Other authors perform similar acts, but whereas they will often look to spice it up with some world changing event or element unique to the canon, Dembski-Bowde n uses drama and conversation to flesh them out. Eventually the shamans of Humanity, unable to reincarnate, would become extinct, and without the shamans and their psychic abilities to guide the race, Humanity would inevitably fall prey to the corruptions of Chaos, just as eventually happened to the Aeldari. In his opinion, what makes the story more interesting is to have a more anti-Imperial approach to things, where Chaos will always win no matter what. Despite His best efforts to promote peace and harmony across Old Earth, the instinctive values of martial honour, ambition, defiance, and self-satisfaction could never be eradicated from the Human character.

It could be down to personal opinion of course, but most accounts of the tale cite it as a story heavily criticizing the Emperor's edict. When it came to tackling the Big E himself, the Emperor of Mankind, I would say it either had to be Aaron or Dan that did it, and I'm certainly happy with how AD-B handled it. Nurgle was the third to awake and plagues swept across Old Earth's continents claiming many souls for the Lord of Decay.A standard year later the child who would become the Emperor was born in a Neolithic settlement of Anatolian herders and farmers of a normal mother and father, with normal brothers and sisters.

Though the Emperor ultimately defeated Horus during the Traitor Legions' assault on Terra, He was all but slain in the battle after suffering a crippling loss of limbs and mortal systemic damage; only the life-supporting Golden Throne has sustained His living corpse in a kind of stasis, neither dead nor truly alive. In Betrayer we had the Shadow Crusade attacking one stronghold, flying elsewhere and then performing a climactic battle. There's been so many lore changes in recent years that it's a fool's errand to keep your own fluff up to date with canon. Now the greatest threats to mankind’s existence are using the webway to besiege Terra, and humanity faces utter annihilation.As more and more Humans were born with the mutant psyker genes that granted them the ability to wield the potent power of the Immaterium in the last centuries of the Dark Age of Technology, and Humanity suffered from the deadly effects of uncontrolled psykers that heralded the onset of the Age of Strife, the Emperor realised that He would have to take a more direct and open role in Human affairs than ever before. But to make His dream of reuniting all of Humanity within a single galaxy-spanning empire possible, the Emperor knew that He would have to make some difficult, even immoral decisions. But with Traitor Legionaries and corrupted Battle Titans now counted among the forces of Chaos, the noose around the Throneworld is tightening, and none but the Emperor Himself can hope to prevail.

Using genetic samples that had been derived from the Primarchs' genomes, He created a caste of warriors who would possess some of the same superhuman qualities of the Primarchs and Himself.

The Emperor first undertook the Primarch Project, the creation of 20 superhuman infants whose genomes had been designed using His own genetic code as the foundation, who were intended to mature into powerful generals and statesmen for His armies. By having and Imperial side here backing up that one viewpoint, with possible no opportunity to consider alternative depictions, it limits the story. If you are looking for Black Library fiction that breaks the mould of hulking warriors in impossibly oversized armour, over the top military battles against nightmarish, 80s horror movie adversaries, and abject nihilism at every corner, you will be disappointed. Once within the Immaterium He forged an unknown bargain with the Chaos Gods and was imbued with new powers and the knowledge required to ultimately create the primarchs, superhuman beings whose creation would combine techniques of arcane genetic science with the energies of the Warp.

Really, the finale is easily one of the best since Helsreach, and retains three of the best last-second twists of any Black Library book. However, perhaps the biggest problem overall is the Emperor himself, and how certain events are presented surrounding him.

The primarchs were sucked into the Warp through the will of the Chaos Gods while still in their gestation capsules and scattered across the Human-inhabited worlds of the galaxy. He is also said to constantly battle the Chaos Gods in the Warp and prevent their further intrusion upon the material universe. While accounts vary as to exactly what happened, the end of the tale is always the same; the Primarchs were cast into the Warp in their gestation chambers from beneath the Himalazian (Himalaya) Mountains in the Emperor's gene-labs despite the multiple psychic wards the Emperor had laid down upon the laboratory, and thought lost. Also, it is interesting you describe them as predictable as that's not something which occurred to me before. The story opens with a brief look at Magnus' intrusion into the Imperial dungeons to warn his father about Horus' treachery, an event that set of a cataclysmic series of disasters for the Emperor secret project and Terra itself.