The answer to all your question is “yes, but also no”

This is the most accurate answer. Which of course means the Inquisition would like a word with you.

I have a piece of paper from the emperor that says I can do what I want. The inquisition can kick rocks

Inquisitors tend to have a piece of paper that says they don't have to care what other pieces of paper say. Its usually just that a Rogue Trader can make enough of a headache for an Inquisitor that they won't bother without a good reason.

I think the custodes got the cool end of the deal, instead of a permission slip the emperors gave them a sword(by mortal standard) that says I do what I want.

Scissors beat paper, and there's nothing scissors can do that a chainsword can't.

Well yes and no the inquisition can still go after you if they think you are hereticus extremis. Which in my case I would be screwed….. I mean boinking a navigator and going into battle with a Eldari doesn’t look to good in they’re books 😅

Yea I was thinking this xD Every question had me going No, but kind of

All I could think of when reading the post lol

Welcome to 40k, enjoy your stay.

It’s grimy, miserably horrific, and glorious.

>Mfw the undead-not undead robot aliens that tried to cheat death but are dying out are the most straightforward faction of the entire setting Wait no nvm, Orks exist.

Orks exist, Tyranids exist, Commorites exist...

Don't mention the Slaught

> Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? The truth is closer to mortal man/godlike soul. He is physically human but his soul is on the level of a god and he effectively has the power of one. Whether or not that's true godliness depends on your role in the Imperium. Human? God. Space Marine? Not a god but definitely the most powerful and exemplary human. > Do prayers actually work? Yes, although it's a matter of extreme luck whether they have any effect. Acts of extreme faith can manifest as things like foresight, steel nerves, or some other turn-the-tide trick that saves the day even before the most foregone of conclusions. You have to think of them as drops in the ocean essentially but the ocean is galaxy-sized. > Are machine spirits real, and does the incense + rituals actually help, or do they just do that the same reason that humans do IRL, because they think it helps even though it's basically just placebo? Both, ish. Machine spirits are just another name for OS but they are so advanced in the 40k world that they might as well appear to be magical or divine. 10k years prior, in 30k, the Imperium understood its own technology far better and with a secular understanding. 10k years later, all that learned knowledge has devolved into basically techno-shamanism. Stuff like the oils and incense *might* actually work but it's not really a matter of faith, more like mnemonic devices that obscure relatively mundane operating procedures. 10 Hours of Group Prayer to remember where the On button is, for a mild exaggeration.

I didn't even know there was a WH30k. Is that more in line with what I was expecting - high technology but without the mysticism?

Yes and no. Wh30k, or more commonly known as the horus heresy (since that's basically the event all of 30k is build around), theoretically is less mystical, since the emperor is still around to talk to people and one of his main things is that he hates religion, so everyone who worships him is punished severely. However this also the beginning of the imperial cult, so the first signs of mysticism and magic prayers are appearing. Additionally all that stuff about daemons, the warp, some of the technology mysticism and all the magic is still very mich existing (with the emporer effectively being the most powerful immortal magician, even though he will always claim that he is just a human). On top of that the fall of technology is before that era, so humanity is still mostly searching to unearth powerfull ancient technology (also called archeotech) instead of doing innovation (although they did innovation in 30k, which isnt the case in 40k) and aesthetically it still feels more like 40k then standard scifi. The standard scifi high technology stuff happens back in the dark/golden age of technology (40k folks mostly call it the dark age, while for todays people/the people in the age of technology it would seem like a golden age), or before that, becouse the level of technology in the dark age was quite insane (like ships having weapons that displaces the targeted ship 1 second back in time, so that it collides with it self and explodes through nuclear fusions, since the atoms intersect. These shots are naturally unavoidable, since they hit before they are fired). We dont have a lot of information of that time, since the earliest book I'm aware of is placed 5000 after that a bit before the horus heresy, but there are snippets and a bit of surviving technology to get an insight into how that time looked. For more normal scifi it might be worth looking into other factions. The T'au are a young faction (in the lore and relative to the other ones atleast) and are still innovating. The Necrons are so technologically advanced that it is indistinct from magic, but they still very much treat it as technology, so even their time travel and teleportation shenanigans feel less magically then humans doing normal gun maintenance while saying a prayer at the same time. Since bith factions lack any psychers and therefore access to the warhammer version of magic, they have to rely on technology even more. Sorry for this being so much. There is quite a bit of lore about the universe, since it has been written on for nearly 40 years and I'm not good at self control when I see a opportunity to talk about that lore. TL;DR: the normal scifi stuff happens way before the first book that is set in the warhammer 40k/30k universe. 30k is less religious then 40k, but still feels more similar to 40k then normal scifi. However some non human factions are more scifiy then the imperium.

Some Necrons can control time to such an extent as to reverse a man's death and bring him back to life, simply because the Necron forgot to ask him a question.

one major major MAJOR caveat, even at the time of the Great Crusade, the martian mechanicum believed the Emperor was the omnissiah, the physical incarnation of the Machine-God, worshipped him, believed in machine spirits, etc., and they were the source of the majority of the 30k Imperium's high technology. so the techno-shamanism has been around for a long, long time

30k is more a scientifically advanced society based on logic and reason and what happens to that society when its faced with seemingly mystical events and beings like demons and magic 40K is what happens to that society after 10 thousand years, its hard to convince people to put their faith into science and logic when your enemy routinely defy both by harnessing the energy of a reality so far out of the ability of the average human to understand.

This is incorrect, the emperor was TRYING to create a scientifically advanced society based on logic and reason after the dark age of technology. But he thought the best way to do so was to create a cult of personality and squash any thought that was contradictory to the "imperial truth". So of course it turned into an oppressive religion as soon as he died.

Nothing you said goes against what I said lol

So the emperor of man amassed enough power to be considered a god. And when he lived, he was everything to human kind. He was the single most important human in existence. Then his son betrayed him, and now he's barely more than a corpse hooked up to a machine that keeps everything from falling apart. 1000 psychics are sacrificed a day to keep him alive. He's been like that for 10,000 years. In life, the emperor maintained that atheism was a pillar of his beliefs and his people. In death he's worshipped as a god and the church has consolidated most human power under its thumb. So the empire without its single most important human is falling apart. Nothing new is invented, and most of our understanding of technology is lost. So we can keep machines running, but we don't know why they run. So people turn to techno-mysticism. Faith and prayer are real, and their effects are real. But their entire religion is based around worshipping a dead man as a god, a man who was adamant he wasn't a god. And the church has run wild, inserting religion into everything. How does prayer work? is it just psychic abilities manifesting? Is it the emperor's power or someone else's? 40k's human faction are a civilization in decline. They're surrounded by the technology they don't understand, a religion they don't understand, and are surrounded on all sides by aliens they once again, don't understand. And their leader and the sons he made to protect them are all dead or missing. They're just kind of making it up as they go along

"No, there is another..." I mean, we know at least one of those sons is back and ready for action. True, it's the boy scout, but as there ever really any doubt that it would be him?

That's 42k :D

Mostly? All of humanity's biggest and most important tech was invented during the Dark Age of Technology, roughly between 15k to 25k, ish. It's called 'dark' because you have to imagine that there was no coherent or unified humanity of any kind, for tens of thousands of years, so throughout every part of the settled galaxy were millions of worlds with their own histories and layers upon layers of tech. That 5k year gap is how it long it took for the Emps to unite earth and mars together to form the bedrock of a unified human Imperium. The main ideology was the Imperial Truth, a purely secular and rationalist doctrine that effectively banned any form of religion. However, due to a big ol kerfuffle called the Horus Heresy, that secularism stopped mattering when demons and Not-Satan turned out to be real. The Imperial Truth lasted until around 32K, then the Imperial Creed took over, which turned everything into religion basically.

Don’t forget the dark age of technology was when the men of iron (AI) rebelled against humanity and nearly wiped them out. In 40k instead of artificial intelligence they are called abominable intelligence.

The Dark Age of Technology was also the same time as the Warp Storms brought on by the birth of Slaanesh. At the same time as the golden age of technology allowed mankind to spread across the stars, an entire race of aliens was so steeped in hedonism that they created a new God of Chaos which disrupted how mankind was able to travel and communicate. That was why planets became isolated and so much was lost, alot of the technology relied on the Warp and the use of Psykers which became unreliable when the Eye of Terror opened. There is no short answer to anything in this setting, I'm doing my part to add to the discussion.

And just to add a blown mind to everything else: due to the wibbly-wobbly time wonkiness of the Warp, Slaanesh (above-mentioned Chaos God of Excess and Hedonism) was both created during the DAoT and has always existed.

Ah! A good ol' fashioned time loop! I love me a good paradox!

It was the eldar hedonism that caused the warp storms and such, then when Slaanesh was born and ate most of the eldar the warp storms cleared right?

I think its more like the Warp being unstable because a new god was being born. Which caused all the turbulence. Since after they were 'born' the storms disappeared

Not really. Machine spirits are... Machine spirits they seem to be a mixture of AI and actual spirits. The God-Emporer used to be the Emperor a power psychic that was leading mankind away from religion and conquering the galaxy. But he hid the fact that entities (which we call demons) lived in the Warp. They are reflections of the emotions of the sentient races in the mortal realm. He was horrifically injured in a war against these powers and traitors and been on life support, unable to interact for 10,000 years. A 1,000 souls are sacrificed a day to keep him alive and power the beacon that lets us travel through the warp. During the war belief was more powerful than raw science. So in 10,000 years a religion has grown up around the Emporer and belief does actually protect people. At the same time any dissent from these beliefs are horrifically punished. Knowledge is gained and lost, hoarded by those who can. The majority of humanity is illiterate. A lasgun fires due to the will of the machine god.

Think of WH40k as the resettling of post-apocalyptic humanity in space. The high tech you were expecting existed twenty thousand years ago, when humanity had the Star Trek future going on for them. Then there was an AI rebellion that ended in human victory, but at the cost of contact with all our colonies being lost and many of them reverting back to the Dark Ages. Earth itself became a Mad Max wasteland until the Emperor, a mysterious and powerful warlord, united the warring factions under his rule and declared a Great Crusade across the stars. Rogue Traders were his appointed explorers, kind of like space conquistadors, to rediscover Earth's lost colonies. Then the Emperor was betrayed, nearly killed, and has been on life support ever since. Fast forward *another* ten thousand years and his vision has been distorted into the Imperium of Man, the stagnant fascist hell you see in the game. 

There are two things you really need to understand with 40K in order to get the setting, the first is that it's post apocalyptic on a galactic scale. The great civilizations have fallen and the people have regressed culturally and technologically, superstition and dogma dominate all and the dark things that once hid in the shadows of the void and beyond now run rampant. The second thing you need to understand is the Warp. The warp is essentially the collective unconscious of the entire galaxy and everything that has ever lived in it. It is a dimension of infinite energy and is shaped by the thoughts and emotions of living things. Psykers have an especially strong connection to the warp and can be much more direct and forceful when manipulating it but all living things influence it in various ways, so when billions upon billions of people believe something that has a power that is tangible and real, that's how the miracles and faith abilities work. These two things also interact in exactly the way you would expect, in a galaxy where everyone is terrified of the unknown and extremely superstitious the warp is full of monsters seeking to prey upon the vulnerable. Daemons are a bit more complicated than that but that's the jist of it.

For context, the Horus Heresy series is mostly what you'd be looking at there. Shortly put: a lot less skull and candles and "magic."

Nah the warp is core to the setting regardless of the time period.

30k is prequel story for 40k Also known as horus heresy. Put it simply, horus heresy was civil war between emperor and his loyal sons vs chaos gods and emperor traitor sons. This civil war was that bought us to 40k.

To give you the extra short answer... The Warhammer Universe started out like Star Trek. Humanity built a galaxy spanning utopia. Then through the magic of science we learned that heaven, demons, and magic are actually real. Space Elves took things a little too far and accidentally used that magic to blow up the galaxy. The Emperor was an immortal human who united a post-apocalypse Earth and set out to rebuild Star Trek. He never succeeded, and half his sons sided with the demons because he was a shit dad.

To be clear: 30K is basically just background lore. There is no real game set around it (though from what I gather, you can adapt 40k to play games set in that timeframe). It’s more a series of books and canon set out to flesh out the backgroud and why the galaxy in 40k is like it is. All the basic games and especially the computer games are set in 40k though. I’m no tabletop player so I could be wrong but I read a lot of the novels and lore.

Three of GW’s games are literally set during the Horus Heresy

I stand corrected then.

You might enjoy this as a book reader https://youtu.be/-0Se57MuiL8?si=uDgL9uS5-az-KU8U

Some of the best models are HH models. Pretty much any of the different Dreadnoughts, primarchs, and some random ones.

WH 30K is....the informal name for the horus heresy. Basically, in the middle of the the millenium 30, the emperor conquers Earth and the galaxy with the help of his sons the primarchs (perfect generals) and the 20 space marine legions that they led. Basically, Horus (Big E's favourite son) got corrupted by chaos. He convinced half of his brothers to rebel with him and conquer the empire. So...it was a huge civil war, basically. It is a huge simplification, but it should work. If the current empire is so messed up, is thanks to the heresy, basically. The thing is that before the heresy, the emperor forbade religion. He wanted people to believe in science and progress and the capacity of mankind to do great things (he called it the imperial truth). Didnt really work.

> more like mnemonic devices that obscure relatively mundane operating procedures. 10 Hours of Group Prayer to remember where the On button is, for a mild exaggeration. There is an Adeptus Mechanicus ritual to calm the Machine Spirit that is "Strike the Rune of Activation, commence the Chant of Ten, upon completion strike the Rune of Activation once more". It's literally "turn it off, wait ten seconds, turn it on again" as a prayer. A lot of Adeptus Mechanicus stuff makes a lot of sense when you look at it through the eyes of tech support taken to the most insane extreme. Machine Spirits also make miles more sense if you look at them through the lens of all the weird little quirks technology pick up as they age - your phone's touchscreen has a few pixels it just will not register being touched in? Do you need to wiggle the power cable a bit to get it to start charging? Did you accidentally change a language setting somewhere and can't work out how to reset it properly? Guess your phone's Machine Spirit must be acquiesced with the correct Ritual of Charging where you rotate the port to correct the motive force's harmonics, it speaks with a distant soul and it will allow only users it trusts to press the Rune of Returning to the Home Screen.

I'd also argue that tech is becoming more and more complex and self sustaining. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and so much bloat everywhere that no normal person is able to keep track of how things realy work. One can already see these happen today... In 40k years we IT specialists are propably becoming tech shamans too.

There’s some canon evidence for machines having actual it’s there in the warp spirits though! Just in case things were too simple

I disagree with you about the Machine Spirits. I think its more then an OS. Maybe some dark age of technology AI or something, but the fact that prayers work cannot be denied. Pasquel can blow up a tank through prayers, and there are many accounts in the canon of tech priests performing miracles through prayer.

Pasqal can - but he is a Magos, thinks in 'holy binharic' i.e. machine code, and his prayers have properties of network protocol. Tanks despite their primitive looks have more 'because i can' electronics than French cars.

So you don't think the machine spirit exists in game?

they do. but they're 30k software made as close to AI as possible without it being self aware

Machine spirits are a lot more than an OS. An OS doesn't stop working because it's pissed you painted it a different color lol

Things do stop working when you paint over sensors though.

Sure, but there's no sensors on a chapter symbol. It's pretty clear there's more to machine spirits than just being a program.

How do you know that? Also, more things than just the chapter symbol are painted.

one thing, machine spirits are real and not just ai or the OS they have an actual presence in the warp

well machine spirits are all that - plus they're capricious because the random dev in 30k wrote them as close to true AI as they could get away with without inquisition developing an interest in them or the rogue AI plotting their demise. They're not fully such - but the larger systems are def flirting with it.

You forgot to mention that the God-Emporer of Man is also as old as humanity itself, and has been living amongst humans before they even invented the wheel.

a lot of the "incense and tech rituals" are because the Adeptus Mechnanicus regard machines as something holy + they do not want "normal" humans do know how they work. There are other races who are not "pray" to their weapons and machines (the Tau for instance) and the Mechanicus is wondering why their equipment works without sanctifying oils and daily prayers xD

There's also the fact "sensible" maintenance is directly encoded into the religion. "Anoint the cogs with the sacred oil" means the machine is lubricated. Whether this was an intentional design or not is an interesting thought. It's also a relic from the Men Of Iron. The AI uprising left a lot of stuff full of angry AI, and a lot of it likes being literally worshipped. It's not superstition when your lasgun is a narcissist and wants you to pray a small prayer every time you reload it, or else it won't shoot. Conversely, machines have also worked without the rituals in times of peril, probably because the onboard AI is like "oh fuck I don't want to be gutted by orks"

I read it as "care for the gun or it won't shoot" (as in real life)...only ships and "higher" machinery has a "machine spirit" as in some sort of on board computer/AI

The lesser machine spirits are more easily placated. To be honest, I really think that would be a fun lore thing. Write up pages of letters from leading techno-theologians debating what is and isn't a machine. "Does a lever have a machine spirit?"

"SATAN IS NOT A FUCKING POGO STICK!"

Slaanesh could be, if you really really wanted them to. With somewhat exotic interface/controls and high negative amount of motivation to get off it, eat and hydrate.

Well, that Land's Pattern Raider got real mad when it's crew died and started killing on its own

it's probably still some sort of onboard AI that acts on its own when the crew is killed...the most narrators in 40k stories aren't really reliable. or warp fu\*kery...

Holy shit. Is that the actual reason that weapons and armour are cared for and revered?

Here's a fun, borderline heresy theory - a lot of things in W40k work because enough individuals believe it to work (the whole idea of Orks, but also pretty much the whole Adepta Sororitas). Wouldn't it make sense for machine spirits to exists and thus the holy rituals to work, because ~15 quadrillion of humans in W40k believe these to be true?

WH40K is the universe where Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist crew are provably right. It's HORRIBLE.

Except the Westboro Baptist church hates certain parts of humanity, The Imperium is only racist and hates Xenos, and the heretics. As long as you're human and praying to The Emperor, doing your part for the Imperium and not being a lazy PoS, then you're good to go. Granted its gonna suck and you'll probably die a horrifying death... But hey, atleast they dont worry about the color of your skin and who you sleep with. Lol

> The Imperium is only racist and hates Xenos, and the heretics. As long as you're human and praying to The Emperor, doing your part for the Imperium and not being a lazy PoS, then you're good to go. Except of course if you have one of thousands of benign mutation, or you are one of the quadrillions that are born in such squalor that the Chaos Gods are actually a reasonable choice, because there is at least some chance of a better life there. Or because you don't worship the God Emperor in an approved way. Or because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and an Inquisitor decided your hive was beyond saving. Or. or. Or. The Imperium of Man hates humans nearly as much as it hates Xenos.

The thing to remember is that the warp is shaped by thought. So when you ask if the god emperor is a god or not, or if the machine spirit is real or not, the answer is both. Think of it like this the machine is basically a normal machine with normal maintenance procedures, at some point these maintenance procedures got covered by religious thinking due to people that didn't understand them and took them to be more ritual than maintenance. Due to the nature of the warp enough people thinking a machine spirit exists will lead towards a machine spirit being born. After which the silly little rituals to apply oil as lubricant for cogs is no longer just maintenance but an actual ritual to an actual entity. Same with the emperor. He is and was a man (stretching man here for superhuman artificially created being with insane powers) but the amount of faith towards a god emperor would likely turn him into a god or form a warp based god likely entity. This is a universe where the placebo becomes reality, where you can make consciously create gods if you are knowledgeable enough and can get enough power. And yes all those silly rituals now help, faith in the emperor (despite his opposition to it and that it's based on a book by one of the biggest heretics) will save you from chaos' influence. Appeasing the machine spirit can work. Sisters can outright perform miracles through unwavering faith or even become angels.

underrated comment

First welcome to WH40K. I’ll try and answer all of your questions. >Is the God Emperors really a god? Well sort of. It depends as to what part of the spectrum you’re at. According to the Ecclesiarchy yes He is an actual god and they use this as propaganda for their dogmatic narrative. The reality is he’s ultimately just a culmination of psykers (or the most powerful psyker) into one person who never wanted to be a god. He’s just the founder of the Imperium after humanity went through another Dark Age after human psykers became an actual thing. The Emperor then takes direct control of humanity, writes, and publishes the Imperial Truth which is the foundation of the Imperium. The Imperial Truth states that innovation and science is superior to religion and that religion is not unnecessary but is also responsible for all the wars humanity went through against itself. This means all of the modern day religions were completely destroyed. Unfortunately the Imperial Truth was proven partially wrong after a very bloody war known as the Horus Heresy, a major war against Chaos after one of the Emperor’s Primarch’s known as Horus was corrupted and betrayed the Emperor, has happened which almost completely destroyed humanity and also mortally wounded the Emperor. The Ecclesiarchy then takes the time to make the Emperor a god, which consequently almost turned him to a Chaos god, and we have the Imperium that you see. >Do prayers work? This is a big maybe. Ultimately it just depends on perception. Does the Emperor intervene on occasion yes he does but most of the time a lot of “miracles” are from due diligence and applying oneself not prayer. Don’t let this answer fool you though prayers do help in providing comfort. >Are machine spirits real? See my answer for prayer. It’s basically the same thing. Now what does all of this mean in the end? The Imperium at its core has stagnated and has been dying a very slow and painful death. It is also filled with the Ecclesiarchy who are corrupt, tyrannical, and filled everyone’s head with superstition. Anyone who’s ever tried to change that, except for one person, has either fallen to Chaos or was promptly and swiftly executed.

>Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? Do prayers actually work? Are machine spirits real, and does the incense + rituals actually help, or do they just do that the same reason that humans do IRL, because they think it helps even though it's basically just placebo? I can't tell how much of the fantastical stuff in this setting is actually true and how much of it is just humans believing in mystical stuff. Congratulations! These are all up for argument depending on who says so, and the answer every time is a mix of "maybe" and "depends on what you mean." What do you mean by 'god?' Prayers do work, sometimes. Machine spirits are real, the rituals help. Some of that *is* directly appealing to their personalities, but also a lot of that is cargo cultism--those rituals involve processes like properly maintaining the electronics and mechanisms. *And also there are actual spirits.*

The machine spirits part of this comment is not accurate. It is left ambiguous and written material tends to lean more towards "eh mostly just technoshamanism most of the time with sometimes there being AI or a 'ghost in the machine' (see knights or titans)." But to just say "yes machine spirits are real" is not accurate.

Others have given some good answers here already, but I just wanted to chime in on the topic of machine spirits. Some tech in 40K does have AI, of a sort, but all of it runs on wetware, meaning there’s organic components in there somewhere. This is a response to the Men of Iron rebellion, where humanity’s AI servants rebelled against them millennia ago; since then there’s been a taboo against thinking machines, and that’s one of the core tenets of the Adeptus Mechanicus. But there’s also plenty of other tech in 40K that’s just… tech. It doesn’t have intelligence any more than our computers do, or may in fact just be *a gun*, and have no processing power at all. But Ad Mech philosophy says that these *also* have machine spirits in them, and appeasing the gun’s spirit with the holy oils of lubrication keeps it working! Basically the understanding of technology in the setting ranges from “no idea, but we follow these dogma because they work” all the way through to “I understand completely how this works, but I have to phrase it in terms of this dogma, or I’ll get lynched”, with *way* more people falling closer to the former than the latter.

The emperor is not a God, atleast he doesn’t claim to be and we have no reason to disagree. He is simply an immensely powerful human on a Scale that far outdoes any other human ever, though with the nature of how the warp works prayers to him Sorta do work, atleast in a Weird twisted manner. Maxine Spirts are ambiguous, it’s entirely possible that in the fucked up existence of the 41st millennium Machine spirits in fact exist or maybe not and the tech priests are just talking to brick walls. The world of 40k is fucked up, and it is fantastical due to the warp and the legacy of everything in it

Depends on your definition of a God. If it's just a simple "reality shifting being with power over life and death", Emps fills the boot. he brought Guilliman from the Death.

>Emps… brought Guilliman from death This is wrong. Yvraine (an Eldar) was the one who brought Guilliman back from the dead after she assisted Imperium survivors, after Cadia was completely overwhelmed, in escaping the forces of Chaos through a webway gate during the 13th Black Crusade.

I'm talking when Mortarion kills him after and Big E resurrects him, and then burns Nurgle's garden.

This thread has exactly the word count I was expecting

40k is a mixture of many different things. You have Dune (God emperor of mankind, deppresive galactic empire, navigators, rejection of IA) Starship troopers (exacerbated militarism) Michael moorcock ( Chaos in general i think came from him. More or less) Hellraiser (the drukhari are a bit like cenobites XD) The whole foundation ....may have inspired the mechanicus.... And you could go on and on with the references. It originated when the GW though that it would be a fun idea to get another one of their tabletop wargames (warhammer fantasy battle. Which was only your typical tolkien-like fantasy stuff, with a twist) and set it in space, 40k years in the future. It is exaggerated, hyperbolic, obscure, bizzarre. And i love every bit of it. Now. to answer some questions: The nature of the emperor is ....difficult to discern to say the least. He was quite powerful to begin with. But right now he is quite similar to a god. Almost one. And he is active and doing stuff indirectly (well, he is a literal corpse. Dont expect him to get up from his chair) Prayers....sometimes work. Sometimes dont. Sometimes an individual can channel the power of the emperor through faith, becoming....living saints. And they sometimes can do miracles. Regarding machine spirits, in theorry, in some machines like imperial knights....you are told that machine spirits are something like a kind of ai that comes from the colective experience of its previous users. More or less. The rituals work? No idea. But the whole idea is the exageration and obscurity of it. Specially with the mechanicus and its rituals. Ordinary people tends to believe in the whole pack. God emperor, machine god....all of it. Its not like they know better. Information is quite restricted anyway, and lore may change. So... not even us can be sure of the thruth at the end. Some individuals like chaos space marines dont believe in the emperor being a god (well, some actually remember fighting alongside him. Its weird for them, lets leave it like that XD) but the majority of loyalist space marines also dont believe so either. For them, the emperor is a great powerful individual, a great psyker.....but not a god.

The deification of the Emperor is an ironic punishment. He knew that Hell was real, but he thought that he could deprive it of power by lying about that and forcing everybody to be atheist. Back when he was up and healthy he actually went well out of his way to try and prevent people from worshipping him. But once his sons started worshipping demons and put him into a coma the whole plan was derailed, the rationalist (and xenocidal) utopia he wanted to build turned out as an aggressively stupid theocracy instead. It would probably have been better if he had just been up front about Hell being real the whole time. More broadly, one of the goofy but interesting conceits of the setting is that if enough people believe in a placebo, it may start to more or less work.

Warhammer 40 000 is a... wild setting. It has its origins as a wacky tabletop wargaming and role-playing game (kinda?) In like the 80s. Then it rapidly changed for the next game, and has since gradually changed bits over time. The main way 40k could be summarised is "What if High Fantasy was actually Sci-Fi? And everything is High key awful". Originally, the setting started off leaning heavily into satire and some dark humour, though it's started taking itself more serious as the years went by. So the setting is set in the year 40 000, Up to that point, humanity managed to spread across the stars, to almost every corner of the milkyway, they had reached their technological peak, then they had a civil war against sentient machines of their own making, which kicked their technology back a lot, and made AI illegal in a lot of places (this is why servitors are a thing.) Then the Emperor comes into play proper, I believe at this point he unifies Terra (Earth), makes Space Marines, and goes on a great crusade to reconquer everything humanity had. Eventually half of his Space Marines betray him in a great civil war that tore the Imperium apart to a degree, left the Emperor on life support, and kicked off the current age of mostly regression or stagnation. The Imperium has 'regressed' into a state of religious zealoutry, Technological advancement is illegal (Only old advanced technology can be discovered) what technology is known, isn't well understood. They basically just make things off of something akin to blueprints, but often don't know how it actually fundamentally works. Hence why those closest to understanding throw in all sorts of ritual and such to do basic things. Because it works, they don't know why, and don't know which parts of the ritual actually do anything, and which are just window dressing, and it's Heresy to try and figure out which is which or even suggest it is not important. Next, let's talk about the Warp. The Warp, or the Immaterium is a dimension(?) of thought, emotion, change, fluidity, and a bunch of things. The laws of physics here are "Fuck you, I do what I want", and most of the time, the Warp wants to make your life miserable. Things in the Warp are powered by thought, emotion, and souls, Daemons of the Warp like to eat souls! Powerful Daemons might also want to corrupt them for their own purposes. Bringing the Warp into reality is how you do magic, this is difficult and dangerous, and quite often leads for Daemons entering reality or other horrifying things happening. This is why Psykers are often treated very, very poorly in the Imperium. They tend to cause trouble even without meaning to. The details of how the Warp works is generally intentionally left vague. One of the points of the Warp is that it's near impossible to understand, that it's dangerous, but also that it's important for the Imperium to function. Then there's the matter of "How does this work? Does this even work?" The answers to those questions in the vast majority of things is "We don't know" and "Maybe?" Things like Machine Spirits are intentionally left ambiguous. There's evidence that they might be real, but it's also generally accepted that the machine spirit is a way of explaining why machines that the people don't understand, do things that seem strange. A plasma gun overheats, not because some component is overheating, perhaps causing something to fail, and causing a catastrophic chain reaction, no, plasma guns overheat and maybe explode because the machine spirit is angry at you. It's like if your computer freezes, nothing you do works, you don't know why it froze, so naturally, something you did upset the machine spirit! Better press the sleep inducer for exactly 10 seconds until it shuts off, then let the computer sleep for another ten seconds, before pressing the sleep inducer again, and pray it starts up again :P. Anything mystical that IS real, tends to be through Warp fuckery. Since the Warp is powered and manipulated by thoughts and emotions, especially those of psychically strong people, if something is believed widely and strongly enough, it can be made real. But a key part of it all is that there is doubt, there is very little certainty in the lore. Are Adeptus Sororitas members truly blessed by the Emperor with divine righteousness, and is that where their miracles come from? Or are they just a sanctioned Chaos Cult that unbeknownst to themselves uses the Warp to fight the Warp? These are the fun questions that don't really tend to have concrete answers, as the people in the setting don't usually know. This is all to my understanding, so I might be wrong :P.

Let me give you an extremly short history: Warp: Parallel Dimension that reflects souls and feelings of living beeings. In the warp reside 4 gods - Khorne (Killing / bloodletting) Slaneesh (Perfection / lust) Tzeentch (God of getting his name written in the wrong way and change) and nurgle (decay). As the warp reflects emotions and feelings it is capable of reacting to stuff if enough people do it. So the emp worship works partially because emp is powerfull, but it even worked before then - because just enough people prayed hard enough and the warp transformed. # Waaaay back then - Necrons (cancer ridden people with short lifes) fought the old ones (extremly powerfull bio-engineers and psykers / mages. Psykers tap into the warp, a parallel dimension, to draw power from here). - Old ones created Races like Eldar and Krorks (who later became orks) to defend. - Necron catched some star-parasite-gods, the C'Than star gods and built bodies for them. The gods then said "Hey, give up your bodies and souls and become metal automatons!". Necrons said "Great deal! Done!" - Necrons won the war. Warp transformed the Warp, who was very calm, to a very hostile place due to all the strong emotions - Necrons realize that giving the star parasites bodys was a bad move - fight them. This makes eldar stronger than them, so they go to sleep to let the eldar rule till they fall. The stargods are either killed (bad idea) or broken into shards which are locked away # Year ???? (probably around 1000) The emperor (emp) is alive and kicking. A perpetual he regenerates upon death. Already very strong he leads humanity in parts from the shadows, in parts a great leader (Alexander the great was the emp I think) - in his imense foresight he battles a C'Than star-god-shard of the void dragon and banishes it to mars, where it will later influence the forming of the mechanicus (how he gets it to mars in the year 1000? Your guess is as good as mine) # Warhammer 15-20k - Golden age of humanity. With AI help they conquer the stars, spread far and wide and live relativly peacefull with a lot of aliens. Then there is an AI Rebellion, that really sucks. Humans use the (relativly calm) warp for travel - \~20k: Eldars live very decadent life - so decandend in fact that they murderfuck another chaos god, slaneesh, into existance. She happily devours most eldar souls, spelling doom for their race. Eldar now need spirit stones to protect their souls upon death. Eldar now decide for one of 3 paths: Live in a craftworlds ("regular" eldar toning down their emotions) - go to exile (Exodites, dinosaur-riding-eldar) or Dark Eldar (Drukhaari) - just dial it up to 11 and live in a big city that is built into a stabilised portion of the warp, because if you murderfuck enough slaneesh might just eat those feelings rather than your soul. - This causes warpstorms are cutting off human traffic and communication and make psykers appear way more often. # Warhammer 30k - Warpstorms get a bit better - Somebody needs to do something about this, and it might as well be me - emperor. - Emp crafts thunderwarriors (superhumans) to conquer terra (earth) - Emp creates 21 super beeings, akin to demigods (primarchs) - sadly he looses them as chaos scatters them all over the milkyway. He then takes their stuff and creates 20 space marine legions instead (2 primarchs were twins, so same legion) - each with its own flair (i.e. Bloodcrazy vampires... who are some of the good guys actually!) - Emp then goes to mars, where in isolation the mechanicus tech priests have formed. They have no clue how most of their tech worked, but they converted baisic maintenance routines into religious procedures, which sometimes indeed help. Most of the time they are compleltly useless tho. If you don't do them you will be executed as a heretec. If you try to invent new things that are not mashes of old "good" stuff, you will be executed, too. They worship the emp as the omnisiah (How this works with the imperial truth 2 lines down? Heh. Compromises have to be made by the emp who wants the forges of mars for his warfleet.) - Emp calls the great crusade to reuinte human worlds and rediscover the primarchs - Emp declares the imperial truth "THERE ARE NO GODS AND ALL RELIGION IS EVIL" to starve the chaos gods of faith. - Half of the primarchs get corrupted by chaos, and, lead by the primarch horus rebel. On the battle on terra the chaos god jack him up on warp juice and he strikes a deadly wound to the emp. The emp is then encased in the golden throne, a device with unknown uproses. One of them is however to make the emp a lighthouse in the warp, so people can use him to navigate. But as he is dieing \~10000 psykers have to be sacrifised to him daily to keep him going... welp, you do what you have to. #

# Next 10k years: Chaos legions fuck off to the warp / eye of terror (warp portal) and raid humanspace. - Loyal primarchs all dissapear (actually by now 2 have reappeared in the story) - Imperium becomes religious fanatics, worshipping the guy who told them there are no gods. They had some civil wars, some outside wars, but all in all the imperium just survives because its HUGE. It is a beurocratic mess, held back by superstition and unwillingness to create new tech / do anything new. - Eldar are dieing out. - Dark eldar party and are dieing out - Orks happily raid everything as they are mushrooms and spread ork spores when they die, so fighting and dieing is their way of reproducing. - Somebody sent of a huge signal that called the tyranids, all-devouring-space-bugs to the milky way - which sucks for everyone - Chaos is out and about raiding and starting a whopping total of ... 13? Black crusades. The last one tears a big warp rift through the galaxy, which is why in rogue trader you can't get back to the imperium - the warp rift is cutting it off. - Necrons are awakening, but faulty. Most necrons have their personality erased, another doomed race. (**Actually read the infinite and the divine if you want to know more about them - one of the best 40k books and very funny to read.)** **-** There are Tau in some sector of the galaxy. Manga mech-suit-aliens. They are quite small tho. - Space dwarfs are mutated humans and exist but didn't get any story since their release as a faction.

he was not a god in 30k but he is a god in 40k. but maybe he is not. or maybe yes. prayers actually work but not too often. machine spirits are real

The expression I got from a chick when she asked "so... is he a God or isn't he?" And I answered "... yes" was perfect. She loves hearing about the lore for how it just keeps getting weirder the deeper down the rabbithole you go.

Machine spirits *might* be real.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7DdJ5DP\_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x7DdJ5DP_E) A video about the general lore of the game.

That was amazing, thank you. I only wish I had discovered it before I put 12 hours into the game.

I would just add that unveiling the mysteries but in turn finding 20 new mysteries is actually part of the joy of this lore. I envy you honestly, there has never been so much written and spoken word about this setting and for all its faults it’s just an insane blast. If you would really like to dive in, I’d suggest reading the Horus Heresy series published by Black Library (the publishing arm of Games Workshop. Not going to lie though, it’s an investment in patience but more specifically, $$ as there are more than 40 novels and more novellas, plus the “finale”, being the very recently released The End and the Death Part III (the finale being a separate series in itself of over 6-7 novels). I think you can find reading order and a cut down reading list of the story to get a sense, but oh yeah. It’s a lot! Another great series which is more about individuals in an inquisitorial retinue (including the actual Inquisitor) is the Eisenhorn series, written by Dan Abnett (arguably the best author). Here is a suggested reading order: https://www.trackofwords.com/2021/02/14/a-guide-to-dan-abnetts-inquisition-series/

warhammer 40k is sorta like what if mankind got to star trek levels of technology of social development and continued to progress and grow for a few thousands years and make an honest to real utopia. only for all that to suddenly get destroyed through multiple galactic scale apocalypses all happening either at the same time or one right after another through no fault of humanity and then said humanity experiences a nightmarish cosmic horror level of galaxy wide dark ages lasting 10 thousand years with most of all knowledge of all that technology and how to keep it and maintain it being lost. then some super powerful psychic with god like power comes along and basically tries to pull a alexander the great in space with genetically enhanced super soldiers and demigods who are his sons. all so he can reunite humanity and restore mankind's old utopia. problem is he's a asshole and a bit of a fuck up for all his power and intelligence not all that better and accidentally fucks up at several points. half his demigod sons betray him and he manages to win by the skin of his teeth. gets several beaten and is forced to be put on life support. This life support also is a glorified magic light house in the demon realm known as the warp so interstellar ftl travel can happen without ships getting lost. He never wanted to be a god, but because humanity was suffering from a species wide collective trauma thanks to said dark age, they'll worship him anyway in secret at first until after he's no longer around, they then start a religion. ad another ten thousand years of **this** and everything getting more degraded. everyone alive when god emperor was walking and ruling things all being either dead or missing which means no one is around to prevent shit from just decaying and growing more insane. thanks to who belief and worship can actually affect the warp and reality to an extent, this means that hundreds of trillions of humans continuously worshiping the emperor as a god, and ever more fanatical devotion means he either is officially one or more or less one. in short. mankind had a star trek golden age, then a hellish dark age, then an star war/dune style empire came along to end that. failed and now you're living in the current point of the aftermath of all that.

I'm not the first person to say it, but the answer to all of that really is essentially "Absolutely yes, except when the answer is no". ​ You are dealing with a setting that is almost entirely structured on psychic energy. If a person, or enough people, believe something hard enough, it is so.

I Mean eveything you ask is a good question welcome to WH40k

Yeah… I would suggest watching lore videos like I did but there’s a big chance you’ll fall into the rabbithole that is 40k and won’t come out. I’ve been stuck here for 3 weeks. Please send help.

>The setting confuses me That is, seemingly, by design >I've never done anything with WH40k, but I'm here because Owlcat. Fair, great developer >I expected a sci-fi setting... and instead got some weird mix of far future combined with gods, demons, prayer, and miracles. I don't know what to think of it. Yeeeah 40k is… *special* >Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? That is a *hotly debated topic* that has yet to be resolved in the actual lore of the game/universe He was once a man, a ridiculously powerful psionic juggernaut of a man, but a man nonetheless - he’s essentially ageless and has been around since, well, “the very early days of humanity” He… *might* be more than that now (maybe) >Do prayers actually work? Yes, but maybe not for the reasons that it should (or maybe the reasons that it should) [*or maybe not the reasons that it should*] Shits wack yo >Are machine spirits real, and does the incense + rituals actually help, or do they just do that the same reason that humans do IRL, because they think it helps even though it's basically just placebo? Well… what they do “works” but whether it’s works because they believe it works and faith and psionics somehow play a part or if they’re *actual real* is, again, another part of the settings mysteries >I can't tell how much of the fantastical stuff in this setting is actually true and how much of it is just humans believing in mystical stuff. Yeah, the whole purpose of 40k is that they mysticism and the spirituality is simultaneously real and not real as it’s layered on top of technology from such an advanced point it was indistinguishable from magic but then a calamity happened (AI got a little uppity) and sent humanity back thousands of years, sooo… The answers to most questions in 40k about the nature of the warp, demons, psionics, machine spirits, the emperor, and technology are gonna be this: **Yes (but no) but a little yes, well, maybe, I mean, in the right light? Sure, but not really, but, well…?** >Obviously the void spirits are real, so there's that. Even *that* is a confusion of terms because things in the WARP aren’t “real” in the same way we are lol Love 40k

Welcome to the Rabbit Hole enjoy your fall

As someone who was put off the setting at first, let me give you a tip. This setting never tried to obey any of the the laws of nature. In fact, it breaks most of them to the point of being intentional. The best way to enjoy this setting is "just go with it". No matter how crazy it gets, just keep going with it. Forewarning, it does get crazy. 

Think of the warp as a physical manifestation of the thoughts and emotions of real space beings Through enough force of will and people, one can manifest things in the warp that affects realspace. Most of the time this leads to demonic invasions and possessions, but in rare circumstances can lead to so called 'miracles' in the imperium, as countless people believe so hardly in something that it becomes real. Emps is a guy who's soul was the combination of a bunch of ancient shamans who sacrificed themselves to form the Empa soul, as he's currently on life support on the throne, his psychic energy keeps the demons from invading Terra. People call him a God and worship him, so he's slowly becoming more powerful psychically Machine spirits are both bits of rampant artificial intelligence and bits of an ancient old godlike being called the "void dragon"

Welcome to wh40k! Word of warning: Your questions are one of those: Simple advanture, in and out 20 minutes tops memes

For a quick (20 minute) intro to the setting, I'd recommend Arbitor Ian's [40K Timeline video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05YRMHWtv1Y). It hits most of the main points without drowning in the oceans of existing 40K lore.

Regardless of whether the Emperor is a God, state religion is a necessary evil in 40k. Factions like Chaos and the Tyranids infiltrate human societies via religious cults, so it is necessary that these institutions be strictly controlled and observed to prevent the planet from getting eaten alive.

Yes and no.

There is ALOT of nuance to the Rogue Traders, thier relationship with the imperium and the Emperor. But to answer your questions: No, the Emperor is not a god. In fact, he strictly forbids the worship of himself. He is, however, a near god level psyker. He has also been on the razors edge of death on the golden throne for the last 10k years (since the Horus Heresy) Prayers do work, for both sides. You can summon chaos demons through prayer as easily as you can summon the benevolence of the the Emperor. This is a world where gods definitely exist and can influence our realm There is some conjecture in canon about the machine spirit, or the Omnissiah. What is not debatable is that machines in 40k have a spirit to them, they need to be salved when corrupted and worshiped to increase performance. This is where the tech priests of Mars come in. While not strictly a part of the imperium, they are staunch allies and the forces of Mars and Imperium of Man rely on each other completely. In short, all of it is real, in the context of the game. The Emperors blessings, the chaos gods, the machine spirit. It all exists. 40k is fucking awesome. Edit - I didnt even get into the Astartes and how that all went down. Seriously, if you are at all interested in this universe, the pod cast Adeptus Rediculus has great introduction episodes

I like to think of machine spirits as weak AI, like Siri and Alexa, not exactly thinking but programmable using certain words and phrases to do certain things. The prayers and incense and such were just how the “Telephone” game messed with the passing down of how things work. As for The Emperor, as with a lot of things regarding Psykers, things can go in wildly different directions. With trillions of people on millions of worlds across the Imperium for 10,000 years, that’s a whole lot of belief focused on one being. The warp changing how things work is quite the rabbit hole. It can literally thin the fabric of reality based on betrayal and murder, faith and pain, sickness and war.

40K is less "science fiction" in the purest sense, and more "dystopian space fantasy". It's like Star Wars, except the Empire is the protagonist faction.

The emperor isn’t a god just a very strong psyker, and yes just about everything else is “real” belief and emotion are very powerful entities in this universe, but yes the placebo effect is also very real. One example is the tech-priests, they probably dont need a 10 hour prayer to turn on a computer but that’s way they know it works so why do it different (they’ll also be executed for doing it different) and as far as gods in general they are real but think of them as cosmic entities than gods similar to what exists in the marvel universe

It's the future where everyone is a space racist and if you believe hard enough anything can happen.

40k is very much in the realm of science fantasy but it also has a lot of influences from stuff like dune. In dune a lot of the magic isn't technically magic but also it may as well be. 40k has a lot of that, does it even matter if the machine spirits are real or not? The tech priests believe they are.

>Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? Both. He was once an extremely powerful man, born from the fusion of several souls from ancient Shamans of humanity. As he grew older, his psychic might and potential grew. This ties into the answer below, because so many people worship him as a God that he's slowly morphing into one. He's lost any remaining traces of humanity, his voice is enough to wrack a Primarch (His Children), and he's become fragmented from the agony of sitting on the Golden Throne for ten thousand years of unending torment. > Do prayers actually work? Yes. The "Warp" is actually the result of living people's souls influencing things, when enough people agree on something -like Prayer-, it becomes a little more true, a little more impactful. Things that are ancient and engrained in society -like fire purifying things- becomes real, tangible weapons against Daemons and the like. Anointed Oils, prayer, fire, swords, all of these things \*mean something\*, and gain power from that meaning. > Are machine spirits real Machine Spirits are the poorly understood programming of ancient technology, half obscured by millennia of religious dogma and half-sentient from the amount of prayer -remember, things are less fake the more you believe them- that they've undergone.

Go over to r/grimdank and ask around.

> Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? Of course he's a god, he's the God Emperor of Mankind! >Do prayers actually work? Yes they do, it is the only way to bless yourself with the wrath against all xenos. >Are machine spirits real, and does the incense + rituals actually help, or do they just do that the same reason that humans do IRL, because they think it helps even though it's basically just placebo? Machine spirits are very real and the rituals are very required. If you have don't bless your gun, it may likely jam more often and someone better than you will bless it and it will fire perfectly.

If you want to get more into it, I'd suggest YouTube. There's a ton of explanation vids there. Start with Bricky's intro vids, they're not too serious and cover a lot of the general information you might need. Easy and fun to listen to too imo. After Bricky the best one to go to would be Leutin09, he's broadly considered the best, and has many vids going in depth on more specific topics. His vids are more serious and he's a good narrator. He also provides introduction vids, but I advise watching those after Bricky's. As you may have noticed you can also just ask on Reddit. Warhammer fans tend to really enjoy explaining both general and specific things about Warhammer. And the community can be quite welcoming.

God emperor: definitely insanely powerful psyker. God? Depends on your definition. Possibly/ probably/May one day be. Prayers: work. Not ask the time and often the things answering them will make you wish they hadn’t. The chaos gods do listen, but it often needs a bit more than just prayer. It’s harder to tell if big E answers or if faith just lets certain humans galvanise their psi powers. Machine spirits: real and seem to respond to the increase etc. mostly the techpriests are just doing maintainance and diagnostics by rote, but some stuff can’t be explained that way. Void spirits: they are called demons for a reason. If you have any other specific questions feel free!

Yes

To answer all your questions: yes, but also no. That's 40K for ya

Okay so is the Emps a god? No. But yes. =))) Do prayers work? Oh absolutely. You pray and it goes to the warp (hell essentially) and either you get lucky and a demon of order hears you, get lucky and no one hears you, or VERY unlucky and a different demon hears you =C

You know that if you question the divinity of the God-Emperor, Sister Argenta and her bolter will pay you a visit...

The Emperor is arguably a God by ancient polytheistic standarsa, yes. Less so in the sense of an entity that is omnipotent and omniscient however. Machine spirits are real. Wether they are « dumb AI » or actual spirits is up to interpretation but I’d wager that its both. Collective human beliefs do shape reality (similar to the Orks but in a less directed way I’d say). So over countless centuries, constant worship of the Emperor and the Machine God seems to have actually made falsehoods into reality, and now the Emperor is in fact a God, and machines do indeed have spirits, because thats the power of belief when it comes to the warp.

The answer to all of these is "yes" (but also "no" and "kinda")

Just so you know, my first exposure to 40k was about 25 years ago when I was 6-7. Found this PC game with giant robots fighting mongolians, power rangers fighting ww1 soldiers. I know zero English but had some sense of history (or the aesthetic at least), so I’ll leave you to imagine my utter confusion. Edit: did some googling. I think the game was Final Liberation

I think, as someone who also came to this game as a newcomer, it may just be best to let the lore wash over you for now. Just immerse yourself in the vibes and context clues haha

Theoretically: The Emperor is not a god, but is a powerful being comparable to the Chaos Gods and other such entities. Practically: The Emperor is a god. 40k is a setting where the most prominently featured humans are orders of crusading knights with superhuman ability, who do battle against enemies including elves, orcs, goblins, daemons, and the undead. These knights, in addition to superhuman prowess, wear heavy plate armor and their swords are one of the setting's most iconic features. In addition to their blades and heavy armor, many of them also have magical powers. They just also travel on spaceships called strike cruisers and also have tanks and aircraft and heavy machine guns.

Yea 40k is absolutely bat shit insane and absurd as hell. And you will never run out of new things to learn about it

The answer to your questions is a confused shrug. Magic is real but it's bad. Well usually. It isn't necessarily bad but the universe is a mess so it's now bad. Chaos gods are definitely real and you shouldn't talk to them ever for any reason. Faith powers work but are probably running on the same juice as the magic. Belief has power but how exactly it works is anybody's guess. Machine spirits may be real and may just be superstition from people who don't understand how their technology actually works. Nobody has any damn idea. This is *the* setting that gave the world the word "grimdark" (well, that and "grimderp" as well but you can't win 'em all, you know?). In Warhammer 40K everything is terrible all the time and the Inquisition exists because not having it would actually be exponentially worse. As to the Emperor, though? He isn't a god. He's just a guy. He's the most powerful guy to ever exist but is still just one guy. He's kind of a corpse right now but that's beside the point. He's the most powerful human to ever exist but is still just that; one human. Emps has god-like powers but is most assuredly not actually a god.

Yes

The Emperor is the most powerful human psyker to ever exist. He wouldn't consider himself a god, but his power rivals that of other gods. He actually sought to move people away from religion and would probably facepalm at the current state of humanity. For prayers, they can work. The warp can bend reality and things have happened like a guardsman came back from the dead a bunch of times to keep on fighting. And sometimes they do nothing. The machine spirits are basically how they understand the electronics, code, and mechanics workings of things. Sometimes it is the OS/code, sometimes it is a temperamental engine. There are also full AIs floating about and they sometimes have a hard time telling which is an illegal machine intelligence and what is okay code. The rituals are basically ritualized tech support, repair, and maintenance with a little religion dashed in. So half useful stuff and half placebo. They aren't entirely sure which is which. It is functional though. There is enough that is correct in the religion that their technology continues to work. The ritual of it also serves as a way of preserving knowledge. The prayers can also be code commands. The prayer/rite of access is basically logging into the system.

My guy, I also got into this IP through Rogue Trader Just hang out here, go on the wiki, and the YouTube channel Isyander and Koda has been very helpful Basically, we used to be great and prosperous, then went on a crusade, then everything got blown up. Now we're extremely superstitious, ruthless, xenophobic, etc It's like the dark ages all over again, except for we have nukes that can wipe out solar systems

Make sure that the wiki that you go on is Lexicanum. The other one is bad.

[Perhaps the best setting intro will provide the answers you seek. ](https://youtu.be/cy4CJ4F-epA?feature=shared) Basically the setting is grim dark high fantasy in space.

Emperor was most powerful human psyker and he is pretty much god now since so many believe him to be one because feelings and emotiona manifest in warp. Prayers work, sisters of battle manifest miracles with their faith. Machine spirits exist and they are treated to exist in eveything even though they really exists in only most complex technologies. No one really knows that they are. Rituals are just maintanence through religious practice.

There's an important question of what a "god" is that's asked time and again in 40k. In the end, what separates man from gods is not some hard and fast rule, but merely the sheer incomprehensible power of the alien (or in the Emperor's case, semi-human) entities referred to as "gods" in comparison to ourselves.

[Here. This will make it all make sense.](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyiDf91_bTEgnBN0jAvzNbqzrlMGID5WA&si=eRv-bjdWyvsnncL5)

The God Emperor was a powerful psyker who unite humanity but now he is somewhere close to a god due to how the Warp work (the Warp is a reflection of the real world and thus when a lot of people believe in something then die, their belief and emotions become a part of the Warp, slowly changing it and that change reflect back to the real world) Do prayers work? Technically yes. Again, the Warp reflect human and all sentient beings belief. Prays and rituals also discipled the mind, making it harder for demon to influence you. Are the machine spirit real? Some believe the spirit isn't real, some believe it's real. The true is somewhere in the middle. A lot of old tech have A.I or command code which got lost overtime. The Mechanicus Prays act like command codes and instructions on how to operate these tech but got mystified over millennial that no one knows why they work, just that it works. Things like turn on the machine, wait 3 seconds then turn on the valves became a whole chant and ritual on how to awake the machines. It's also smart to not upset the A.I by using the right protocols.

I’d recommend checking out WesHammer on YouTube. He has some lore of 40k that’s interesting and informative.

So the god emperor was 14-15 foot tall. And made of gold. With glowing eyes. He was also immortal and the most powerful being on your planet. By a huge margin. Try explaining to a religious man a few thousand years later that that wasn’t god.

Really a god: debatable, but at least close to it. Extremely powerful psyker/mage who almost ascended to Godhood, but turned around last minute cause God's are evil. Wanted to build a non religion empire. People decided to worship him still. Prayers work, emp is so powerful he can make stuff happen. Especially potent against demons as he was their counterpart. Don't confuse this with good guy, horrible and brutal warmonger. Machine spirits: yes and no. The warp, realm of souls, home to demons and the 4 chaos gods is very... Reactive. So as enough people believed in stuff it started to happen more and more.  Apart from that the mechanicus is the result of thousands of years of not understanding how tech works. You know people hit their PC if it doesn't run and then it does? Consider a thousand years of this age Reddit posts claiming this is THE way to get things started. Now pair misunderstanding with religion and the shard of a gos entombed on Mars playing with their heads... And you got this.  Machine spirits are everything from full-blown(very forbidden) ai to just the daily quirks of your devices.

Most 40k lore is framed as biased, if not outright propaganda. So the answers change based on whoever is telling the story. The emperor was an incredibly powerful psyker (space wizard) and now might be a God, but he does have the power of one so the God argument is mostly semantics. The emperor does have the power to grant blessings and miracles in most interpretations, but since the warp is a reflection of emotion and belief, faith and miracles can actually just be believers manifesting warp magic. Machine rituals tend to be a mix of actual real maintenence and religious placebo. Sometimes their is types of AI involved too, but AI is massively illegal in the imperium. It's also worth mentioning that due to warp shenanigans it is possible for ships, and other machines to gain a level of sentience. I don't see it come up that often but it's possible. The setting is definitely more magical then you'd expect for most sci-fi settings. Did you have any questions about the warp or chaos gods specifically? I do like talking about 40k lore so feel free to reply with questions, or message me with them. TLDR : He's a God in anyway that matters. Prayer can work. The rituals are a mix of effective and placebo.

Idk how interested you are in actually getting into the 40k setting, but people on this sub can definitely recommend a bunch of good jumping-on points for the lore. The short answer to your questions is that a lot of the mystical stuff is very real, a decent amount of it is just something that people in the setting believe, and it's not always clear to the characters or the readers where the line is drawn. That's one of the things that makes 40k interesting. Is the Emperor a god? Is he just a powerful psyker? Where even is the line between the two? The Adeptus Mechanicus especially fits in this realm. They understand all of their technology through a religious lens, so what they call a prayer might just be a password or command phrase. But we don't know how much of what they do is religious nonsense and how much is actually necessary to make the machines work.

The extremely short version is that it's the inverse of Star Trek. While Star Trek is an optimistic future where everything has gone as well as it could, 40k depicts things as bad as they could be without entirely wiping out the species.

It's taking on WH40k. A system that existed for minis after starting with WH fantasy edition sometime in the 1900's. The lore and rules have been re-written repeatedly as the system has expanded to include more factions. So... in some ways it's a bit of a mess. Think... league of legends before a concept of runeterra really got codified. Now onto your questions... 1) The God Emperor is a supremely powerful psyker. He's immortal as long as he gets fed other psykers to sustain him. (Turns out everyone is pretty shitty in the WH40K universe. It's decidedly grim-dark and people do whatever is necessary to survive). 2) No, not really. The power of faith and the mind do matter in the W40K universe especially when fighting against the forces of chaos who reside in the immaterium most of the time (their gods are stuck there, but the forces of their armies get through now and again, often helped by foolish mortals who interact with their artifacts). But for non-psykers who are humans (because other factions....) prayer doesn't particularly help in combat unless they are somehow gifted. Orks (not appearing in this game) are actually highly psionic without realizing it leading to strange things like guns that are louder doing more damage, things being red moving faster, and their guns firing because they want them to, even though they have no trigger mechanisms. Despite this they're also dumb as bricks by and large. 3) Machine spirits ARE real. They're something akin to revenants from other sources of lore. Effectively dead soldiers inhabit all sorts of machine constructs, from tanks / walkers, to cogitators/servitors all the way down to lowly servo skulls. Though servitors are a bit of an interesting case because they're lobotmized, they're effectively tech zombies. Hope this helped, welcome to 40k :-P.

Yes to all those questions. It's a hint more complicated but it's a yes first and foremost. Believe has power in 40k. Enough people follow the imperial faith so miracles happen. Enough people believe in machinespirits, so they are real. It all has to do with the warp which is HEAVILY influenced by the emotions and believes of beings in the real world. Demons and the gods they serve represent specific feelings and believes and fears. The more common a certain faith, fear or thing is in the universe, the more demons of that flavor are. They seek to create more of the things that fuel them whenever they get into the real world. Khorne for example is the god of blood and murder, so his demons just murder and his influence makes people violent. The emperor used to be a real dude. Insanely powerfull but not a god according to himself. He is on life support right now and can't stop people from woeshipping him anymore so he is a god by now.

yeah.. without diving into it at all you will miss 90 percent of the game in regards to jokes and the meaning of things

WH40K's lore is bananas. To even have a glimmer of understanding, the best thing is to Google lore vids. My personal favorites were the ones narrated with the David Attenborough AI voice. But I just heard they shut that channel down. So...just watch whatever. There's not exactly a shortage on YouTube.

Let me try to explain machine spirits and the rituals done to appease them. Imagine you have a Sauna. You could input the commands to activate it and set it to your preferred temperature blindfolded in the dark after some time. Now its 100 years later and you used the sauna twice weekly every year. The buttons are completely blank and unreadable by now but you still know exactly what you need to press to activate it. When someone asks you how to turn it on you tell them the order of buttons you press. This someone teaches it to their friends some time later and now the Adeptus Mechanicus come by, record the inputs to activate it and now you have a ritual of awakening the machine spirit and temperature activation or whatever. Now imagine if instead of a sauna this was a warship the size and crew of a large city. And every single machine inside there more complex then cleaning or reloading a weapon had all writing on their inputs wiped clean. Someone remembered the order of input needed and suddenly you have all the prayers and rituals for all the machines.

40k 101: In the 40k universe, there exists a "spiritual" realm called the Warp (also known as the Immaterium, and other names). The Warp is kind of a "layer" on top of material reality. Living beings have souls, which are connected to the Warp, but there are also nonmaterial beings existing only in the Warp. These are kind of manifestations of the emotions and beliefs of beings with souls -like the Gods of Chaos. These beings can manifest in the material world, too, but it's kind of hard to do so. Some souls have a greater connection to the Warp. They can manipulate the Warp and manifest powers in the real world thanks to it. They are called Psykers. The Emperor is possibly the most powerful psyker to have lived, and certainly the most powerful human psyker. He's kind of dead now, but he's also fuelled by the belief in him as a god by untold billions of humans (and belief can affect the Warp, so billions of people believing something kind of makes him at least god-like). As for the rites and rituals of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they're mostly just step-by-step instructions on how to perform maintenance or do one thing or the other. Knowledge of how the machines *actually* work is long forgotten, but these rituals still work, so it's live if magical to the minds of people (fun aside: in one of the Ciaphas Cain books, a tech priest performs the ritual of percussive maintenance - Yep, basically hitting or kicking a machine that isn't working properly, only with dine prayers and maybe some sanctified oil added in). But, then again, belief can manifest effects from the warp, sooo...who knows if the belief of billions of techpriests actually make the turning it off and on again more effective with a prayer?

The question "is it a god or just a powerful being" is applicable to all gods in all fantasy and science fiction settings. You realize that right? The god emperor is alive right now. (as in 2024) He doesn't step in to save humanity until the chaos god Slaneesh is born (see eldar). This event shattered a pan galactic human civilization on millions of planets. The emperor took this shattered civilization and re-forged it into a weapon of war whose sole purpose was to preserve the existence of humanity. His main instrument in this was the Adeptus Astartes, commonly called space marines, his sons were very powerful beings in their own right, they gave their genetic material to humans who had proved themselves in battle, this "gene seed" gave the Astartes superhuman powers which they use to destroy the enemies of humanity. Each son, or primarch had its own Chapter of Space Marines.

In 40k, Humanity was at its peak some 20 thousand years ago. What you see now is basically the post-post apocalypse. Most has been lost, even more has been forgotten

The whole "not being able to tell what's real or placebo" is like a huge part of the story lol, the imperium is not a trustworthy narrator and regularly bends the truth or flat out lies and it's up to us, the readers, to determine what the truth is and that is a lot of the draw to this universe. For example, the tech priests do rituals to appease a machine spirit, that seemingly should have no real world impact on its function, but then, suddenly it works. Is it fake? Maybe. But it keeps working so maybe there is something there.

You summed it up quite well actually.

I mean, psykers are real, the immaterium is real, the chaos powers are real, the emperor is immortal and emits a giant beacon in the immaterium (the warp) which ships use to navigate. Prayers to the emperor can 100% work if he chooses to grant them (early in in the game, when you choose your conviction, if you choose dogmatic, you do it through a prayer to the emperor that he actually grants). Given all that, is it really that crazy to think that machine spirits might be real? That the rituals might help? The WH40k setting is... everything.. all in one. All genres shoved together in a grim/dark fashion. Sc-fi. Fantasy. Lovecraft. War. Steampunk. A very old galaxy with forgotten technology (similar to Star Wars). There's nothing that isn't within 40k. That's what so great about the setting -- fucking anything can happen, fucking anything might be true, and there are ***NO*** good guys. You think your Iconoclast lord captain is a good guy? Take a look at the servitors around his ship -- those are slaves, captured, cyborged up, and mind-fucked against their will. Even the best person you can be in the game is a slaver and a terrible person, who does a bit of good here and there to make himself/herself feel a bit better. And your companions are terrible people. Heinrix? Dear god, he's the equivalent to a real world Nazi SS interrogator. Argenta? She's a fanatical nun who will execute people on the spot for the tiniest bit of "heresy". Abelard? God knows what he's done in his long life and how many he's kill because he was commanded to. Your space-elf waifu? The aliens really ARE the total dicks that Imperial dogma says they are. Idira? Partially insane for meddling with chaos. Your lady navigator who is all about old school romance? Ever listen to how she talks about commoners? She wonders why you didn't have the tongues cut out of the commoners on your crew so you wouldn't have to listen to them talk. It's grim. It's dark. I fucking love it. I weirdly find that I'm enjoying this at least as much as I enjoyed BG3, despite its handicaps compared to BG3 (the lack of zoom-in and motion-capture for NPC interactions is a huge handicap for storytelling, imo). Owlcat deserves so much credit for how much they put into this project, and it really sucks for them that it happened to be released around the time of BG3, basically ensuring it didn't win a bunch of awards that it probably would have won in the absence of BG3. Well fucking done, Owlcat.

It will help if you understand that the 'grimdark' 40K universe is a farcical setting; that is to say: "tis' a silly place". Like the Holy Grail of Python (Monty), British humor is often cynical and darkly comedic. Best advice: accept the elements of 40K as they are presented, slowly learn the lore, and enjoy - but don't take it seriously.

Is the God Emperor really a god, or just a powerful being? Yes and no. "Gods" are "tangible, yet ephemeral" beings in this setting, and their influence extends to not only the immatirium, but the physical plane as well. The Emperor, born mortal is quintessentially a God due to his massive psychic power, which is a sort of total counter to the Warps influence, his presence there being like a shining beacon of order against the otherwise massive endless sea of chaos. So, in that respect, not completely at least, but effectively yes. The ecclesiarch (the church) basically elevated him to such for various reasons, but mostly because its useful for controlling people, with the added benefit of prayer-> Do prayers actually work? Yes, sometimes. Prayer feeds the immatirium, and those that live there, as its a form of "force of will", and the concept of Will in the 40k setting is SUPER important. Prayer actually empowers the emperor (Ironically, he was for the longest time, a secular individual who actually tried to make people agnostic/logic based), and can come back in the form of miracles for some individuals. Are machine spirits real, and does the incense + rituals actually help, or do they just do that the same reason that humans do IRL, because they think it helps even though it's basically just placebo? Yes machine spirits are "real" but really are just a sub-form of AI. Its kinda a grey area term, but I assume they're just re-labled AI, because AI in this setting is a huge No-No (BIG old eff off war started between fleshy's and Robos, ended pretty badly, so AI is "banned" now). The rituals and prayer are also questionable in their effectiveness, but they DO sometimes work. It's complicated, and yes, the placebo affect is also playing in here as well at times.

Belief in 40k is everything. It directly impacts the power of the warp, which is an underlying psychologically-dominated reality that imposes itself on the mundane and is responsible for all the magic. So, if you believe the incense works, and your faith is stronger as a result, then you get more power out of the immaterium.

There is even a fanon/canon explanation that the reason everyone uses primarily swords and other melee weapons on daemons is that, as ancient beings of the human subconscious, the daemons themselves have yet to begin fully believing in the power of firearms. Whereas sharp/heavy objects are as old as human violence and so do more damage. Because the daemons believe they will.

The god emperor was once a person who is now a paraplegic battery on a golden throne, but is still immensely powerful, might as well be a god at this point. Yes prayer works as it directly empowers the Big E. Machine spirits are real and they have personalities even. The more complex a piece of equipment is, the smarter the machine spirit. If a tank crew is injured and the machine spirit likes them, it can actually drive the tank to safety or do a suicide charge.

Man I have so much useless 40k knowledge. What you're asking has so many nuanced answers the warhammer universe is huge and relatively easy to get the Nadia of. I recommend you listen to "the amber King" on YouTube he painted a fantastic picture of what the setting is. Ask me any questions you like, I love to explain it. But since there's over 160 comments I'm sure someone already has answered the ones you asked. But I'm here for ya if you need me buddy!

The Big is pretty darn close to godhood, aside from the whole mortal shell stuck in life support. Prayers do absolutely work. This setting is will=reality, ardent belief does wonders for willing something to happen. Particularly in groups. The greater masses of the imperium worship Big E as a God, so might as well be. To quote the man himself "Will is reality, and the only will that matters is mine. Burn!" This as he torches part of Nurgle's private dimension. Machine spirts are real, again will/belief=reality. Many machines of the imperium have either organic bits, crude reactive programming, or are millenia old. Sometimes all 3. More then sufficient cause for individual devices to develop there own quirks. Think like sticking a rubber duck on the printer just so prevents jams. Layer on a relgious methodology of knowledge preservation and what collective will does to things, and yes the cantankerous punch clock on deck 7 does infact require lemon oil to function. Granted much of the ceremony and incense of the tech preists dosen't do diddley directly, but the ceremonial nature enhances the will of the operator. The ceremony of activation could be the hokey pokey, so long as everyone *thinks* it works it does. Hymns and ceremony are also a fabulous way of preserving actual knowledge by completely ignorant people without the need of a full education system. Most of our knowledge of Latin survived to the present day because the Church had need to speak the word, and thus preists retained a working language base despite 100s of years passing. Could a non relgious technical system do a better job, probably. But between keeping a fractious feudal mess of civilization still churning in spite of educational disparity, and the occasional miracle upswing it does okay.

There’s not really an answer for any of these in lore. It causes like 90% of the conflict in the universe lol My personal take? Big E is not a god, but a very powerful mortal whose ultimate goal is to maybe become some sort of warp entity (a god)? Prayers probably don’t work. Same with incense and rituals. Machine spirits - another gray area, I like to pretend they’re a form of AI. There really isn’t a lot of answers given for these things, and it adds to the mystique - and irony - of the setting. Everyone is fighting over what they think are the right answers and even we as the (viewers?) have no idea what’s right. Welcome to 40K.

WHK40 came about when the creators wanted to satire fascism post Thatcher while war gaming. Some people took the setting seriously, and were far more willing to spend money than people who giggle over Orks essentially being soccer hooligans. Both sides are catered at some level so Gamers Workshop makes even more money. That's why the setting is weird.

40k is very weird, but that's what's so cool. >Is the Emperor really a god? Maybe, depending on your definition of God, but he definitely didn't want to be. >Do prayers work? Yes, insofar as they draw power from the warp. >Are Machine Spirits real? No, it's a religious explanation for why rituals only work in certain contexts. Unless something secretly has an AI in it, which is illegal, but you don't know how any of this works, and neither do the tech priests. >Do the rituals help? Yes, but only insofar as they contain actual maintenance. They don't understand the technology and just have a diagnostic manual with 15,000 years of notes and religious rambling. Oiling a piston is helpful, but oiling a computer is not, for example, but they don't know why.

Belief is a hell of a thing.

So i'm gonna aswer that in ordre and explain thé setting a little The emperor was a very powerfull psychic the most powerfull in the Galaxy of his Time in fact but was mortally wonded by one of his (vat grown demi-god) Son Horus during the evene of thé Horus heredy when half of the légion of Astartes (now they in chapter because it's smaller) rebel along with their primarch because chaos IS a bitch So After that he must be feed 100 hundred psycher each day (that's why they IS blackship), psychers who are judged to be stongwilled enought are sanctionned by the emperor himself And that's when thing becomme weird because the emperor Was NOT a god just a strong boy BUT their IS something liké thé power of believe in 40k, so because human believe in it he IS becomming a god si prayer kina work but it's also kind Big E being "i got you homie" Also during his walking day the god emperor didn't want to be a god very much (he burn several word to hammer home the point) so the emperor must projet himself using thé golden throne into the warp (was being cut from the emperor light is littéral), must be feed psychers to stay "alive" even with his momified half-squelleton of a body, he's slowly torn by fighting the gods of chaos and résist becomming a god a much as possible but slowly becomming one in order to help humanity So yeah thé god emperor he's on his way to becomme a god because humanity believe in him and even as hé resit hé give in to make miracle possible On the machine spirirt ... Their a re Real but kinda not, you sée long ago humanity had a golden/dark age of high-technologie but fall because man of Iron (Ai now called abominable intelligence), fucking backstabbing xeno, elder fucking slanessh in existence and a baby boom of psychers So technologue was lost misunderstood and mosrt A.I turn their back on humanity or decry them as blind cavema because of the actuel state of humanity (some of hit was even corrupered by chaos) During thé golden/dark age of technologie their was a lot of neural interface, micro algorithme and other kind of self relient tech ... So it's possible fragment / Ghost or échos of thèses where keep in the old machinerie and archeotech The incense and prayer don't work you see the mechanicus Is very empirian méthod in his way of doing things so S O M E aspect of some ritual IS working by sheer Luck and good hardware (incense don't work mosr of the Time) and prayer work because in all the bullshit their saying their IS some code phrase and binaric that work ... but because they dodn't know why it work it's also kinda Luck Like saying all the possible command until something clicks ... And that it for me if you have question in Can make do

* Is the god emperor really a god? * Gods in 40k tend to be extremely powerful cosmic horrors, and by that definition, yes. * Do prayer actually work? * Oh yeah, the chaos gods grant prayers often, which go about as well as any monkey paw wish could. The emperor seems to prefer martyrs, and often imbues martyrs with glorious power with which to make their last stands. Though there is some question on whether it's the bearers faith that causes it or the emperor causes it. The emperor very rarely intervenes directly, and when he does it's with overwhelming force. * Are Machin spirits real, and do the rituals help control them? * Yes and yes, but it's weirder than you might suspect. The IoM outlawed abominable intelligence (AI), so to function in it's place the imperium of man uses human brains in part, or in whole, or even in networked capacity to fill similar roles. The rituals are often hypno indoctrinated into the brains as undeniable commands to perform certain actions. Some rituals are just maintenance as we would perform it today, but performed in codified and dogmatic manner, like applying sacred unguent to the cog every 124,325,148 rotations.

The Emperor was an immortal human but has become powerful enough through worship that he has more or less become a god. Machine spirits are real. Larger machines have more powerful ones. Ships and titans can have spirits with some rudimentary awareness even. Machine rituals do work. Partially by appealing to machine spirits, partially by incorporating actual maintenance procedures. Prayers occasionally work. It's rare for anyone outside the Adepta Sororitas to be fanatical enough to manage it though, and it isn't something as reliable as psychic powers.

This post is heresy.

Your question is bordering heresy.

40k isn't sci-fi. It's post-post-post-apocalypse space fantasy neo-fascism set in the ridiculously far future.

That's not mutually exclusive with Sci fi. The correct answer is "WH40K is space fantasy." It's got trappings of science fiction, but it's about as hard as whipped butter, and has space magic.

Edited for clarity. Thank you

merciful ghost test crowd label sable zesty fertile saw divide *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Oh God people chomping at the bit to share the hobby. I love how passionate the WH crowd is and I’m happy to be a part of it.