>Conquers the entire galaxy with his anti-religion ideology>Can’t 100% stamp out Mars’ weird religion???
>>97971036He let them have it because Martians had him completely by the balls. Conquering Mars probably takes even longer than the Reunification War did. With Cult Mechanicus aid, the Great Crusade took a fraction of the time the Reunification war did
>>97971036Per Mechanicum, Emp started the machine cult
>>97971055This is objectively and canonically correct, with the additional caveat that the Emperor knew that the Mechanicum's crypto Void Dragon worship is explicitly not Chaos worship in a trenchcoat because he was responsible for imprisoning the Void Dragon on Mars in the first place, and set himself up to fulfil the role of the Mechanicum's omnimessianic figure.The Emperor wasn't some Reddit atheist, he wasn't opposed to religion because of some ideological belief in the truth of scientific enlightenment; he was well aware that the Materium was reflected in the Immaterium and his proscription against religion was explicitly a weapon against Chaos. Belief empowers entities in the warp, so don't permit belief and starve them out.
>>97971055>>97971070>>97971111Why did he hate Xenos so fucking much?
>>97971425During the Dark Age a lot of aliens immediately took advantage of human weakness and turned on humanity. Other aliens had a lot of chaos worship in their society.Though mostly he was just being a spiteful asshole.
>>97971425It's unclear what the state of the galaxy was before the Cybernetic Revolt, but humanity was the ascendant power and had both stalwart allies and begrudgingly impotent enemies. During the Cybernetic Revolt, humanity's power was broken and many allied species perished, some in the infighting and a great deal many because formerly cowed enemies now had an opportunity to commit great horrors without facing an immediate and lethal response.The Great Crusade was a method by which to reunite the scattered masses of humanity, relocate the surviving allied species (extremely few though they were), and exterminate the enemies of mankind and their allies who had glutted themselves on the suffering of others.As a point of comparison, imagine if the US tore itself apart fighting Skynet and every shittly little gang, cartel, and terrorist organization in existence flooded in to dance in the ashes, desecrate all national monuments and centers of industry, and sodomize and cannibalize the hapless survivors. In this analogy, the Emperor is a general in a bunker under D.C. which contains just enough warfighting equipment to jumpstart the reconquista, and Mars is a cult which has somehow managed to keep open a manufacturing line for the M2 Browning and Toyota Hilux.The general meets with the technical manufacturers, abuses some old authorization codes and the wack-ass religion they've invented to firmly secure them as allies, and goes forth into the wasteland to salvage what he can and shoot the raping pillagers stone dead.That should sufficiently address both your question and OP's.
>>97971036it was a case of them being far to convient to force them to be athiestic (he even gave the occasional exception to Primarchs such as when Khans homeworld was allowed to keep their beliefs so long as it stayed within his legion and homeworld) that being said towards the end of the crusade you started to see some martians adopt the Imperial truth so it could also be Emps was playing the long game and was waiting until enough of them converted to end their beliefs, but then the HH came and forever fucked with that
>>97971629>Big E had a plan for that, but then the Horus Heresy fucked it up foreverThere's the entire setting in a nutshell.
>>97971036>Can’t 100% stamp out Mars’ weird religionA shard of the Void Dragon is sitting pretty on Mars even to this day, and he knew he couldn't destroy it, so he just let it go. Problem can be dealt with later, or so he thought.>>97971425He had a fundamental belief that humanity and aliens can not ever have a relationship of mutual trust. Our cognitive, physical, and spiritual differences would inevitably lead to conflict which was not acceptable.
>>97971736But I thought Tau sterilizing the human populace was Dawn of War slop!
>>97971782That's the general Taufag defense, but that is taken straight from the Deathwatch RPG so it is definitely something they do. Any person that declares the Imperium an evil fascist dystopia but romanticizes the Tau as being benevolent and wholesome is massively full of shit.
>>97971701Pretty much, his plan had a bunch of little it can wait until later parts, and a few big this needs to happen as soon as possible parts, one of which was the reunification of the human species under a single banner. He had a big overall goal that he was doing his best to speedrun.
>>97971111>>97971561Nice headcanon, but I'll stick to lore with actual sources.
>>97971111I always wonder if Big E wouldn't have been better off trying to co-opt some clearly non-chaos gods as a way to funnel any worship positively. Knowing 40k shit probably still would have gone sideways, but Lorgar might have been easier to handle by funneling his zeal towards being a tech priest or letting some details slip about Cegorach or Isha. Having Lorgar fawning over xenos isn't ideal, but it's magnitudes better than him finding out gods are real on his own and stumbling headfirst into chaos.
>>97971036The emperor was legit an incompetent retard. It took him 700 years to conquer earth. With super soldiers. Complete retard who had plot armor. In any semi sensible setting he wouldn’t have even unified earth due to his incompetence
>>97972005gr8 b8 m8
>>97971782The idea that the Tau sterilize all humans is largely made up, but sterilizing traitors is fine with them.
>>97971036He chose not to so he could use them to conquer the Galaxy. He probably would have purged them later if the Heresy never happened, but the Imperium is full of quick and easy solutions that they considered necessary at the time, but end up fucking them over long term because it creates problems that entrench themselves before the Imperium can even consider resolving it.
>>97972783>reads a genuine source explicitly stating Tau regularly perform sterilization as a common population control measure>"It's only a rumor, and if it weren't it'd only be for traitors, and if it were they'd deserve it"
>>97971036The Imperial Truth is where 40k jumped the shark.
>>97971036Yeah well the weird technology religion knows how to mass produce lascannons as a core part of their faith. What does christcuckery have in comparison?
>>97972915>regularly perform sterilization as a common population control measureOn a planet that had been dealing with extreme amounts of human resistance, and which had been cut off from the rest of the Tau Empire so they couldn't redistribute the population elsewhere.
>>97973063>several dozen populated worlds>"only one planet">description of the Tau's entire philosophy>"that's extremists"
>>97973098I've read the book it's from, it's basically just a thinly veiled critique on the war on terror (down to taking place on a desert planet and the local human population routinely using suicide bombings against the Tau). The Tau had been using sterilization because the human population was dangerously overpopulated and on the verge of turning the planet into another hive world, and the death watch was basically there to stoke discontent.
>>97973057If you believe those hacks at Black Library Chaos Daemons are repulsed by Christianity still
>>97973119>"it was actually good and right of them to do and you shouldn't fault them for it"
>>97973128Nobody said that, you can certainly criticize the Tau, they're just better than all the alternatives.
>>97973151That depends REALLY heavily on your point of view and species of birth.
>>97973174Fair point.Eldar, Squats, Orks, Necrons, and Tyrannids will all prefer the company and empires of their own species. It's only humans, minor aliens, and the Tau themselves that benefit from being in the Tau Empire.
>>97973189Given the pretty explicit mind-control helmets on the Vespids, I'm not really sure you can count minor aliens in there.
>>97973241Eh, it's not explicit, it's hinted that it might be mind control but nobody knows, it's just a theory.
>>97973189The only people who actually benefit from the Tau Empire, besides the Tau themselves, are the Kroot. They largely get away with this because they’re nomadic by nature, more widespread than the Tau themselves, and don’t actually need anything from the Tau. Everyone else is largely in various stages of being exploited.
>>97973320Nothing exists in a vacuum. The Tau do exploit humans and minor aliens, but their alternatives are being exploited worse or exterminated by the Imperium.
>>97971425The Emperor was a control freak. Forget about Orks or Nids, even if some form of cooperation were possible with certain xenos, they were fundamentally unpredictable. They could be influenced by, or tamper with, the Warp (as with the Eldar and the Eye of Terror), possess galaxy-destroying abominable technology (like the Necrons), or pursue entirely alien and inscrutable objectives that would ultimately harm humanity.Better completely xenocide them or beat them until they cannot pose a threat for good measure.
>>97973338So what you're saying is that a fascist hierarchal state stratified via genetic lineage is preferable to being murdered or skullfucked by its enemies? Cool. I agree.
>>97971036One day, the Mon-Keighs will figure out that the Emperor was not the 'tactical genius' they believe he was.
>>97971036The whole gay space atheism angle has no place in WH40k, and was retarded from its creation all the way until WH40k ended.It is known.>>97971425Because Xenos constitute an existential threat to humanity and its evolution, on top of the fact that entire xenos species and empires routinely fall to Chaos.He doesn't "hate Xenos so fucking much"; he simply recognizes that they are in natural opposition to humanity. He clearly was not above working with the Eldar when advantageous to do so, and both he and the Imperium have worked with the Eldar and other Xenos species many times, and even with Orkz, and there are even Eldar half-breeds.
>>97974602Correct. The Imperium is not fascist, however.
>>97971425Because they're assholes
>>97975294He was in good company then.
>>97971425Jealous of the Eldar Empire which just so happened to collapse right before the Great Crusade
>be the emperor>psychic power strong enough to strike fear into the Chaos gods, stronger than anything else in the galaxy>know that the Chaos gods are plotting your and the human race's downfall>take great measures to guard against Chaos, including plans to move all humanity into the webway>...>incorruptible warrior-philosopher custodes are le not enough for the great crusade o algo>decide to create primarchs>primarchs get corrupted>job to Horus>humanity eternally raped by chaosWhat the fuck was he thinking? Why would you even make primarchs in that situation?
>>97975440The custodes are pretty mindless, they have no independent will, only ever doing what the Emperor tells them to do directly, and the God-Emperor needed actual lieutenants
>>97975488I like this interpretation since they did fuck all for 10,000 years until an official Regent could be named and then tell them what to do
>>97975488Needing lieutenants is one thing. Creating some of the only things in the universe that could kill you is another. Besides, even if you did need lieutenants, why do you need them immediately? The Emperor is immortal. He was needlessly hasty in his plans. He should have slow rolled the great crusade and made absolutely sure that the webway project wouldn't get fucked in the process.
>>97975639Because the Emperor is always right.
>>97971036>make character who's indifferent towards religion a raging atheist>keep everything else the same>"why dowsn't this make sense">mfw
>>97975639"But then the story wouldn't happen". -The battle cry of the hack fraud.
>>97971036Couldn’t he have threatened to use psyker powers to destroy mars? Or just threaten to awaken the dragon if they don’t surrender completely
If the emperor is so powerful, why did he get killed by Horus?
>>97971425I dunno, let's take account:>a race of explosively reproducing battle thralls engineered for mass murder and systematic genocide on a galactic scale.>a race of alien robot fascists seething with rage that other things dare exist without being their slaves at best, extinct for a preference (they have always been like this)>a race of degenerates so debauched on their grotesque excess that they birthed an eldritch demon god which plagues all intelligent life to this very day>>their "good" successors are a faction of space racists who view all other intelligent life as pawns to trick into dying for them so that they can live a little bit longer>the zerg>a new race that insists they're nice guys but they're a fascist expansionist dictatorship that uses chickenshit subversion and simply attack when that doesn't work>>their loyal subjects include a species of mercenary cannibal birdman and literal brainwashed bugmenBig E wanted to kill all aliens because they're fucking evil.
>>97971425The Emperor wanted to purge the warp and remake it in humanity's image.The warp reflects the thought and emotion of *all* sapients within the galaxy.Naturally, this makes his aspiration impossible to achieve while xenos still exist.All the guff about may xenos betraying humanity in their hour of weakness and worshipping the chaos gods - while true - were secondary impetus.They were convenient excuses to do what he was already planning.
>>97976096>Big E wanted to kill all aliens because they're fucking evil.I mean...so is humanity by that metric since humans do worse to each other than half the xenos you just listed do to humans.
>>97971036>>Conquers the entire galaxy with his anti-religion ideologyNu-lore ignore. The Emperor acting like a cringe reddit atheist was one of the worst bits of slop ever pushed out of Black Library's asshole.
>>97978091>lived for tens of thousands of years>seen retard humans killing each other for gods forgotten to time and history by even modern day times>knows an explosive kebab isn't going to his virgin holiday, just fed khorne>knows what gods are in the setting, doesn't consider them gods, merely powerful entities>still written like a reddit atheistBlack Library is miss way more than hit.
>>97978091You can't really have the emperor without him inherently being anti-religion
>>97971425Because the default Xeno is an Ork.
