The Emperor's actual character

An abstract from "Forge", by Milleuros

FOREWORD

This is an abstract from a fanfiction written in French by a Swiss using the pseudonym Milleuros many years ago.

Admittedly, my friend made various Fluff faults and he knew it, because his ken of the Fluff was shallow and he had the humility to recognize it; even taking into account the fact that the Horus Heresy had yet to be developed by Games Workshop, or that he was advised and criticized by people who knew a lot about the Fluff.

Even so, I think that the depiction of the Emperor's character that is the most truthful to the Emperor's actual original Fluff is found in this. Yea, a Swiss who writte a fabulous depiction of the ultimate Ghibelline hero-god; but I shan't facepalm though, because it was really well done, and even at that time I could tell that THIS was how divine sovereign of cosmic life & sublime thoughts and emotions would speak and feel like. Do not be fooled by the depiction I made of the "Hormonal Empress", she is just a rightfuly pissed off shrimp; or by the darkened depictions that you may find in the new official fluff, for they are but slandered on the "Golden Age" and the primordially Traditional world views… these are but shallow representations of what kind of person the Emperor was, they are marred with falsehood and willing misinterpretations. The correction of these false views had to be done eventually.

And so I took upon myself to translate this text from French to English.

Do not bother for the end, or from the beginning either, you will do more harm to yourself than otherwise. I tried to push the author a great many times to end his texts, especially this one, but he rarely did so. No really, it was almost harassment. He had talent, but was not willing to overcome the anguish of white pages, not even with proper methodology. If you read the original version, you will be filled with an impetus to read the rest, but you won't, because it was never finished and never will be. #Assholetep, am I right?

I will say a few words on it, however. The original story was inspired by a different Si-Fi universe & story that you will easily recognize, I won't name it for reason of obviousness. The plot however went differently. The main character is not the team leader, he is just a human, an Imperial Guard if I recall; and there was no love stories. The leader was an eccentric Inquisitor, who went around and recruited several talented men for his mission, many of them being Space Marines. There was also a Blood Angel who was getting overcome by the Black Rage and was sent there as a suicide mission of sort. There was a pretty decent Ultramarine character, nowhere near as atrociously obnoxious and insufferable as most of his fellows, in the end he proposed to sacrifice himself but was stopped before actually doing it by a Tyranid attack, we will never know what happened next. It is beside the point, anyway, because I soon as I read the original text, these many years ago, I knew that Milleuros got it right about what kind of person the Emperor was.

So, I suggest you read it and if you write about the Emperor of Man in a not so far future, that you spare some thoughts for this small story that portrays the Emperor in a most praiseworthy fashion; for as the Knights of the Grail said to li Roy Méhaigié Amfortas in the last scene of the Wagnerian Parsifal : "Be Mindful of your duty !"

That is all.

- Tomosada, during the last days of the month of Augustus of the year 2018 Ano Domini.

Entry 33. 022M42

I was right.

We were gathered in the sleeping quarters / eating room and took upon ourselves to open the door. Everyone thought that hidden Genestealers would be behind, so we all took a combat formation and placed an explosive on the door.

The explosion was… odd. And that is when I understood that something was not normal. A great light exploded all of a sudden and as it faded away gently I saw that it came from but one source, hidden by the smoke.

I readied myself to shoot at it, awaiting the moment where I could distinguish what was hidden behind the door. Each second was like an eternal instant where thousands of hypothesis whirled and where anguish heightened as the fog decrease. And then, we saw Him.

A man stood, just behind the door. He was tall, very tall. His gaze held an incredible might, source of fright but of admiration and deep respect also. A huge armour He wore covered in gold and magnificently chiseled symbols and details, a (Palatine) Eagle among them. A strange aura seemed to come out of Him which eased my anguish born of fear to replace by the angst of awe. Exactly as he was represented on so many vitraux and paintings, the Emperor stood in front of us.

As soon as the smoke dissipated, everyone immediately knelt, lowering their gazes and stuttering apologies for having dared to look at Him. All, but me. This was not possible. I knew He could not be here. This was just impossible.

I stood on my feet, surprised, amazed, nearly shocked. All emotions in the world succeeded themselves in my spirit, but curiosity surfaced again and again, all the time. This was not possible, I thought. I wanted to be sure. At long last, I walked past my cover, my gun pointing upfront, towards Him. Many were those who would have straight executed me for such a blaspheme, but I was too suspiscious: it was impossible. I came closer, slowly, my mind enraptured into a storm of emotions: alarm, adoration, suspicion, curiosity. And that suspiscion built up as I grew closer: He was totally unmoving. Even His eyes were immobile.

I was close enough. I extended my left arm to His shoulder in an eternal movement. Two issues were dictated to me: kneel and beg forgiveness or continue and be sure. Each centimeter I went through changed my mind. At long last, my glove touched His armor… or rather, the image of it. While my hand touch the hologram, disappointment tore my mind. I knew it, but I refused to believe it, keeping a fragment of hope. A tear flowed along my cheek, entering my helmet. Only then I looked down to see the drop reach my boot.

I saw the hologram moving. His lips were opened and I knew he was going to speak. With a voice filled with extreme power and yet so beautiful, he confirmed my sorrowful discovery:

"This is a holographic message destined to the Imperium."

I did not thought at looking at the others; I imagine similar feelings of disappointment went trhough their minds too.

He continued to speak. I was not ready at all for something like this, but he gave us the information that we sought. Our prayers were answered. Fom then on, I shan't stop thanking Him.

I shall re-transcript his speech another day; it will be soon my turn to keep vigil but I don't even have my uniform.

Entry 34. 022M42

Hither are His words.

« One day, the Imperium will need the object that you walk upon. One day, it shall need to rebuild what I have destroyed, to reactivate the Forge's power. I do not think that nor do I hope that I will know this day. This day, sadly, has come however. So that you may save my Opus, I give you all that is here, all that I discovered inside the artifact's bowels.

We were on the world of Amerigo Prime, and I fought to unify the rest of humanity. In one of the rare moments I was alone, I met an Eldar, a Great Arlequin. He was deadly wounded. When he saw me, he muttered "the God-Man" with a tone between surprise and contempt. I offered him drink which he refused; life was leaving him. He spit blood and then told me of a great space Force, an artifact of which he taught me only the position and main function: to build war ships. He then prayed one of his gods and then became unanimated.

« The Eldars are not liars, especially not on the verge of death. I knew that I could not leave, for I had to continue to battle for mankind's unification. But I never forgot him, until the occasion to join the Forge presented itself. I left my best friend Horus continue the Great Crusade and I returned to Terra.

« During the travel, I managed to leave the Fleet in a transport and to go alone with a small escort and Dorn to accompany me.

I had no trouble finding it. A powerful energy emanated from it, albeit it was camouflaged. While approaching, we saw a Hulk nearby the forge, which jumped into the Warp soon after our arrival. Orks had accosted in and the bolts of my son & companions were helpful inside the Forge.

« What we discovered was beyond my hopes. The Forge contained a data bank of all known ships and even some I had never seen, and was equipped with automatized machines allowing to create any of these vessels and apparently without spending any resources. Those ships themselves would have been automatized, piloted by artificial intelligences though they could all be controlled by an admiral. Dorn was dumbfounded, and only desired to make the artifact work. But there was a price to it.

That price, we discovered in the room that you just went through. TO create objects of that size required colossal amounts of energies, an energy that even a plasma reactor could not produce. But the Eldars had found a solution : the Warp's energy. The energy that is inside every person that linked them to the Warp; and to extract it there was no other way than to sacrifice said persons. »

The Emperor lowered his head. A sadness that nearly amounted to despair could be read on his face. He backtracked and with his arm pointed at the chamber behind us. A chamber that was devastated, crippled with bolt impacts and filled with Orks corpses and ruins.

« 'Tis in that room that the process is started. A being must enter these tubes and someone else must operate the console, then will the ships start to exit from the hangars.
« While explorating the data bank, we discovered that the mightier the being was and the greater the fleet's size produced by the Forge would be. We attempted to find a way to calculate the number of ships. Rogal Dorn did it with himself and we were all surprised by the result: if my son sacrificed himself, it would produce a fleet equal to the entire size of the Imperial Fleet on a galactic scale.

« Learning of this, he seriously thought about sacrificing himself inside one of those tubes. To convince him to not do so was hard, but he ended up understanding that we did not need these ships: my sons would soon enough unite the entire galaxy and we would never need the Forge; unless the stars' gods still keep some surprises from us.

« When Dorn understood that he would not need to commit suicide, the Orks attacked us. They charged our small group albeit it was a kind of assault worthy of their race: disunited. They took us by surprise, but they discovered by sons' fury. It took us less than a minute to push them out. But when everything seemed to have ended, two other Orks appeared out of nowhere. One of them had avoided us and jumped inside of the tubes while the other started to tape randomly on the console. There was a flash and the first ork disappeared while one of my Custodians slew the other. Dorn and myself immediately understood what was happening; he ordered the Custodians to destoy the installations and we ran.

« In less than a minute, we had joined the generator of energy which we immediately disactivated hoping that it would stop the process. A frigate still had the time to come out and jump into the Warp, but we halted the making of a battleship class.

« I cannot forbid the Forge's use, I know well that it will end up being used and relatively soon. The best protection is ignorance. I swore Dorn to silence and obtained it from those that were accompanying us as well, and I trust they will keep silent. Yet, I am aware that the Forge may save my oeuvre from a crisis. I thus decided to hide a very vague document inside the archives of the Mechanicum, hoping that it would be found at the right moment.

« I do not want for Humanity to be transformed into a battle fleet. »

The hologram slowly faded away, and we already missed the Emperor. Gendol ordered to retreat to the Traveller, we had to think about what to do next.