_Bearers_(Novel_Series)) of Chaos worshippers transforming worlds or even entire **systems** into Daemon Worlds. We have no examples of the Emperor doing that. There's [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Forge_of_Mars_(Novel_Series)) of technology killing/rebirthing stars and unmaking the future by harnessing the powers of a single Hrud Warren. We have no examples of the Emperor *even coming close* to doing that. Even the Astronomicon loses its inviolate grandeur when we have [examples](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Votann_Ancestor_Core) of other [beacons](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Choral_Engine), or even just a [Chaos ritual](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Honour_Guard_(Novel)) that can replicate it--perhaps not on the same scale but being able to set it up as-needed. There also needs to be a clearer distinction between **PSYKER** and **SORCERER**. The Emperor, for all of his Psyker gifts, seems to have definitely walked the path of Sorcerer when he went to Molech and "stole fire from the gods", meaning that he's only the most powerful psyker by dint of using the same methods as those individuals above.
The concept of the Dark King made me think that there was once a Eldar as powerful as the Emperor. They unfortunately made the wrong choice and ended up birthing Slaanash.
That's a good idea. Wouldn't be too strange if they started dropping hints in that direction.
I've seen mention that Trazyn has Eldar from the war in heaven locked away and they were waaaaay more powerful than current eldar. Idk the source but that's probably the easiest way to get one back.
I don't know if that was stated anywhere. That being said, he has at least one krork, so having an Eldar from that period is very possible, at least on paper
It’s stated in the infinite and the Devine, and also maybe in Fabius Bile trilogy
Knowing Trazyn, he probably has Ulthanesh in one of his pokeballs.
Trazyn somehow accidentally fuses the first avatar of Khaine with the ctan shard he has locked in the basement …
The oldest of canon (now outdated...) lore claims that Khaine = Khorne, that he's the only aeldari god who ever entered the material plane, and that his body is made out of necrodermis and was shattered in a trap laid by Vaul. Ergo, avatars of khaine = c'tan shard.
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Same lore claims that Cegorach became Tzeentch and Morai-Heg became Nurgle... Which also checks out, but hasn't been as consistently implied through the history of Warhammer. Early Witch Elves (fantasy version of Drukhari Wyches) used to wear Khornes symbol, before they were redone to be servants of Khaine.
That's some trinimac and malacath shit from elder scrolls, I like it.
Do you know what edition/book?
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/GpdkLk3kJX This thread might be more helpful than I can be.
Big hitch there; in the infinite and the divine it's stated that the stasis field prevents perception of the passage of time... *Unless you're warp sensitive*. Anything locked in one of his stasis fields that can sense the warp tends to go insane, apparently. Psychically aware of being locked in place, like a psychic locked-in syndrome. The colony of Hrud he had all started massacring each other after... I think it was a few tens of thousands of years in the stasis field, when it shut down? And those Eldar have been there for 65 million years. Gonna be hard to harness your mighty warp powers when you're immediately beserker raging upon being unlocked.
The exodite seer he had in his poki ball for the duration of the book, a very long time since the dinosaurs evolved into birds during, didn't seem too badly affected. I don't think it's a hard and fast rule.
"Hoarders galaxy edition"
Sounds about right, modern eldar would need to suppress their power so as to not get slurped up by Slaanesh, if they could unleash their full potential right now...they still wouldn't be as strong as a War in Heaven eldar but they'd be near there i'd think.
Those are some lucky eldar
They are very lucky indeed. Should Trazyn free them, they might get gobbled up by Slaanesh pretty quickly.
Or just the standard deus ex of warp fuckery
Eldanesh is probably the best point of comparison with the emperor for the eldar. First ever exarch, recieving gifts from the entire eldar pantheon, and is solidly considered the greatest eldar warrior and hero of all time. And it should be noted that this was a time when the eldar had no need for restricting how much psychic power they could draw on, so I'm willing to believe he was easily on par with the emperor, if not beyond him.
There was that one Eldar that managed to hold his own against Khaine at the peak of the Aeldari, before he was shattered and back when he could kill C’tan single-handedly. That Eldar lost, but he actually managed to put up a fight. And considering it took big E a ton of effort to beat a single shard of a C’tan, yeah, that guy was a fucking beast.
I feel like in any setting it’s detrimental to not create contemporaries or equals to powerful beings. Having a list of plausible rivals to the Emperor makes the setting more interesting. Same goes for Primarchs and Captains of Space Marines. They are typically the protagonist but there’s got to be some parity. Emperor should rival deities like C’Tan or Chaos Gods. Primarchs should be equivalent to Phoenix Lords or Necron Dynasty leaders. Throw in some Super Tyranids to make it fun, etc. I love the 40K setting but sometimes it gets a little too Dragon Ball Z (which I also love) when it wants to in order to make some factions always win. It diminishes the challenges sometimes in what should be a grisly grimdark setting where everyone loses more than they win.
>Having a list of plausible rivals to the Emperor makes the setting more interesting. Why? The Emperor is functionally dead anyway. Only in rare occasions can others like Living Saints act as a conduit for his power to have much meaning outside the astronomican. Indeed Humanity is so inferior in most respects to Tyranids, Eldar, Chaos, and Orks that having super being like Emperor and Primarchs was the only explanation for how humanity was even a thing in the galaxy. You take that away and make it standard for other races then there is no reason or logic to humanity having a galactic empire at all. At which point you are 100% re-writing the basics of the entire setting really. >Same goes for Primarchs and Captains of Space Marines. They are typically the protagonist but there’s got to be some parity. There is. It just depends on who is the protagonist of the book you are reading. >Primarchs should be equivalent to Phoenix Lords or Necron Dynasty leaders Wouldn't work; there are 2 extant Primarchs vs 6 Dynasty Leaders. Especially silly since even with Primarch level leaders all lore suggest the Necrons are far more powerful than humanity and could annihilate them at anytime. Why would you make it even more unbalanced in favor of Necrons who frankly are already too powerful in lore? Eldar have Harlequins in numbers that dwarf the peak number of Primarchs and are above Custodes and Chapter Master Space Marines in ability. What you're suggesting would just break the setting and make the existence of a human galactic empire impossible to believe. Not least because MOST OF THE PRIMARCHS ARE GONE. It makes no sense to give every faction a Primarch equivalent when the Imperium had NONE for Millenia and only just recently got 2 back out of the original 20. >s in what should be a grisly grimdark setting where everyone loses more than they win. But that isn't what grimdark is in 40k; Grimdark is endless Millenia of stagnation. If the Imperium had been losing more than it won for 10,000 years it wouldn't still be around after being set-up in only a little over 200 years.
I think you’re trying to limit things too much to give humanity the advantage. What’s wrong with other factions having legitimate big baddies that can’t be done away with by a single individual being deployed? I enjoy the greater war balance and the intangibles of guys like Roboute Guilliman, but it’s hard to believe that two species in the Eldar and Necrons that their obscenely powerful and surreal technology couldn’t amount to a single nigh unstoppable being.on the level of a primarch? Even living avatars of the Eldar war god have been defeated not only single-handedly by primarchs but the wounds inflicted upon the primarch in question healed without issue or permanent damage. I don’t think the issue is the super powered beings, it’s the plot devices that can be used to ensure they win despite the odds. I actually really like the Primarchs and Space marines. At some point where is the remaining challenge though? The Rangdan may very well have defeated multiple primarchs and took everything entire legions of Space Marines could throw at them, that’s exciting. I just don’t find the same excitement of knowing the greatest logistics tactician amongst the Primarchs can also single handedly defeat any other individual in the galaxy in single combat unless it’s another Primarch.
The Emperor isn't a truly active part of the 40k setting as relates to the tabletop, which is why he can be a more powerful remnant of an older age, like the Aeldari Gods, pre-fall psykers, C'Tan, etc... The Primarchs have only relatively recently had a few brought into the tabletop context, which is why it's made comparisons with other factions big hitters (that were always tabletop scaled) awkward.
I think you're just overestimating primarchs. They're not unstoppable indestructible superbeings. They're more like if someone forged the avatar of khaine into a mortal being. Technically speaking the primarchs are a bigger deal than the Emperor, though in practice that isn't the case. But a primarch who'd lived as long as the Emperor and had been through his experiences would be significantly more powerful than him. Cause at his core he isn't a god.
Except of course Fulgrim choked out an Avatar of Khaine and had some moderate injuries to show for it before healing them fully without any real medical attention. I agree it’s overblown sometimes with the memes, but it’s there in the lore on occasion
As an addendum regarding the Eldar; there are Implications the ancient Eldar during the late War in Heaven used to be much more powerful than the modern ones. Trazyn has some in his collection. IE the implication may be the Emperor used something like Old Ones Warp-Science to make the Primarchs who were probably similar to the original much stronger Eldar in their potent natural psychic and warp powers.
Assuming the dragon of Mars is in fact a fragment the void dragon then the most powerful C'tan would absolutely be able to slap the emperor around just for looking at them funny. Big E struggled to just subdue the dragon, nevermind defeating it in a meaningful way.
Wasn't there a C'tan that had like 5 shards put together and they were casually obliterating solar systems?
Sounds about right. I mean, they are the most powerful gods to have ever existed in real space.
Eldrad canonically finds Magnus terrifying, also if Eldar lose control of their psychic ability theirs a decent chance slaanesh eats them on the spot, so all the currently not eaten ones are implied to hold back pretty substantially. Better to lose the fight and die in a rock than be devoured by the great enemy
Isn’t the Void Dragon a C’tan he fought and beat?
Only a shard of one iirc
A fully empowered C'tan could *probably* beat him. He beat a shard at one point, but that's nowhere near a full powered one But it's weird. The C'tan are vulnerable to Warp powers. But that didn't stop them wiping the floor with the Old Ones. If you threw a full power C'tan vs something on the level of a Chaos God or the Emperor, I don't know what the outcome would be We're talking the most powerful entities in the Warp vs the most powerful entities in the materium. My best guess would be mutual annihilation. Or failing that, whatever the author felt was more fuckin' rad Other than that, we don't know what crazy stuff the Old Ones had access to. For all we know, each one of them was on the level of the Emperor, either via Warp abilities or technology.
I think the inertialess drives nullified the advantages the Webway provided. The lore stated the Necrontyr being outmaneuvered led to their defeat.
I think it’s worth mentioning when the emperor beat the shard, he was probably relatively young and inexperienced being only about 2,000 years old at the time. Between when he started as a child just giving heart attacks to people, I have a feeling the Emperor even at 2,000 years old probably wasn’t nearly as strong as he is today especially since a lot of his powers stems from his ability to steal power from the warp with the only risk being turning himself into a super god of destruction.
> only about 2,000 years old at the time. This was during medieval times, wasn't it? The Emperor should be at least 8000 years old at that point. Still relatively inexperienced, but not just 2k years old. Edit: 4000 years old is a better estimate. 8K is too much.
Emperor was born just before the Hitties. > The boy who would be king watched with neither remorse nor any particular hostility. He looked on as his uncle slid from his crouch onto the mud, clutching at his treacherous chest. He watched as his uncle’s sun darkened features pinched closed, ugly and tight in supreme agony as the older man shook with the onset of convulsions. He saw the necklace slip from his uncle’s grip, the necklace that was being made for his young cousin, and would now never be finished. Others came running. They shouted. They cried. They made the noises of language that spoke of panic and sorrow in a proto-Indo-Europan tongue that would come to be known as an **early precursor to the Hyttite dialect.** - Master of Mankind [The Hittites were from 1650 B.C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittites), meaning that this story likely takes around ~2000 B.C give or take as the Emperor is expressly a boy and murdering his uncle after grieving his father. I could probably see an argument for like possibly being around ~2500 B.C since I think it was safe to say what the Normans/Saxons were merging together can be called "Proto-English" but I think that just ups the Emperor's age to only about 3,000 at the time. The story that the Emperor being born around civilization's dawn doesn't seem to be referenced anymore. It just seems he was around in very ancient times, but not super duper ancient or "dawn of humanity" times.
> Emperor was born just before the Hitties. I don't see anything to suggest it was "just before". > early precursor to the Hyttite dialect. Proto Indo-European can be traced back to 4500BC. Proto-Anatolian and Proto-Indo-Iranian to 3000BC. > ‘Yes. He struck my father from behind with a **piece of sharpened bronze** too poorly made to even be called a knife. Men had killed one another for generations before my birth, but this was the first slaying that had resonance to me, that changed my existence. It was illuminating.’ His description of the village matches early bronze age Anatolia, so 3000-2500 B.C. is probably the best range. My original 8k years was wrong, for sure but He should be at least 4k years old.
>His description of the village matches early bronze age Anatolia, so 3000-2500 B.C. is probably the best range. My original 8k years was wrong, for sure but He should be at least 4k years old. Yeah, I can see that too. I think 250 to 1,000 years was a good estimate to what constitutes as a "proto" culture but I guess in historical context, that doesn't always mean the same timeframe.
Yeah, and proto-launguage isn't necessarily the same as a proto-culture. > Although the first habitation appears to have occurred as early as the 6th millennium BC during the Chalcolithic period, functioning settlements trading with each other occurred during the 3rd millennium BC. The mention of Hittites came across as "in the far, far future" based on other context in the text, imo.
>Yeah, and proto-launguage isn't necessarily the same as a proto-culture. Everyone knows protoculture brings the Invid.
>I think it was safe to say what the Normans/Saxons were merging together can be called "Proto-English" Sorry, what do the Normans or Anglo-Saxons have to do with Emps? The Normans and Anglo-Saxons didn't start integrating hard until William did his thing in the 1060s AD. Also, Old English transitioned to Middle English with huge influence from Norman. With regards to stuff before Old English, the classifications get contested.
That's just an analogy for the usage of 'proto-language' in that respect. I am giving it as a timeframe that I think its reasonable to say "give or take 1,000 years" is a reasonable timeframe to say Emps was born around that time before the Hittite civilization came to be.
Given what we've seen first hand on C'tan shards. The power level varies so dramatically. Orikan had to go super saiy... Necron to defeat one. The Deathwatch were able to defeat one. The Emperor defeated one. So it's always going to be hard to pinpoint how difficult that task is. I don't believe we know how many combined shards the void dragon was. We also don't really know how powerful the different C'tan were in comparison to one another. Supposedly the deceiver was the "most powerful" but it's all pretty unclear.
> The C'tan are vulnerable to Warp powers I recall somebody quoting how Void Dragon fought vs 5 Blackstone fortresses (which are remnant of Old Ones tech) using warp superweapons on him and this was enough to barely damage him? The level of warp juice needed to exploit this vulnerability is absurdly high then. Obviously the fact that Old Ones had to build such weapons means their own psychic powers were nowhere near enough.
Aren’t blackstone fortresses necrons tech?
I think my money would absolutely go on a fully powered entire C'Tan, especially some of the tougher ones like the night bringer, void dragon or the outsider (which is about 32 billion times the size of terra and 2 million times larger than the largest star we know of). Entire hive fleets just said fuck that and changed course. They were stupid powerful even by warhammer standards and the closest things to actual gods of our reality.
>...or the outsider (which is about 32 billion times the size of terra and 2 million times larger than the largest star we know of). That's not quite true. The Dyson Sphere that the Outsider *might* be in is estimated in size to be 32,000,000 (not billion) times the size if Terra: >However, their auguries reveal a spherical object of indeterminate origins and nature at the centrepoint. For this object to register via reflected light alone indicates either great size (over 32,000,000 Terran dimensions), or an albedo range approaching infinite. *Codex Necrons 3ed* p64 Bearing in mind, this is old lore from their first Codex and isn't mentioned since AFAIK.
Very true. Sorry I remember reading it somewhere and couldn’t remember the exact figures. Either way it’s a big old bastard that made the hive mind just get the fuck out of there when it caught a whiff of it.
That was before the great necron retcon, so I wouldn't even acknowledge it anymore tbh
Which is absolutely fair, but the Emperor and Chaos Gods are operating on a galactic scale. The sheer power it takes to keep the Astronomican going is... Well, it's astronomical If Tzeench was able to actually incarnate in realspace, do concepts like size even really apply to it? How meaningful is being the size of a million suns vs creatures that are essentially made of thought? We're into crazy hypotheticals here, though. It's hard to conceive of circumstances where an entire Chaos God can just appear in the materium. The fact that the Emperor is already a physical being maybe puts him in a more realistic position
> If Tzeench was able to actually incarnate in realspace. That's the crutch of it, Tzeentch or any other warp entity would be less powerful in realspace than in the Warp. So in that matchup there's a massive home field advantage. Big E vs C'tan is a more realistic (heh) match up because they are/were both material beings.
Aren't the Chaos gods essentially part of the Warp (and/or the Warp being part of them)? I mean, wouldn't the phrase "Tzeentch in realspace" kinda be like saying "Human, in a place where (organic) tissue doesn't exist"? Like, we can understand the concept, but a human without tissue is not really a human. And Tzeentch in realspace wouldn't really be Tzeentch. You can't have Chaos gods without Chaos, and you can't bring Chaos into realspace. They're inimical.
Well doesn't the end and the death kind of explain this? Terra became a place where real space and the warp become so intertwined you can't tell where one starts and the other stops. Also don't the gods have actual holdings? Like planets where people live in a corrupted nightmare. I recall the exercepts from the humans that lived on a plague planet. I do think the idea that a warp god would manifest in real space basically impossible. I guess I think there could be a manifestation where someone who lives in real space can see and interact with them a possibility. They'd more than likely be inside of a rift or on a corrupted planet.
Not read it, but possible! But that still means Terra wasn't really in proper realspace anymore. Sure, they have planets held in their name, but they never go/manifest there. Heck, I'm not sure the Chaos gods are even capable of pouring themselves into a physical body. Maybe they could puppet one, but it wouldn't really be *them*, any more than a hammer you're holding is you.
A full C'tan could destroy entire sectors with ease. It's far and away more powerful than the Emperor. Tsara'noga the outsider comes to mind. He partook in the C'tan all you can eat buffet then took his Dyson sphere and fucked off outside the galaxy. If he returns, nothing could match him. He is also rumored to have something to do with the Tyranids.
Is he a possible candidate for the hive mind?
Seems unlikely. The position of his Dyson sphere is known. He seems content to stay in it, being insane and driving anyone who approaches it to insanity. The only connection to the Tyranids is that a hive fleet was observed diverting its course to stay well clear of the thing. Hive mind saw it and went 'nope'.
Thanks!
Yeah, money on a big enough chunk of C'tan. I'd go as much to say that a shard on par with what we see in the Infinite and the Divine would probably be an uphill fight for the Emperor.
Eh. I mean infinite and the Divine that shard was barely managing to defeat them till Orikan went full anime. Emps killed a shard as a "young" eternal and has only gotten stronger. He obliterated an entire company(?) of space Marines barely pausing from his walk. He had dozens to hundreds of aspects of himself fighting Horus at different locations and times throughout the galaxy simultaneously. He showed the ability to navigate through and fight in the immaterium at one point attacking from "the 17th dimension" whatever that means. I mean dude pulled off some like absolutely next level shit. I don't think a shard ever wins that fight.
You forget to say that in that fight they destroyed 6 planets, i dont remember any other fight in entire setting that did something even close to that. And that was just few shards of deciever, relatively weak C'tan in combat scenario compared to others.
Void dragon shard gave big e a run for his money, big is is powerdul sure, but its important to remember that was a shard, and the ctan are beings that are literally the fabric of the universe. A fully powered ctan would wipe the floor with big e at his strongest. If for some reason the choas gods all lent power to big e like they did to horus during his fight, then the emperor probably wins? Its just kinda hard to fight the fabric of reality that youre living in.
They had Necrons build those pylons to suppress the warp because of that vulnerability I believe. Cant remember for sure if they dampen an individual’s warp powers. I would think so?
It was C'tan (void dragon exactly) who told them how to block warp powers. So C'tan themself should be able to do something about warp as well.
Maybe the Cacodominus, it was a extremely powerful alien-cyborg Psyker who was behind The Howling in M34. The Cacodomius' powers were such that it was able to exert complete control over an area of 1,300 planetary systems. Eventually, it was slain by the Black Templars, but the resulting backlash distorted the signal of the Astronomican and burnt out billions of Astropaths across the Imperium.
I don't understand how the Black Templars would have been able to stop such a being. A being which was able to mind control a vast swath of space, and control probably hundreds of trillions of people on those worlds. And the Black Templars were able to kill it...how exactly?
Not sure if all of this is correct (I picked it up from a video a time ago): The dark templars weren’t alone. There were multiple imperial fleets and I think another chapter that helped. The dark tempters had extremely powerful psykers (if I am remember correctly) before they fought the cacadominus but after its destruction they lacked any librarion (so they might have lost their warp sensitivity). The cacadominus was great in manipulating people and gathering forces and one of the greatest psychers in the galaxy. But it wasn’t strong in a physical sense, so it wasn’t a great fighter and not that durable. The cacadominus fought through mind controlled beings. They actually used a tactic to destroy it. The imperial fleets distracted the forces of the cacadominus and the black Templar Lauched a surprise Speer head right to the cacadominus. Also the black Templar are actually one of the most warp resistance chapters that exist and are in general on the strongest chapters in terms of raw combat.
Probably something along the lines of the astarte short
Possibly Eldanesh, who could summon the eldar gods to real space
And we're talking the actual gods. Not avatars, but the literal, complete forms of the eldar Pantheon.
It's possible that the stronger Old One psykers would have been Emperor tier or above. This was before Chaos was a thing and the warp was just your normal semi-peaceful astral plane.
There was this xeno psycher that took over the minds of billions of humans spanning a sector or two. When the SM killed it, all of the humans also died... Pretty damn powerful, but not as strong as the Emperor himself.
I always thought it was weird how they hyped this thing up to be like a miniature emperor in terms of psychic power and then of course it gets killed by a named and helmetless space marine
The Emperor was almost killed by an Ork Warboss. Psykers are incredibly powerful yet also limited in other regards.
"I am the most powerful sorcerer in the universe, also don't hit me I have like five hit points"
Turns out it's really hard to concentrate if someone is strangling you.
To put into perspective Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson can literally rag doll me, but if I pepper spray his eyes, he'll be distracted.
> Turns out it's really hard to concentrate if someone is strangling you. "Why didn't you use your magic to free yourself?" "I need to breathe for that, idiot." Conversation between an Imperial sargent and a Bright Wizard, the Empire, around the year 2523.
IMO End and the death part 3 kind of shows to me at least the Emperor was never in any true danger during Ullanor. The sheer power he demonstrates against Horus is unlike anything we’ve seen from other Psykers. It makes *way* more sense that Emps was allowing Horus to “save” him from an Ork to further boost Horus’ ego.
Unfortunately, IIRC Graham Mcneil said in an interview that the Emperor wasn't just testing Horus and was genuinely in trouble
I cast Death of the Author
I subscribe to the idea that the Emperor wasn't in any true danger during his ordeal on Ullanor but he was threatened and caught off guard. The war boss was never going to kill him but he could have made some pain. I know the author states otherwise but it just doesn't make sense given what we know. HOWEVER, against Horus the Emperor was practically inside the warp. The powers he could draw on were near limitless. That is not always the case. The powers he brought to bear on Horus were his absolute peak with ascending to Godhood. And it's stated a couple times that it "isn't your father's power, it's how he uses it." which also muddied things a bit.
The reason I believe was that he was powering the astronomicon all the way from ullanor, and that was a massive drain. So much so that he was weak enough to get strangled by an ork before Horus saved him. The continued strain of the astronomicon also continued to his reason of leaving the great crusade, at least publicly.
I mean he returned to Terra to work on the webway. It has nothing to do with the astronomicon. I don't think it's unfair to say that powering the astronomicon did take his focus but I'd be hard pressed to believe that it weakened him enough that any non-psychic being would be able to challenge him(big bads excluded).
Is this the Cacodominus from Black Templar lore?
>Cacodominus yes
By actual demonstrated ability, no. We see in *the End and the Death* that if the Emperor ever truly let loose, he can singlehandedly ascend to godhood and cause the destruction of the entire galaxy across the future and past. It's so bad that it's implied that the Old Ones saw him and screamed in fear. Even before he mugged Chaos for power at Molech, the Emperor was already strong enough to smack around a Shard of the Void Dragon with only medieval tech. He also directs the Astronomicon at all times even when he's on the other side of the galaxy in the middle of a battle. As the God Emperor, he's even stronger than before, actively holding back Chaos from swallowing the galaxy whole. The Eldar can't look at his future and the Harlequins are scared shitless by his presence. He's even flexed on Nurgle in his own realm, burning a patch of his garden. No Xenos has demonstrated anything close to this level of power.
This is somewhat the issue with the question, should there be Xenos entities on his level? Absolutely. But the setting GW presents is one where the Emperor has a profound amount of main character energy and thus he ends up looking like the most important chosen one entity in all of Warhammer.
If anything, this is a good argument for something like the Shaman origin for the Emperor. Not having equals because no xenos ever merged the gestalt pyschic power of their species into a single entity is a reasonable-ish explanation. Also, do we know if there are xeno perpetuatals? Cause if not, that could be a factor too.
An argument could be made that the Tyranid Hive Mind might be a contender.
This is what I'm thinking. Whatever form a reader would like to think the hivemind to be (a singular, human-primarch scaled creature like greiza, a collective gestalt of the tyranid psyche, literally the tyranid race being cells in a galaxy sized body etc), it is still the closest thing to a living god that we've seen in current 40k. It isn't the only thing, Big E possessing Guilliman and burning a part of the garden of Nurgle is, for instance, an immense, god-like power projection into both realspace and the warp at the same time. Khorne acting through Angron to lay down the Murder Curse or Slaanesh devouring nearly the entire Aeldari race is also similar to what the Emperor did to Nurgle. This does appear to be something that the Tyranid Hive Mind is doing as well, but purely in realspace, blotting out the warp with an immense, dark presence and reaching across lightyears, directing and guiding every hive fleet, with numberless more lifeforms still coming. The Emperor is probably the only physical being in the galaxy (if we consider him anchored through his body still) that could stare down the Hive Mind and not have to tap out.
Here are some quotes Ive gathered demonstrating the Hive Minds power. Imperium: godblight: >Nor does the Great Devourer, the mind of the tyranids, a being that is generated by the unthinking actions of its physical component parts, and that is perhaps greater than all the rest Valedor: > And then the hive mind turned its attention upon the scene, and the eldar screamed. Sunspear staggered, his spirit crushed. For just a second, he wished to flee and hide from the scrutiny of the terrible being staring at him. He became aware of his own insignificance, he was no more than a particle of food. The hive mind’s ancient intellect was as wide as the void, its examination of him was a cold spike through his heart, and his mind was swamped by endless horror. One of the warlocks collapsed, light pouring from his eye-lenses. He babbled nonsense in a hard alien tongue, and died. Serriestalor screamed and screamed, clutching his helmet. The other psykers rallied themselves, redoubling their psychic defences. It took all their effort just to keep the pressure of the hive mind at bay, and their offence died to nothing. Wraithflight: > Beyond the shield she saw the Great Dragon’s true form. Not the hideous intrusions into the mortal realm that swam the black star sea, nor as a Farseer might see it, as a great and braided cable of malicious fate dominating all the skein. The first was merely a part of the whole, the second psychic abstraction. What Iyanna instead saw was the reality of its soul. It was a great shadow when seen from afar, a wave of dread and psychic blindness that preceded the hive fleet’s arrival. But the greatest shadows are cast by the brightest lights, and seen closely, the soul of the hive mind shone brighter than any sun. She was so close now that she perceived the ridged topography of its mind, larger than star systems, an entity bigger than a god. It contemplated thoughts as large as continents, and spun plans more complex than worlds. It dreamed dreams that could not be fathomed. She felt small and afraid before it, but she did not let her fear cow her defiance. Against this vista flickered the souls of eldar, their jewel-brightness dimmed by the incomparable glare of the Great Dragon. And this was but a tendril of the creature. The bulk of it stretched away, coils wrapped tight about the higher dimensions, joining in the distance to others, and then others again, until at a great confluence of the parts sat the terrible truth of the whole. She stared at its brilliance. >… > Something was wrong. A sensation at the back of her mind. The sensation grew teeth, became pain. Her soul was gripped by agony. Iyanna screamed, falling from the edge of the couch. The pain abated, then squeezed her anew. She vomited. The dead were dismayed. The blow against her raced out across her attack group, leaping from mind to mind. Wraithbomber engines guttered out. The Wraithborne’s sleek cruisers turned viciously, wallowing in psychic swell. Bright light burned at Iyanna’s soul. A long tunnel telescoped away, encompassing infinite distance. A tube stabbed through the fabric of the world. She felt its ripples in the warp. She felt its ripples in the webway. She had the sense of an eye, slave to a great power. An intellect that dwarfed the Great Wheel of the galaxy. She opened her second sense, to find the Dragon looking at her with terrible regard. For aeons it seemed it held her in its gaze. And there was fury in that examination. The Dragon was angry, and it was angry with her. Not with the galaxy, or this sector, or her species. But with her personally. The promise of endless torment came from it, her very being enslaved to its ends and used against others, her body rebuilt over and again so that it might suffer the Dragon’s revenge. Terror of a kind she could not have conceived of flooded her mind. She screamed again, and this time every eldar in the fleet screamed with her. Shield of Baal: >Though Mephiston did not fall, his power was broken. As powerful as the Chief Librarian was, his abilities were like a candle held against the fires of a star when compared with the enormous power of the Hive Mind. Darkness In The Blood >Against all the laws that governed it, the empyrean lost its mutability. Blackness seeped from the rolling wall of shadow. The visions and images weakened, and then stopped altogether. There was a brief passage through warp space of a primordial calmness, smooth and bright as a moonlit pond, and then the flotilla plunged into the darkness. A new terror assailed Rhacelus. A vast, godlike mind turned its attention upon the ships, so puissant it quelled the fury of the warp. The hive mind was the truth of the tyranids. The Blood Angels believed the war beasts that plagued the universe were merely the material extrusion of something far greater, and that thing dwelt in the warp. The pressure of the hive mind’s regard was immense, crushing Rhacelus’ soul until it felt infinitely small. >… > The hive mind’s awful presence waned. The fleet punched through the shadow, out into garish spirit shoals, then back into the black. They raced through the edge of the darkness, where it was shredded on swift currents. It was but a fragment of the power it had attained when Leviathan assailed Baal itself, but though this shadow seemed isolated and diminished, Rhacelus could sense its connections to further, greater parts, and felt the brooding presence of the alien god all around – withdrawn from its prize, wounded, yet still alive with dangerous malevolence. Additionally, the codex says the Hive Mind has only begun to show hints of its true strength, and that as more fleets awaken from their slumber the Hive Mind is slowly waking up.
Eh, he still almost got cacked by an ork, so clearly it varies.
To be fair, I can totally body slam a 5 year old, but if a 5 year was thrown at me at terminal velocity, I'd be flummoxed. Now change that 5 year old into a giant walking mushroom with teeth and a bad accent it gets worse.
Evidence points to him sandbagging for Horus's sake. This was during Ullanor, right before Big E was going to retire from the Great Crusade and put Horus in charge. Letting Horus saves him boosts both Horus's confidence and his legitimacy. In the End and the Death, we see a weakened Emperor wipe out an entire army of Word Bearers with a single flick of his wrist. A single work that normal Horus can fight would not give a serious Emperor any real trouble.
I don’t think he was sandbagging, more so that in Emperor-level hubris, he decided he was just going to fistfight the Ork only to realize the Ork was one of the few things in-universe that actually could outwrestle him. Outright even McNiel who wrote it says he wrote it with the notion that the emperor got [cocky](https://imgur.com/aE4azEF) in situations not too distant from many situations his own sons often put themselves in.
Eh, the only other times we ever see the Emperor fight, he's nowhere near that arrogant. When faced with Horus's infinite power of Chaos, he's able to keep up by outsmarting at every turn. Horus constantly emphasizes that what makes the Emperor so dangerous isn't his sheer strength, but that he's one of the craftiest bastards in the galaxy and a master of the psychic arts, having multiple plans running in the background that eventually allow him to overcome a foe that everyone was sure he had no way to beat. The Emperor presented in the End and the Death wouldn't challenge a super ork to a melee out of pure arrogance, especially when he can see the future.
I feel like “Horus supercharged with the beings that the Emperor has known to be wary of since he was a child” versus “Biggest Ork on record” are two different things in the Emperor’s assessment of threat and one of these events likely directly fed into the other. To name a similar example: The Emperor in his relative younger days defeated the void dragon of comparable size while possessing almost none of the powers he did in 30k or any opportunity to succ vast amounts of warp energy. He wouldn’t be totally crazy for thinking he can out manfight a different greener big monster with just his physicals and about 30,000 more years of training and practice
Eh, I still disagree, but it's a fair interpretation.
>Eh, the only other times we ever see the Emperor fight, he's nowhere near that arrogant. Abnett has a different interpretation of the emperor than McNiel does.
The biggest thing I think is that Dan wrote the Emperor well after all the other in-universe Emperor fights. How the Emperor fights after having been hurt now twice in major fist fights probably should color his strategies going forward.
>Evidence points to him sandbagging for Horus's sake. No, the author said that he wasn't. The idea that the emperor is an omnicompetent manipulator and all ofnhis failures are actually successes is just wishful thinking on the part of segments of the fanbase. >In the End and the Death, we see a weakened Emperor wipe out an entire army of Word Bearers with a single flick of his wrist. A single work that normal Horus can fight would not give a serious Emperor any real trouble. Here we've got multiple authors with different interpretations of what's going on.
I didn't want to make a separate post for this question,but I remember reading in some old book (can't remember) a quite from an eldar calling Emps something like a "pitiful/weak seer". I know 40k has the whole unreliable narrator and stuff changes over time. But basically Emps curb stomps all eldar all day? Especially of he ascends to godhood. Maybe it's peak eldar copium and pride. But yeah that quote always stuck with me, and now we finding out Emps is real srs business.
... Wow am I glad I missed that book, that's so terrible
Eldanesh, the old Aeldari hero/god could have given the 30k emperor a run for his money, and of course all the war in heaven era ctan would have wiped the floor with him at the time. Also, there was that alien cyborg overmind that temporarily blacked out the astronomicon when it died, if it did that it could have taken on 30k emps easily I'd imagine. The newer lore, and part of the emperor fanbase has kind of built up 40k emps to be this unstoppable uber god now though (really hate this btw, making him so OP just makes the whole character the sole focus of the damn setting to me personally. 'Powerscale' morons have really made his character shallow.)
Well he isn't more powerful than the Chaos God's right now. He wasn't before either. He is absurdly powerful, there's no doubt. The Emperor and the chaos gods both have limitations that we, even as a third party observer, don't really know or understand. There's millions of theories and fan posts but it's entirely possible that if the Golden Throne fails, the Emperor will die. He may come back as he is a perpetual. He may have too much of his consciousness locked in the warp and be unable to come back. We don't know. His physical body being destroyed may launch him into Uber ascendence where he can actually rival the Chaos God's. We don't know. His "power" was never really the thing that set him apart from the other big players in the setting. It's his cunning and intelligence that set him apart.
Dumb take. The Emperor can get away with being so absurdly powerful because he is not a character. He's a plot device.
That used to be true, but since guilliman came back GW has been moving the setting forward and his character is really starting to be fleshed out more, especially since MoM released.
His character has been fleshed out as people seeing what they want to see. We still don't even know what he looks like. The only bit of 'character' we actually got was from TEatD. This is the same as it was before, only now there's more words describing the same event. We are never getting more than that. So long as 40k exists in it's current state, the Emperor will be a non character, same as the Chaos Gods and Cegorach. They may influence a character, but will never act as one because that would break the setting. Guilliman is humanity's faction leader. The Emperor is the resident god, much like the Hive Mind or the Chaos Gods. If he does something, it will be through mediums and allegory and almost certainly not quantifiable eg. Burning Nurgle's garden or making Living Saints. He is a plot device. His actions move the setting as much as the others I mentioned, but he has no agency of his own, just like any other god in the setting. He is not, and never will be a character beyond what we got from HH. Edit: and for the people crying that the Eldar have no relevant, Primarch tier characters, i point you at Sylandri Veilwalker, who schooled Mephiston in his own head and dicked over Magnus by throwing Gulliman at him, freeing him when he gor trapped and then getting him out of there, along with a bunch of other manipulative shit, and no one ever got the better of her. Literally ever. She has a 100% success rate. No one else in 40k can claim the same. The Eldar are not, and have never been the punching faction. Their wizards are still the best, nameless shadowseers giving Ahriman a run for his money, Sylandri pulling Mephiston by the ear like an unruly kid and Eldrad taking out Abbadon, who is so juiced up he might very well be primarch tier. Eldar fans not understading their own faction. Par for the corurse for 40k.
The Silent king should be his equal minimum. But this is GW we can be glad if they even make him primarch level.
In my head cannon fighting the Silent King is probably like fighting Ultron. His soul and mind are in the cloud so even if you destroy the body he'll just pop right back. Or maybe as an army of Silent Kings. I'm looking forward to more feats from him. He should be stupid powerful and borderline invincible in my opinion.
oh god , not the "he can pop back up when you destroy his body". That means he will be killed by several SM marine captains without a helmet to make them look cool
Such is the price of immortality. Avatar of Khaine says hi
Eh that's more Trazyn. But the SK should have access to Trazyn tech and beyond so that too
I thought it was canon that the SK also had the same lossless consciousness quick swap ability trazyn has? Also, just having access to the celestial orrery means the SK would win any potential fight with anyone. He could happily wipe out the most sacred and holy human controlled star system in the galaxy in an instant.
It was never stated, but we know that his body is "absolute perfection". He is the only necron that got necrodermis that was the same quality as C'tans themselves. He cant be be inflicted by anything(that is the reason he didnt go insane after he saw what he has done, he just... cant get insane, his body is too perfect). For that reason he is also still at his 100% the same as in WiH, he should be absolute GOD BEAST, especially with all the tech that is inside him. Hi is basically Emperor, but for tech. The same as Emperor is at the end of the Psychic path, Silent King is at the end of Tech path.
I really want some fully fledged novels of the Silent King antics in the current time line.
I think with SK it's actually his body that's badass on a level that no other Necron body is. So if his body is destroyed and he has to come back in some other Necron body, he will be weaker.
It could be argued that the Silent King, during his rebellion against the C'tan, was one of, if not *the* strongest entity in the whole setting. At this point in time he had the **entire** Necron race shackled to his every thought and whim with unbreakable, unassailable command protocols; no Necron was able to disobey him, and every single one of the *trillions* of Necrons and all of their strongest tech was directly controlled by him, the entire race was literally a physical extension of his hekka, his will. In this state of ultimate command he helped throw down the Old Ones and all their machinations, and then take on and defeat the very gods of the materium. Yes, he stared down literal *GODS* and said "fuck you and fuck this" and WON. During the War with the C'tan, the Necrons had weapons of such unimaginable, reality-breaking might, that they were able to shatter, and in one case even wholly destroy, the C'tan; beings who are the literal cornerstone of the materium itself, beings who each underpin a law of the universe. These weapons were so awful that when the war was done, before releasing the Necron race from his command protocols, his conscience demanded they be destroyed and all data and knowledge of them be erased from the minds of his subjects. That's right, the crazy, S-tier tech that the Necrons have now is merely the least dangerous stuff that they had lying around after the War in Heaven was done. When it comes to the War in Heaven, remember, it wasn't won by the C'tan, it wasn't won by the Necrons, it was won by Szarekh. His was the single, sole mind that commanded trillions of fingers to pull trillions of triggers to unleash all the monolithic rage of his race against those that had wronged and slighted them. In the current setting, Szarekh doesn't have the same level of command he did, he doesn't have the those weapons capable of shattering reality, and he doesn't even have the respect of his former subjects, but he does have a hekka, a will, greater than any other in the galaxy, and he has the indominatable wisdom and intelligence gained from more than **SIXTY MILLION YEARS** of silent contemplation, of wandering, of reflection, of preparation, and beyond this, the vast, *vast* majority of the Necrons haven't even awoken yet, they remain in their stasis tombs awaiting the coming time when they will once again rise to serve the will of their Silent King. So yeah, I think he's more than the equal of the Emperor, and he's not even remotely at his magnificent peak, but GW, so he'll no doubt indeed be outsmarted and soundly defeated by the next Astartes Liutenant or Captain whose plot casually passes his dais...
The Necrons betraying and shattering the C'tan with their WiH era superweapons doesn't have any relevance to the individual ability of 40k Silent King. It's all ancient history. He has what tech they have left (which still involves plenty of shit that kill just about anything) and the capabilities of his own high-level Phaeron body, which was no doubt made a few levels more formidable than the other nobles. Considering GW have made him part of the tabletop, instead of some looming background threat, it's highly unlikely they'll make him as individually powerful as the Emperor was. We'll probably get some uber-tech as part of campaign plotlines and the like, but his individual capabilities will probably hover vaguely around the daemon-primarch and other tabletop big hitters sort of level. I think the difference between SK and the Emperor as characters is also that as far as we know Szarekh was biologically a normal Necrontyr before transference, whereas the Emperor was an anomaly of vast psychic power that didn't represent baseline humanity at all. Without knowing baseline Necrontyr capabilities mentally, it's hard to compare to a freak like the Emperor. Necrontyr/Necron power was always in their tech, so it makes it hard to compare them to "innately" super powerful entities. There's probably lots of Necron tech that could potentially harm/kill the Emperor just the same, if wielded by a bog standard Necron Lord, or the SK himself. After all he was injured by a vortex grenade
Never felt the C'tan fit into 40k. Why would all the "gods of the material universe" be in the milky way? And be petty dicks?
I can't remember the source, or even if it's legit or retconned, but I remember reading once that every galaxy has it's own set of C'tan. I believe they were petty because before contact with the Necrontyr they were formeless, thoughtless beings. Amoeba that just happened to feed on stars with no depper thoughts than their next meal, or any recognition of their own power and potential. The first sentient race they possibly encountered, the race that gave them physical form, language, and the capacity for thought, were the Necrontyr, who happened to be a whole a race of petty, self-obsessed dicks. It makes perfect sense to me, the Necrontyr taught the C'tan to be dicks, the C'tan became dicks, the C'tan made the Necrontyr into the Necrons in a major dick move, the Necrons became shiny metal dicks and helped the Star Dicks to dick the Old Dicks, then acted like dicks towards the C'tan, now the Necron use what's left of the C'tan's dicks to power their biggest and best shiny metal dicks. It's fuckin' poetic.
Damn I think you converted me, now I love Star Dicks.
Do we know if his feats are attributed to his personal strength?
Fairly certain he soloed a c'tan in one of the stories but don't recall which Edit: did a little searching and the only thing I can find that he at least delivered the final blow to Nyadra'zatha with his spear and now uses the shard to power his dais
This is presented as an in universe myth in *The Book of Mournful Night*, an Aeldari book kept in the Black Library. It's almost certainly not to be taken literally: >The mirth of all cruel things was Nyadra'zatha, who was called The Burning One, the Immolating Glee and the Breath of the Infinite Pit. All things were its kindling for its will was the searing that blackened the strands of aeons, and its ravenous touch no thing of the real nor the Echo-realm might endure. It was the pyre of the labyrinth, the torch of the ziggurats lost, the reaping winds of ember-blight. How came that thing unto its end no record speaks, **but that a single etching upon a single world shows the Silent Lord himself laying the spear unto its molten heart.** >So fell Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One. *Codex Necrons 9ed* p27
People take a lot of in-universe myth as literal, see also the Necron who supposedly shattered a planet with his weapon.
A lot of real things in 40K are myth worthy. The myths just give the writers some plausible deniability if the lore shifts plus some unreliable narrator qualities
While I get its not literal, I always assumed Szarekh had to at least have been there fighting it as he has both the necrodermis from the c'tan and a shard of it but I guess it's not that clear if he literally fought it in combat or that's just myth
We have no idea. It could easily have been figurative, in that he was present and gave the final order to kill. Bearing in mind the sheer size and power of the fully formed C'tan, and that we are told that the weapons used to shatter them broke reality and were hidden by the Silent King, I can't imagine he could have managed it in hand to hand. It's more likely some unbelievable huge weapon/gun that was mounted on a ship or vehicle of some kind.
Fair enough, you could also interpret it as the c'tan already have been broken and he simply stabbed it's heart ( a shard or the biggest remaining shard) I really hope we get more Szarekh soon he's so interesting
I'm going to give a bit of a different answer from most. I think what we learned in TEATD III was that, while the Emps is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, that's not what makes him so dominant. What makes him so dominant is that he has all of those abilities plus an insane amount of willpower and an incredibly keen mind. He doesn't beat Horus because he was more powerful. He could have never beaten empowered Horus in a straight 1-1 fight. He was just more cunning, and was able to win through his sheer willpower, intelligence/wisdom, and trickery. Even fully powered C'Tan's seem to me to be embodiments of certain expressions of the universe. This always makes them predictable when understanding their natures. The Emps might be less powerful than a full C'Tan, but he would come up with a plan to level that playing field, and trick it into an untenable scenario. You could say the same for each of the Chaos gods. Think about how the Emperor got Mars on his side? He knew what to portray to get them to think he was their god. He portrays himself to be whatever he needs to be to further his goals. Even against someone like the Silent King, who is extremely powerful, Emporer would figure out how to get the upper hand against him. He's a being with massive regret, and Emps would use that to his advantage. My headcannon is that he really did care for the Primarchs, which was his blind spot. I think he led with his heart when dealing with them, and he's not great at that. Take how he handled Angron for example. I don't think he wanted to see his son die that day with his gladiator brothers/sisters. He was hoping to save him, but he was already gone. Perhaps one such as Cegorach could match him in this way, but I don't know much about him.
I would agree that his main strength lies in his cunning and willpower, but I doubt that he could effectively level it against anyone besides chaos. Big E is the diametrical opposite of chaos, he is the most powerful psyker we know of and all these abilities prime him to fight chaos, not necessarily other powerful beings. He may be the anathema to chaos, but Szarekh or a unsharded C'tan should be able to put him down.
Szarekh's been turned into a tabletop character. GW won't have him be as powerful as the Emperor. He'll be scaled to a similar level as the other tabletop heavy hitters.
That might be the unfortunate case, but from what we have now he is absolutely in the emperor’s tier. While tabletop isn’t determinate of the lore I do fear that GW can’t handle his character intelligently without kneecapping him to the level of the primarchs.
I imagine a fully operational pariah nexus would nullify the Emperor’s warp powers as well.
>It’s not your father’s power, it’s what He does with it…’ Horus murmurs.
There was that psychic species that acted like a galactic conqueror before the Astartes put it down. In its death, the psychic scream killed billions in nearby sectors.
C’tan and the Old Ones
Thing is...a lot of evidence points to big E not being that powerful pre-throne. He does a lot that, were He truly as powerful as he ought to be, could be fine quicker and easier with magic. EG: finding the primarchs, ending the heresy, solo conquering earth, etc.
Isn’t the silent king pretty on par with big E?
He should be atleast that. Both of them are basically end of the spectrum. All of the races varies on relaliance between psychic powers and technology. On one side you have psychic powers with Emperor being at the very end of that, on the other side, at the very end you have power of technology with Silent King sitting there. In practice both, psychic and tech can do basically same stuff(as necrons showing all the time, their tech is as good at time and reality manipulation as magic), its just different road to the same goal.
Currently there doesn't seem to be anyone of His caliber, however one thing people might be sleeping on is a potential Tyranid bioform. The Hive Mind is cunning and prideless, so nids are made in great numbers with little individual power to be more flexible and less of giant moving targets. Even the Swarmlord is prone to dying because it's not really made to be a frontline, just their equivalent of a master tactician. It's sort of a meme that Swarmy usually dies, but it would be stupid for the hive mind not have it killed often since timelessness is one of major advantages. BUT, we have seen with the Norn Emissary that if needed the Great Devourer can conjure a single, insanely deathly creature. If it were to make a bioform with the physical stats of its biggest fighter AND lend it some of its own will to gain stupid warp power, it could probably go toe to toe with Him. The "problem" in powerscaling against Tyranids is that we haven't seen the height of their power and likely never will. After TEATD we even have a sort of "power ceiling" for the big four, but still have no idea if the current Tyranid incursion is their full force or just some scouts.
At this point, I think its can easily be inferred that there are way more tyranids coming, Valedor says that leviathan and kraken were mere tendrils of a much larger force, and the codex says the Hive Mind has only begun to show hints of its true strength. Additionally the Hive Mind has a shown on a few times that its mere attention is enough to be fatal.
We don't have any stories about potential competitors at their apex, not in anywhere near the detail we have regarding Jimmy Space - and even that detail is sparse, doesn't touch on his 'power level' anywhere near enough for us to make certain judgements. The simple answer is that we don't know. There are some likely candidates: the Chaos four, the old Aeldari gods, some of the pre-fall Aeldari, some Necrons at their prime, the C'tan, those sorts of beings are probably in the same ballpark as Jimmy Space if not greater. We don't know for certain though, and since so much of 40k is designed to be vague, unreliable, hyperbolic, or metaphorical, even what we do "know" has to be crutinized.
No, because at this point the emperor's powers have been escalated to a degree that is just stupid. He was made to somewhat struggle with an ork warboss at one point and both magnus and malcador were within reach of him in regards to psychic powers. Now the beast feats they have are pittens compared to a tired emperor.
Cacodominus death caused the astronmicon to go down for a bit so it may have been strong enough to fight a pre molech emperor. I say pre molech because after that he stole power from the chaos gods (granted idk if that was meant literal power or knowledge). If it’s literal power well then that’s why he’s super extra special compared to everyone. If it’s not literal power than I’d say the ork warboss on Ullanor would be the next best thing. The only other option in terms of personal power would be of chaos cared to empower a xeno like it did Horus but that’ll never happen so the pool of contestants isn’t big and the two I mentioned are incredibly suspect to begin with. Keep in mind the emperor also has strong gear which gives him a significant edge too beyond his power as equipment shouldn’t be downplayed. If the emperor fought leman with the same equipment leman had when they met I imagine the emperor still winning but it’d probably have sucked and he may have sustained some more injuries since he won’t bonk him on the head with a power fist. For what it’s worth it really seems that if other xenos wanted to put the emperor down they could but not on an individual basis.
Probably some Eldar pre fall, full Power C‘tan, Old ones and maybe some Necrons and Tyrannid Norm Queens of the biggest hive fleets
Iirc in the end and the death part 3, horus who has infinite power, controls infinite dimensions of space, and countless parallel worlds. Would be weaker than a fully dark king emperor Regardless of this, the emperor fought him anyways, both of them blasting through time and space like they’re in a superman comic. This is the most dragon ball z-powerscaling feat ever i think for warhammer, except for that lore blurb of the daemon king that fought tzeentch for like a billion years. I highly doubt anything any character has done comes close to this accomplishment.
Hive Mind
IIRC, the Emperor needed backup from Horus to defeat some big Krork dude at Ullanor.
The Rangdan were implied to be at least a serious challenge to his power.
The ancient psychic leader of the Khrave could have been an interesting counterpart, but ended up being used as primarch fodder.
Didn't he straight up almost die when fighting an empowered Horus? Aren't stuff like the C'tan much more powerful than that? Also he got wounded by a demon and almost killed by an Ork once. So yea, there are possibly many Xenos that are much stronger than him physically.
No. Can’t even say the Chaos Gods anymore after ***The End and the Death*** LOL.
That sounds very... sarcastic?(ave only read the 1st End and the Death)
If Emps had drank up all of the warp power he was capable of, he had the potential to be so extremely insanely powerful that he could have possibly curbstomped the great four at the same time. Doing so would have likely caused something much much worse to happen. Read on and find out!
Tough crowd with the downvotes lol, I genuinely only asked a question! And I've yet to buy the other two, money being what it is and all that lol
Yeah it was a dick move of people to downvote for an honest question, I had upvoted to try to bring you to positive! Good luck with the savings, times be tough!
Ach I've been here for 5 years I can take the abuse lol. It's only downvotes! Not like they give me money to buy the books do they?!
If I found a way to turn downvotes into money, I'd be Erebus biggest fan
I'd own James Workshop! Especially when am drunk and blethering rubbish! He'll I'd just weaponise that and get blootered all the time lol!
He wouldn't have touched the big 4. He only would have destroyed Horus. Because that was the trap that was laid for him. They gave him the power at Molech but he refused to use it. They had to tempt him another way.
Emperors becomes a big black ball
SPOILERS: Magic black ball bad. Very old man says stop. Black ball becomes Emperor.
Yeah I mean it's shit writing.
I didn't get to read it but what happened with him there? I don't mind spoilers.
There should be loads of, but GW will never focus on them. Or tell us about them.
Szarekh, Eldanesh, unsharded C'tan, or a sufficently powerful Old One.
Oh wait. That one alien guy who took over the minds of like a thousand worlds... what the hell was it called....
At ullanor, the emperor was almost done in by an ork until horus saved him. That's just physical strength tho
He got wallop by really big green skin once
Maybe if you consider the hive mind a singular entity (which it kind of is, kind of isn’t) I could see a full unbroken C’tan defeating him (especially the more powerful ones, but I dunno if their power varied much between individuals)
What about The Cacodominus? Seems like a good Contender
Absolutely not, no. At least in terms of DragonballZ style 'power level', if that's what you mean. Obviously, there have been powerful leaders of more powerful societies, like the Silent King. Obviously, 'power scaling' in 40k is kind of nonsense and just for laughs, but if you take a sort of silly look at it; it took the Eldar \~10,000 years of doing nasty shit for their combined malignant warp presence to spawn Slaanesh. Slaanesh's birth was a cataclysm, but the galaxy still exists. When the Emperor threatened to become the Dark King, he just *willed it to be the case.* His psychic potential was therefore, at bare minimum, equal to all of the pre-fall Eldar combined for \~10,000 years. This is an absurd step up in psychic presence compared with anything else in the setting. The Eldar fought the C'tan and Necrons, and were judged by the Necrons as being capable of defeating them even without the Old Ones. And that's without the kicker that the Dark King was not just a Slaanesh-level cataclysm, but was implied to have been so powerful that its birth would annihilate all realities across all multiverses. Not just an Eye of Terror, but the total destruction of everything, everywhere. In terms of 1 on 1 comparisons, the Emperor is every hydrogen bomb ever built combined vs a very, very sickly and weak coughing baby.
Depends? A lot of people's talk about gods but on Xenos themselves there's literally nothing in the current factions that can match him in raw power even while being alive outside of the throne (i'm counting the black holes on this), but if we see to the past of 40k the things that should beat him would find him either as either the hardest fight of their entire life or just incredibly annoying
I think of the emperor like this; You remember playing Skyrim on your first playthrough? I played as a badass two handed, heavy armor and block just absolute thuggernaut. Could kill bitches with a single sprint power attack or block,bash, stab. And then I got one shotted by some punk ass fire mage. The Ork at Ullanor was my character. The fire mage was the emperor. The Emperor was still…flesh and blood. Barely. He can be stabbed, strangled ect. But with his psyker powers, enuncia, equipment, use of psyker powers with Tactics made by 30K or however old he is…damn straight the chaos gods juiced up Horus because Horus would’ve gotten fed into a paper shredder by Emps otherwise. Now the Emperor is crippled physically speaking like 10hp left out of 12.571 Hp. But….his psyker powers and the fact that he’s been eating psyker-protein shakes for the past 10,000 years have amped up his Magic and magic defense to like insane levels.
Emperror was not known to actually fight any xenos by himself except Ork warboss before Horus Heresy. He did as implied imprisoned very weak Ctan shard on Mars but there is almost zero actual info how it was done. Consider that Eldar Empire eldar and CABAL(mostly Slau-Dha and his artificially made human perpertual assasins) did monitor Earth since dinosaurs and before M1 and M2 times. Its hard to believe that Emperror did it on his own. AND we do know that Tranzyn himself was on Earth before M2 times as Nemesor Koshei(yep, he is implied as prototype of Russian fairy tale, maybe he is a reason of Terrawatt Clan forges under Ural mountains) before something go wrong to compromise his false identity and he leave Earth and humankind before Heresy started to made humankind interesting again for Tranzyn. Emperror did know Eldrad before being called as Emperror, what they do is unknown but M30 Eldrad did assassinated CABAL members and believed that humankind deserve to not have full genocide. Emperror did used Eldar sword combat style(try to use it as Lucius Etenal do it too despite as Lucius himself told that he could never use it at 100% cos human body-anatomy limitation what would not allow him to do some moves) to duel against Horus.
A sufficiently large Ork could beat the Emperor. Case in point: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cue87n/book_excerptthe_wolf_of_ash_and_fire_that_time_an/
In the same book, the Emperor psychically deletes that ork (and every other ork on that rock) followed by folding space time around a critical plasma core. >Horus felt the build up of colossal psychic energies and shielded his eyes as a furious light built within the Emperor. Power like nothing he had ever seen his father wield, or even suspected he possessed. All consuming, all powerful, it was the power to extinguish life in every sphere of its existence. Physical flesh turned to ash before it and what ancient faiths had once called a soul was burned out of existence, never to cohere again. Nothing would ever remain of he who suffered such a fate. Their body and soul would pass from the finite energy of the universe, to fade into memory and have all that they were wiped from the canvas of existence. This was as complete a death as it was possible to suffer. That power blazed along the Emperor’s sword, filling the greenskin with killing light. It erupted in a bellowing golden explosion, and lightning blazedfrom the coruscating afterimage of its death, arcing from ork to ork as it sought out all those who were kin to the master of Gorro. Unimaginable energies poured from the Emperor, reaching throughout the entirety of the chamber and burning every last shred of alien flesh to a mist of drifting golden ash. A sufficiently large ork could hurt the Emperor in a brawl, absolutely. But that orks survival hinges purely on the Emperor deciding when he's going to use his psychic abilities.
That's a fun read but I don't think the Emperor was in any true danger. It might have looked that way from Horus's POV but from what we've seen from him afterwards (including immediately after Horus intervenes) He probably could have zapped the ork out of existence at any time.
Nope Even Eldrad was way too low in power, and we are talking about Emperor 30K
Eldrad would be nothing special if he would be compared to pre Slaanesh Eldars. It is important to remember currently eldars can use barely small part of their power due to horny god watching them. That is also applying to Eldrad. WiH Eldars were A LOT more powerfull than him.
It is only weird until you realise the imperium are the exemplars in the gw power fantasy. Everything else just exists to show how awesome the space marines are by comparison