3516- History of the Emperor
Early history
Humanity originally was aware of the warp and coexisted with it. There were certain gifted individuals who could sense the movements of the warp and use it for many purposes - the Shamans - the spiritual leaders of early humanity.[citation needed] These people's spirits could even flow through the Warp seamlessly after death and be reborn in new human bodies.
However, as humanity prospered, the process of civilization severed its links with the natural forces of the warp and created new ones based upon mankind's own character. The shamans began to notice the changes as their psychic gifts diminished and their ability to reincarnate was being lost. All the Shamans of earth gathered together in one place to begin the most important debate in human history, in which it was concluded that they were doomed and that without them, the rest of humanity would fall prey to the entities it had created in the warp. They decided that they would, together, take their own lives, and together be reborn into a single, immortal body.[citation needed]
The Shamans were from then on extinct from the earth, but within a year after the resulting mass suicide, a child was born - the boy who would become the Emperor of Mankind.[citation needed] His original name is unstated, although there are some references in Warhammer 40,000 canon that he was born in the 8th millennium BC in central Anatolia[1][2].
As the Emperor grew older his powers began to manifest themselves and he gradually remembered his thousands of past lives. The Emperor was aware how the extreme sides of the human character were feeding the Chaos Powers, and devoted his immortal life to promote peace and harmony, and to hold back the growth of the Chaos Powers. The Chaos Powers themselves recognized the Emperor as their greatest enemy. For thousands of years the Emperor wandered the earth, watching the human race develop. As the incarnation of the Shamans who were the spiritual guides and guardians of their people, he used his ancient wisdom and influence to help humanity where he could, adopting many guises and guiding his race along a narrow path of survival he alone could see.[citation needed]
The first mention of the Emperor in Imperial records occurs when he unified Terra at the end of the Age of Strife (sometime in the 30th Millennium). Mankind was spread across the galaxy, divided since the Age of Strife, and at war with itself and against invading alien races. The conquest of Earth was the start of the Emperor's broader plan of unifying all of mankind under a single banner. His use of genetically engineered warriors - the protoastartes, genowarriors, pre-Space Marines - enabled him to emerge from a warlord of techno-barbarian warriors to become Emperor of Earth. With the assistance of the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars, the Emperor armed his Space Marines and fleets of interstellar ships to carry his armies to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, beginning the Great Crusade which would create the Imperium.
The Primarchs
The Emperor created the superhuman Primarchs from his own genetic template. From remnants of this experiment, he also created the Space Marines. According to Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus, the Emperor made a pact with the Chaos Gods to scatter the Primarchs across the galaxy. The truth of this claim is disputed: Erebus, like the rest of his Legion, was corrupted by Chaos, and actively sought to convert others to his cause. Yet, as Erebus reasons, if the Emperor alone created the Primarchs, "Why not make a thousand Horuses?" [3]
Another theory is that the Chaos Gods somehow broke into the Emperor's laboratories on the moon and used their power to scatter the Primarchs across the galaxy. They hoped that the infant Primarchs would land on human populated worlds and develop flawed, human personalities that would be vulnerable to the seductive nature of Chaos. They did this because the Chaos gods either could not destroy the Primarchs for some reason, or saw that corrupting them would be more beneficial to them.
The Great Crusade
The Emperor had a grand vision: to reunite the elements of humanity who had been scattered across the galaxy and isolated from each other during the Age of Strife. In the initial years of the Great Crusade, the Emperor was at the forefront of the fighting, leading his genetically-engineered soldiers into battle. As more worlds came under the control of the fledgling Imperium of Mankind, the Emperor rediscovered the lost Primarchs, whose genetic template was used to stabilise the creation process of the Space Marines.
Following the triumph at Ullanor[4] the Emperor returned to his underground laboratories on Terra to work on secret projects, including an invasion of the Webway, an entrance to which he had discovered within his mountain fastness.[5] He left his trusted 'sons', the Primarchs, in control of the Crusade, promoting the foremost of these, Horus, to the rank of Warmaster of the Imperium. Crucially he did not explain to anyone, even Horus, what he was planning to do or why he had returned to Terra; this sowed the first seeds of discontent, which would later bear deadly fruit.
[edit] The Horus Heresy
The Great Crusade came to an end with the events of the Horus Heresy, when Horus turned on the Emperor. Under Horus's leadership, nine Space Marine Legions and many Imperial Army regiments turned to Chaos and started a galactic civil war.
Even as Horus' armies laid siege to Terra, the Emperor still believed that Horus could be redeemed due to his love for his son, and he maintained this belief even as he faced Horus in single combat. Due to his unwillingness to use his full power against his surrogate son, the Emperor suffered grievous injuries at Horus's hands. As Horus stood over the Emperor's shattered body, a single guard of the Adeptus Custodes entered the room. Horus tore him apart with a single look. The guard's death galvanised the Emperor. He saw how far Horus had fallen and that there was only one way to defeat Chaos: to kill its ultimate pawn, his beloved son. The Emperor mustered a psychic lance of unparalleled power and unleashed it upon Horus. To preserve themselves the Chaos gods deserted their pawn, the Emperor sensed the return of Horus's sanity. He knew Chaos might attempt to possess Horus again, and he would not be present to stop it a second time. Driving all compassion from his mind, the Emperor called on his inner reserves and destroyed Horus' soul utterly.
More of this story is told in the Black Library book series, The Horus Heresy, the series' books are written by different
