The Emperor

> *"ABOUT FUCKING TIME. I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT."*
>
>

**The Emperor of Mankind** (formerly known as the **Holy God-Emperor of Mankind**, now the **Manly Man-Emperor of Mankind**) is the eponymous main character of *If The Emperor Had a Text-To-Speech Device*, and a central figure in Warhammer 40,000 lore. After ten thousand years of silence, the Emperor is able to speak to his subjects once more - and is very displeased with what they've done to his Imperium.

## Official Canon

Long forgotten in Terra's distant past, the man who would become known as the Emperor was born from the thousands of souls of ancient human shamans, who sacrificed themselves in a desperate bid to outwit the nascent Chaos Gods. The result was a human being of incredible psychic prowess and virtual immortality, as well as the collective wisdom of the shamans. This being would become the secret guardian of mankind, guiding it from the shadows as it developed into a mighty interstellar race and established itself in the galaxy.

But when the Age of Strife brought the human interstellar empire crashing down, in no small part thanks to the Chaos Gods, the guardian knew that he had no choice but to take direct action. Therefore, he took it upon himself to become mankind's leader and began his plan to foil Chaos once and for all.

### Great Crusade

Using his army of Thunder Warriors, the progenitors of the Space Marines, the Emperor reunited the warring factions of Terra. However, his plans meant reuniting all of humankind, and so he needed a new army with new generals to lead them. Thus he created the 20 Primarchs - genetically engineered sons based on his own genetic code, each with their own unique strengths. Once again, however, the Chaos Gods intervened and scattered the newborn Primarchs across the galaxy. The Emperor brought his new Space Marine legions with him to be reunited with their Primarchs and embarked on the Great Crusade to reunite the galaxy.

### Horus Heresy

As each Primarch was eventually found, trouble began brewing among their ranks. Not all Primarchs got along, and the Emperor needed to return to Terra to start working on the Webway of Mankind. Thus he appointed Horus, his most decorated and capable son, as the Warmaster to lead the Great Crusade instead. This proved to be his undoing, as Chaos slowly began to corrupt the Warmaster, leading him to take half of the Primarchs and legions in a terrible war called the Horus Heresy.

The civil war finally ended at the Siege of Terra, where the Emperor personally dueled with Horus. After the heroic sacrifices of his son Sanguinius and a single guardsman named Ollanius Pius, the Emperor succeeded in defeating Horus, but was mortally wounded in the process. He was since interred on the Golden Throne, artificially keeping him alive so that his soul continues to hold back Chaos from consuming the galaxy.

There he's sat silent for the past 10,000 years as the Imperium he dedicated himself to building slowly decayed even as he did. A religion dedicated to him was created in the intervening years, and he has since been rechristened as the God-Emperor of Mankind. The Golden Throne that keeps him alive requires constant sacrifices of psykers, but even then both the Throne and his own soul are slowly coming apart. If his body finally dies, Terra will be destroyed and mankind will be doomed forever.

## TTS Canon

In a monologue, the Emperor reveals that some of his past personas included the likes of Moses, as well as Chris-Chan. The latter was an attempt to convince people to do something with their lives, but in the end all they did was mock her.

As it was later learned that Chris-Chan raped her mother, it can be assumed that He was misquoted.

At the request of Captain-General Kitten, a Text-To-Speech device was successfully installed into the Golden Throne to allow the Emperor to speak. This device allows the Emperor to carefully manipulate the stasis field around his body and translate those movements into words. His first words after millennia of silence was to berate his subjects for undermining everything that he had worked towards, having perceived much, though not all, of what had transpired in his internment, especially the constant chanting of the Ultramarines.

Still unable to interact directly outside of the throne room, the Emperor had Kitten tell him of everything that had come to pass since the Siege of Terra. His first orders were to call for the immediate disbanding of the Inquisition and Ecclesiarchy; the former because its members had become too corrupt and insane to do their jobs of safeguarding humanity from Chaos properly, and the latter because he continued to detest religion, especially one centered on himself. Despite not wanting to be worshiped as a God, he still refers to himself as a "God-Like Being" and compares himself to the Chaos and Eldar Gods, and how superior he is to them.but he agreed to be worshipped and to be humanity's spiritual salvation. Because it is mutually beneficial and because he already is.

While his sons were gradually returning to the fold (the first being Magnus the Red, who was abducted by the Ultramarines), the Emperor busied himself with convoluted and clandestine plans to restore the Imperium to its former glory. A key part of this plan involved Fyodor Karamazov; at first, it appeared that he was going to dispose of the mad inquisitor and most of the Inquisition with him, but in reality, he was to be used as a vessel for a shard of his soul that was lost in the warp. Fyodor merged with the Star Child, becoming an extension of his own will and leading the Inquisition alongside the recently found Leman Russ.

## Personality

Often heard complaining, the Emperor of Mankind is most frequently seen being angry, upset, or even just mildly annoyed at any given topic that is brought up. The Emperor himself is extremely foul-tempered as shown by his very first act in the series, which is to voice his displeasure and desire to complain about multiple subjects. Indeed he seems to have a pathological desire to complain as shown by his desire to have question and answer sessions just so the frustration of reading the stupid questions from his citizens will put him "back into balance." Most likely to distract himself from the constant pain of his living death, or the depression from his family breaking apart.

On top of that, the Emperor is also extremely arrogant with an insane amount of pride in his own unique nature, and how he is a flawless being who never makes any mistakes, often shifting the blame onto others. He loudly complains about how nearly everyone apart from himself exists on varying spectrums of incompetence, such as when he blames the entire state of the 41st and 42nd millennia on Magnus the Red. In addition, he is also extremely hypocritical and will often go to extreme lengths to appear as infallible, even backtracking over things he previously said and denying or ignoring that he said them, such as when he forgave Magnus (slightly) for what he did. Often when he endorses something or someone terrible unknowingly, he will refuse to retract his compliment even when presented with large amounts of evidence that said thing is objectively awful and will try to justify such negative aspects as reasonable; unwilling to admit he had made a mistake. To cap this all off, the Emperor is also extremely wrathful and has a rage that is truly terrifying when he is provoked, causing him to "crap out warp storms." Still despite these faults the Emperor does frequently acknowledge some of his personality flaws (except his hypocrisy or ability to make mistakes) and excuses them as he is permanently stuck on a life leeching throne, that is literally tearing his soul apart every single second of every single day. The pain is so intense that he describes it as "like a stubbed toe, but all over, and a thousand times worse."

Still, the Emperor is prone to making jokes and seems to enjoy making fun of some of the less serious issues in the 41st millennium, or when he deliberately antagonizes someone just to annoy them, such as when he told Magnus that "everything would be revealed in good time," much to the latter's anger. Indeed, the Emperor is also prone to incredible childishness and pettiness behind many of his more apparently noble goals, often carrying them out for selfish or rather stupid reasons. For example, when he heard of the Necrons' World Engine, his first reaction was "I want one!" Another time he used his strained psychic powers to 'flip the bird' to the entire galaxy through the Astronomican or to drink tea. Though in those cases, they were also opportunities for him to bond with Magnus. Even so, his humor is often self-serving with its target audience being purely for himself and making many people the butt of his jokes (mostly Magnus for his prior treachery). For example, he made multiple chicken puns when Magnus came back with wings, as Magnus had earlier predicted.

He also has had a very troubled love life, as nearly every woman he's bedded ends up in critical condition (though some did survive long enough to bear him biological children to his surprise). As such, the real reason for building mankind's webway was to get less shoddy Eldar prostitutes. His living death has done little to abate his libido, as he eternally yearns for his missing "old bonerstrum."

On the other hand despite being "grumpiness incarnate" and prone to both petty acts of self-serving humor, The Emperor is at his core a truly caring person, with his frustrations and anger often being born from his revulsion at how insane the 41st millennium is. Certain people have hearts of gold, if this is true, The Emperor is a diamond-studded pure platinum and gold-hearted guy. Underneath his exterior of bitterness and snark, he has shown the capability to forgive despite his obvious frustrations with the character in question. Even when he will loudly berate his own family to their faces, he still holds affection for them and feels heartbroken by their loss, such as when he believed that Kitten abandoned him because he felt taken for granted.

He cares for the whole of humanity as, despite his eternal frustration with the rest of his species inability to get past their own faults, he still sees great potential in human beings and wants to uplift them to a nobler state of being. He is surprisingly very patient despite his readiness to complain at others, and undoubtedly wants to repair the Imperium as to spare mankind the suffering it has been going through, with this desire coming from a truly selfless place, considering he has yet to give up on keeping the golden throne running after 10,000 years.

The Emperor is capable of planning ahead to a ludicrous degree. For instance, when Karamazov’s Inquisition came to Terra, the Emperor seemingly spared Karamazov, but then prompted Magnus to exile Karamazov's Inquisition into the Warp. Before exiling him, however, the Emperor convinced Karamazov that he was a shard of the Emperor; so when Karamazov entered the warp the Star Child would fuse with him, thus allowing the Emperor to travel the galaxy once more. Even the Inquisition’s capture by the Dark Eldar was according to plan, as the Emperor intended to be there for the birth of Ynnead. Likewise, even Magnus' attempts at fixing the Imperium by himself were part of the Emperor's plan, a fact which greatly frustrated Magnus. The Star Child also references his ability to plan ahead to an insane degree when Vect mentions the heat death of the universe.

The Emperor's egomania extends to his roleplaying games. That is, his RPG character is a gender-inversion of himself, namely an Amazonian apprentice wizard that he named "The Celestial Shaman Queen". Despite her immense physical stature, her magic abilities were pitifully weak and prone to failure (mostly due to bad dice rolls), and she is extremely uncharismatic that her attempts to socially resolves worsens the situation. The Emperor's attempts to cheat his way around bad dice rolls lead him to berate Magnus and his stupid game, leading to him and the other players rebelling against Magnus for being "a bad GM". Despite his character being critically wounded by the Gorger Lord, eventually, he got in a lucky roll and defeated the enemy with a sleep spell. After the game ended and Magnus tore up the gamebook, the roleplay characters suddenly appeared in the throne room.

## Quotes

* "*I am the Emperor. For millennia I have stridden across life carefully watching as the seed of what is to come has risen from its earthly barrows into the starlit sky. This seed, known as Mankind, I have existed along from the time of my birth. I let the seed grow, I nurtured it, did my best to have it remain healthy and secure. But, as it kept on growing, I could not keep up. I could not come with it, but could only watch from afar as its health deteriorated and vegetation grew bleak. As I entered into the realm of the half-life the only thing I could experience was despair. My work that I had driven to construct for such a long time had been obliterated in but a mere moment. Mankind, my once pure seed, had fallen into the hands of sheer, corrosive, and preposterous prudence. And at no other time has this been displayed as intensely as this very moment. Because holy fucking shit these questions are the worst fucking shit I have ever read! What ever became of mankind?"*
* *"What a fucking nerd you are"*
* *"Build a dick, Rogal."*
* "*The spanking of your ass shall be thorough and merciless, Rogal!"*
* "*At the point in time when bullets can pass through the inter-dimensional walls, when firepower takes up the entirety and eternity of space and time all beings stuck in a never-ending life and death cycle as bullets recover and destroy their bodies in quick succession, no one able to think about anything but the sheer force of the bullets rapidly flying literally everywhere in the materium turning the warp itself into nothing but a sea of semi-automatic weaponry. Then, there will be enough Dakka. Or at least almost.*"

## Gallery

Emperor's standard cutout, by NostalgiaEmperor's angry cutoutEmperor's happy cutoutEmperor's Anatolia era cutoutEmperor's Age of Strife era cutoutEmperor's Age of Strife era cutout proudEmperor's best dad cutoutEmperor's angriest dad cutoutEmperor's Age of Strife era cutout thumbs-upEmperor throne-bound thumbs-up cutoutMomperor cutoutDadperor cutout
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Episode 1: Adorable Centurion
2. ↑ Episode 23: A Hairy Conundrum
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Episode 11: Intervention
4. ↑ Episode 0: White Scars (Podcast)
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Episode 4: The Inquisition
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Episode 17: Emperor's Excellent Autobiography
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Episode 13: The Fifteenth Son
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Episode 27: A Cat to Yarn, A Bird to Folly
9. ↑ Episode 5: Malcador the Hero
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Episode 18.5: Atrocious Answers
11. ↑ Episode 14: Greatest of Psykers
12. ↑ Episode 9: Necrons
13. ↑ Episode 19: Warp Grumbling
14. ↑ Episode 12: Primarch Pessimism
15. ↑ Episode 22: Change
16. ↑ Episode 18: Banished Expectations
17. ↑ Episode 26 Part 1: Hateful Feud at Khaine's Gate
18. ↑ Episode 26 Part 2: Fear and Loathing in Commorragh
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Episode 27: A Cat to Yarn, A Bird to Folly
20. ↑ Special 6: Tabletop Adventures
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Episode 12.5: Awful Answers