Horus Heresy and events leading from it never happens

[Bedlam]

Ok then...what if he never bothered with the Primarchs and went straight to Space Marines? There would still be leaders but they would be merely superhuman, not demigods, and would IMHO be a lot less likely to think they could challenge the Emperor.

This is more or less the idea I had when I said to get rid of the Primarchs.

Keep your forces generally split into the various fleets led by a marine or exceptional human. Chaos will corrupt some of them by at worst 100th of your forces will turn without the super charismatic Primarchs rather than almost 50%.

[Eternal_Freedom]

IIRc, that was the justification for breaking the Legions into Chapters, the commander of a Legion was just too damn powerful.

Incidentally, if you have no psychic abilities at all, can you be touched/corrupted by Chaos? If so, weed out psykers from the SM's ranks and DNA.

[Rabid]

Incidentally, if you have no psychic abilities at all, can you be touched/corrupted by Chaos?

The constant emergence of Chaos cults throughout the Imperium, the vast majority of which are without any psyker at all, suggest a positive answer to this question. As I understand it, as long as you aren't a Blank (= as long as you have soul), you can potentially get corrupted by Chaos.

I seem to remember that even inanimate machinery can be possessed by Chaos Demon. In the first "Ghaunt's Ghosts" novel, we are shown a chaos-corrupted Iron Men STC, churning out chaos-corrupted Iron Men once activated.

[Sidewinder]

I seem to remember that even inanimate machinery can be possessed by Chaos Demon. In the first "Ghaunt's Ghosts" novel, we are shown a chaos-corrupted Iron Men STC, churning out chaos-corrupted Iron Men once activated.

In The Lost, we see a daemonically possessed Leman Russ battle tank. And don't forget the Defiler and other examples of Chaos heavy support.

[Darksider]

Incidentally, if you have no psychic abilities at all, can you be touched/corrupted by Chaos?

The constant emergence of Chaos cults throughout the Imperium, the vast majority of which are without any psyker at all, suggest a positive answer to this question. As I understand it, as long as you aren't a Blank (= as long as you have soul), you can potentially get corrupted by Chaos.

Utter lack of a soul isn't required for chaos immunity. Tau are essentially immune to chaos corruption and they aren't blanks. I wonder if the Emperor could engineer humanity to have a minimal warp presence like they do in order to reduce the risk. Go in the other direction rather than his plan to emulate the Eldar.

[Simon_Jester]

The two plans aren't mutually exclusive- you could have a Tau-like species capable of utilizing a human webway, I think. Or you could have a... bifurcate species, if you will- a class of psychics who are strong, carefully monitored, and warded to protect themselves against Chaos (much like the Navigators, and in some respects like the Grey Knights but not to the same extent), while the rest of the human race is low-presence.

[lordofchange13]

Incidentally, if you have no psychic abilities at all, can you be touched/corrupted by Chaos?

The constant emergence of Chaos cults throughout the Imperium, the vast majority of which are without any psyker at all, suggest a positive answer to this question. As I understand it, as long as you aren't a Blank (= as long as you have soul), you can potentially get corrupted by Chaos.

Utter lack of a soul isn't required for chaos immunity. Tau are essentially immune to chaos corruption and they aren't blanks. I wonder if the Emperor could engineer humanity to have a minimal warp presence like they do in order to reduce the risk. Go in the other direction rather than his plan to emulate the Eldar.

That would greatly limit how far the Imperium could span. With out psykers to guide them Warp drive is very inefficient.

[lordofchange13]

The two plans aren't mutually exclusive- you could have a Tau-like species capable of utilizing a human webway, I think. Or you could have a... bifurcate species, if you will- a class of psychics who are strong, carefully monitored, and warded to protect themselves against Chaos (much like the Navigators, and in some respects like the Grey Knights but not to the same extent), while the rest of the human race is low-presence.

You mean to split humanity into 2 different species? Did the Imperium ever have genetic engineering of that magnitude?

[Simon_Jester]

Where do you think the Navigators and the Astartes came from?

You might have, oh, homo sapiens, re-engineered for lower Warp presence and homo custodis, "guardian man," with psychic ability, and filling many of the same roles that in the 'real' Imperium are filled by the Astartes, the Navigators, the Adeptus Telepathica, and so on. You might still need something like the Space Marines' geneseed to provide supersoldiers with exceptional physical prowess, and for the sake of the human future you'd need to be careful to make sure there were still useful roles properly occupied by highly talented members of sapiens instead of custodis.

But I suspect that had it occured to the God-Emperor to try, and had he not had any philosophical reservations about the idea I don't know of, it would be something within the reach of the bioengineering establishment he had at his fingertips. The man who created the Primarchs should be able to do that job.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Hm. The Tau are immune to Chaos corruption now- they're a very new species, it's possible Chaos simply has not the measure of them yet; and you don't necessarily have to be a psyker to be a victim of chaos, they may be more common in the ranks of the warp- touched but the vast bulk of the ranks of the armies of darkness can't be, there just aren't that many.
It is possible to give your loyalty and allegiance to Chaos, to believe in Chaos, without being directly touched by it- there's only the Greater Good between the Tau and that.

As far as splitting humanity into two species, the protectors and the protected, goes- somebody somewhere in the process just reinvented the wheel, because that is out of Plato's Republic, near as dammit. His ideal society featured a few more gradations, but has been condemned by many starting with Aristotle as trading away all discernible human freedoms for the establishment of a cheerless, static prison of a society, a human termite hive. Even the bloody Daleks would have more fun. (Obviously the ancient Greeks didn't add that last bit.)

It could be done, but ultimately to avoid shafting both, to avoid having one strand doing all the work and being essentially distant and sterile and the other doing none, they have to converge again. In one sense the guardian type, the Astartes, Navis Nobilite, etc, are templates and prototypes for the bulk of humanity; in another sense they are a chrysalis and a shield, buying room for the rest to grow, buying time for the normals to mature as a species- down directed paths, probably- to ultimately rise at least to the status where their protectors are no longer alone, where they can face and face down the naked universe.

One key element, the one the Emperor left out, was that the Guardians are also the guardians of the system, they have to know their enemies, they have to know the truth. They can't fully do their duty, otherwise- can't protect others, most of all can't protect themselves.

[lordofchange13]

Where do you think the Navigators and the Astartes came from?

They were created during the Dark Age of Technology.

You might have, oh, homo sapiens, re-engineered for lower Warp presence and homo custodis, "guardian man," with psychic ability, and filling many of the same roles that in the 'real' Imperium are filled by the Astartes, the Navigators, the Adeptus Telepathica, and so on. You might still need something like the Space Marines' geneseed to provide supersoldiers with exceptional physical prowess, and for the sake of the human future you'd need to be careful to make sure there were still useful roles properly occupied by highly talented members of sapiens instead of custodis.

I like the idea, but as i said before, doubt that the Emperor or the newly formed Imperium has the ability to do it.

[/quote]But I suspect that had it occured to the God-Emperor to try, and had he not had any philosophical reservations about the idea I don't know of, it would be something within the reach of the bioengineering establishment he had at his fingertips. The man who created the Primarchs should be able to do that job.[/quote]
The Primarchs were just clones of the Emperor that came out wrong. He and his scientists don't necessarily have to have the tech to alter humans to such a high degree as removing their Warp potency.

[Minischoles]

Genetic Engineering was pretty widespread on Terra, not just by the Emperor. Warlords he allied with/conquered had their own genetically engineered armies, virtually the entire Imperial Army at the time of the great crusade is genetically engineers to one degree or another.
The Emperor at least had the technology to first create the Primarchs, then the Astartes - and he did create them, as he realised how unstable his proto-astartes that he had used to conquer Terra were and he knew he needed them for the Great Crusade to work.
According to Nemesis, they are capable of engineering and cloning psychic blanks (or at least one of the assassin clades is) so removing warp potency is potentially possible, whether they can actually do it by degrees or not is unknown.

[Simon_Jester]

ECR has a point about the split between homo sapiens and homo custodis; as I said, "and for the sake of the human future you'd need to be careful to make sure there were still useful roles properly occupied by highly talented members of sapiens instead of custodis." Which isn't the sum total of the matter, but is at least part of it.

And, yes, Plato. There's a reason I chose the Latin for "guardian" for the name of the psychic protector-race...

Seriously, it's as good a description of what the Emperor might want to do to make humanity safe from Chaos over the next several millenia as anything else I can come up with. I agree, in the extreme long run the sensible goal would be to uplift sapiens to the point of being peers of custodis, if not in raw power then at least in terms of being able to cope with the same reality. But in the 30th millenium, that is still a long way down the road, and you need defenses and a plan for organizing them now.

Where do you think the Navigators and the Astartes came from?

They were created during the Dark Age of Technology.

The Navigators yes, the Astartes no- the Emperor made them, and the Primarchs from whose templates they sprang... and the Primarchs represent a level of genetic modification against which any other feat of bio-engineering in the 40k setting pales by comparison, with the possible exception of whoever made the Tyranids.

The Primarchs were just clones of the Emperor that came out wrong. He and his scientists don't necessarily have to have the tech to alter humans to such a high degree as removing their Warp potency.

I do not believe this to be the case. I don't think the Emperor consciously cloned himself- there was, from everything I've heard, conscious genetic engineering involved even if the Emperor laced the clones with bits of his own genome.

[lordofchange13]

The Primarchs were just clones of the Emperor that came out wrong. He and his scientists don't necessarily have to have the tech to alter humans to such a high degree as removing their Warp potency.

I do not believe this to be the case. I don't think the Emperor consciously cloned himself- there was, from everything I've heard, conscious genetic engineering involved even if the Emperor laced the clones with bits of his own genome.

The articles and novels i have read seem to imply that the Primarchs are clones of the Emperor, they never specify if the clones were altered during there growth. With out sufficient evidence i'll just leave it as a possible example of Great crusade gene-technology. Though it is clear that the Emperor "Consciously" used his DNA to make lesser forms of him self. But Perhaps they would rediscover the Knowledge from one of the conquered worlds, as they found a lot of STC devices and other such lost technology.

[Simon_Jester]

My interpretation of the text is that no, he did not make twenty identical clones of himself- that many of the Emperor's genes were spliced into the Primarchs' DNA, but that they had significant genetic differences and were created to be a group of distinct, unique beings.

Which would have been pretty much impossible unless Terran bioscience was up to the task of understanding which of the Emperor's genes actually contributed to his powers and resilience, and how to interface these with the genes of an ordinary human being without creating lethal combinations like "3500 cc brain in a 2000 cc cranial cavity."

[lordofchange13]

My interpretation of the text is that no, he did not make twenty identical clones of himself- that many of the Emperor's genes were spliced into the Primarchs' DNA, but that they had significant genetic differences and were created to be a group of distinct, unique beings.

Which would have been pretty much impossible unless Terran bioscience was up to the task of understanding which of the Emperor's genes actually contributed to his powers and resilience, and how to interface these with the genes of an ordinary human being without creating lethal combinations like "3500 cc brain in a 2000 cc cranial cavity."

To clarify my last post: I concede this part of the argument on the grounds i cannot produce any evidence to the contrary.

[Connor MacLeod]

there are several kinds of corruption. There's 'physical' corruption, mental, and spiritual (psychic.) Physical and mental are closely related, they represent mutation and general physical or physiological changes to the matter of whatever we are talking about. This can be people, machines, inanimant carbon rods, lumps of rock, etc. The normal kind one thinks of when one thinks of corruption is the psychic/spiritual kind, where a daemon takes over the body through the soul (which is basically just a connection to the warp. Psykers are more vulnearble to this because their use of the warp gives off a distinct signal that daemons can pick up on, but in theory any soul could be used as a gateway if detected. They're just hard to detect in 'normal' people.)

What one is vulnerable to depends alot on how you handle the warp in crossovers. If the other universe has warp 'souls' (which is reasonable) but they aren't engineered for creating stronger connections (EG no emerging psykers), then there probably is very little change of possession (the warp won't be greatly influenced, and the ability of daemons to detect souls would be minimal.) This means they're effectively safe from virtually any form of psychic corruption.

They are still, however, vulnerable to the more physical or mental kinds, as they simply change existing matter and there is no fundamental difference between universes matter (assuming real life rules and physics hold fairly consistent between the two universes. Which they ought to, otherwise how do you do crossovers.) The one caveat here is that we dont quite know what is involved in the physical matter corruption process.. it isn't instantaneous (or at least it's not predictable.) so it is possible for someone exposed to the warp not to be mutated at all. Another difference is that a psychic corruption/possession generally involves an already-established link, which can sustain the corrupting influence by its warp connection. Physical or mental corruption, unless permanantly inflicted (as in mutations), will only exist/last as long as the warp energy is present.

[Connor MacLeod]

As far as the Emperor goes, near as I can tell he created 20 different 'aspects' of himself.. each Primarch meant to embody one part of himself or his nature (which tells you something about him, I think) - at least that's as close as I can recall.