And that justifies worshipping him how?
Why do you even give a shit about whether it 'justifies' it?
I mean, this is basically just the Emperor massively fucking up and being profoundly ignorant of human nature.
And my point is Chaos is why its so ineffective because the entire point of the Horus Heresy was to make the Imperium degenerate into a huge buffet of negative emotions for the gods
Granted GEOM underestimated Chaos by thinking it was powered by religion but again the blame is on Logar and Horus
Yeah, but as others are pointing out, for this to even happen, the Emperor had to make numerous 'unforced' mistakes. That is, mistakes where no one was holding a gun to his head.
Like, Lorgar
loved his father. A lot. Disturbingly much even. And instead of just conquering planets wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and going on to the next world like the other primarchs, Lorgar did
nation building. His legion stayed around and tried to build up institutions that would be super-loyal to the Emperor and worship him as a god.
And yes, he killed people over this. I'm not endorsing that obviously. Thing is,
ALL THE LEGIONS WERE KILLING PEOPLE. That is why the God-Emperor of Man had created
Space Marines and called his grand operation the Great Crusade, as opposed to, oh, creating swarms of genetically modified exchange students and calling it The Great Summer Vacation or something.
...
And
YES, the Emperor said not to do what Lorgar was doing, but to be fair the guy walks around in golden armor and a radiant aura of halo shining around him all the time looking like a much more swole version of Jesus; it's hard to blame at least one of his sons for thinking of him as a deity of some kind. And the Emperor could have done a lot more to dispel that impression WITHOUT resorting to mass destruction.
But mass destruction is what the Emperor did, laying waste to a huge city that was utterly devoted to him, just as a way of punishing Lorgar and humiliating his legion for loving him
too much. Right in front of them.
That shit is fucked up, yo.
...
Moreover, the Emperor did not so much as utter a word of warning suggesting to Lorgar that there might be
real evil godlike entities out there who could seduce him to their side and ultimately turn him into a demon or something. That he should refrain from seeking out gods to worship, not because they didn't exist, but because they DID.
Lorgar was
completely ignorant of all this. He went out looking for a god who would accept his worship, and it's hard to blame him, and the only reason he knew of not to do that was the word of his father who had just murdered thousands before his eyes and,
while forcing him to kneel, told him he was only a man, not a god.
It is not hard to imagine what a roiling sea of anger and emotion and very honestly-come-by daddy issues might have been boiling through Lorgar's head when he got the ball rolling on the Horus Heresy.
"
All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth."
-Lorgar
And this doesn't justify Lorgar's actions. But
unless the Emperor was a moron, he had to expect a response. Probably a bad one.
...
That's the point is, if you're the all-wise Emperor of Man and you have a legion of superhuman warriors who fight on
WITH NO OVERSIGHT, free to roam the galaxy and strike as they will and do as they please for decades at a time... And this legion is commanded by your very, very,
excessively loving son... Well, bluntly, you should be smart enough to handle shit like this with more tact and basic competence.
Surely at least ONE of those ancient human shamans who fused to form the Emperor had some goddamn clue as to how to be a good father, or at least a mediocre father? Or at least a father who doesn't commit mass destruction of the homes of people who love and honor him as a way to teach OTHER people who love and honor him
AND HAVE SUPERPOWERS and no oversight that they should love and honor him LESS.
:banghead:
...
And that's what we're talking about when we say "the Emperor made many unforced errors." He did thing after thing after thing, and a lot of them were just
foreseeably going to go wrong, and he could fairly easily have avoided a lot of his worst problems just by regularly exchanging astropathic messages with his kids.
