Starchild, Sensei, and Illuminati

[Jmaximum]

I have been an avid WH40K since 1988.

so what the holy crap is this stuff all about?

I vaguely remember reading something about the origins (and I use that word loosely) of the Emperor, but I thought the Star Child was one of the C'Tan gods. (also, wasn't an old inquisitor novel named 'Star Child')?

The first mention of sensei I ever read about was in Outcast Dead. How long have these guys been around?

And the Illuminati? Is that the same group to which both John Grammaticus and Oll Persson claim membership to?

Can anyone shed some light on this (I read a bunch on Lexicanum, but t seems rather disjointed and inconclusive).

[charliemachina]

While the Emperor was boding around amongst mortals popping up in history occassionally as Saint George etc he also found time to make babies with random chicks!

These babies are the Sensi. They live until they are killed they do not die. The do not know they are the Emperors children. They are psychic blanks and so really hard to find. They are very powerful and ted to be heroic of character sticking up for the little guy etc etc.

The Illuminati believe if they can "catch em all" and sacrifice them all they will cause the emperor to be reborn entirely as a warp based entity or to be more accurate a God. He can then fully spank the Chaos gods and make it ALLLLLLL GOOD!!! for humanity.

The Star Child is this reborn warp based god that is the emperor.

That's about the gist of it.

One of the old Lost and Dammed/Slaves to Darkness books and the old Rogue Trader book explains it all.

It's not referred to much these days....ignored really.....but I think it's ACE.

The Sensi are WELL ARD CHAMPIONS OF THE EMPEROR.

See below

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110425140808/es.warhammer40k/images/2/23/Sensei1.jpg

[Wolfshade]

http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?19762-Star-Child-Illuminati-and-the-Sensei&highlight=Sensei

http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?29622-The-star-child&highlight=Starchild

and discussed as an aside
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?7850-The-Emperor&highlight=Starchild

[Jmaximum]

Thanks for the links guys!

Correction on the book I mentioned earlier: it's Chaos Child by Ian Watson.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

It'd be great if Lexicanum would take down their page of 20+ years out of date "background information" on Emprah. Then maybe we wouldn't have another one of these threads every other month!

Seriously: it's not current, it's from the hokey old cheesefest days when GW employees were sat around drinking bad ale and watching far too much NFL. The reason it's not "referred to" much these days is because it's not current background. It hasn't been current since 3rd Edition (1998), which wrote these things out in a sidenote about "Tzeentchian plots". If it's in the background, it's one of the minor cults or folk superstitions about Emprah, of which there are thousands.

For more up-to-date background on the theories, speculation, metaphysics and conspiracies of the Imperium, the Inquisitor game (and rulebook) is packed full of them. It's substantially what it's all about.

What there is in the Horus Heresy series are attempts to bring some of these things back in a new (less stupid) form. So you have the Perpetuals like Oll, Grammaticus, and (hinted) the Emperor himself, Malcador as one of an ancient order (the Sigillites), etc. There's no Illuminati, but there is a Cabal, composed mostly of aliens. Etc.

The Ian Watson books are so old by now that they are most definitely non-canon.

[bfmusashi]

Oh, so you're the guy in charge of the canon! Man there are some dudes that want to talk to you!

[Psychosplodge]

The Ian Watson Inquisition war is brilliant, an inquisitor, a space marine, a squat and an assassin walk into a bar...

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I'm not in charge of the canon; I'm just more on top of what the current state of play is than Lexicanum. ;) And just with the Inquisitor game stuff alone, there's so much more of worth and interest to play with than the Sensei/Illuminati nonsense.

Which, it needn't be said, is all just my opinion, and everyone can play or think whatever the heck they like. :D

[Wolfshade]

The Lexicanum is a very good repositry of all knowledge, however, it is a "universal source" that is it contains information that may or may not have be retconned.
It requires wisdom to understand this knowledge and interprte what is relevant and what was thoughts of a bygone age.

[Denzark]

Canon is canon until superceded. The Tzeentchian plot piece is just fluff itself, so GW can act all mystic and grindark. Hell some sensei are tzeentchian plots. Inquisitor etc, specialist games now virtually dead, are hardly canon themselves...

[Cap'nSmurfs]

It got superceded. By Inquisitor. Seriously!

As to Inquisitor not being canon anymore: I see you and raise you Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn/Ravenor series of novels, which are still being written and are chock full of the Inquisitor-era (which is current) background. Given that Inquisitor (and attendant writing) is all about the battle over the Emperor's soul and the Imperium, all the stuff in there about the Inquisitorial and wider factions and schools of thought is all still in play. A lot of it rewrites the Sensei/Star Child era stuff into a new format. There's one of the "tendencies" which is looking for a new host body for the Emperor; that's probably the closest to the old Star Child stuff.

Add to this the Horus Heresy, which is actually going right to the heart of the matter and showing us what things were like before the 41st Millennium: you'll note for one the staggering lack of sensei and near-complete absence of star children. There's Perpetuals and the Sigillite and the Cabal, though. They're riffing on old stuff (Ollanius Pius/Oll Persson), but in a new format.

How much of this stuff would you know from reading GW's post 1998 output, as opposed to Lexicanum? Pretty much none. It's gone or has been rewritten.

[Denzark]

Yeah not convinced. I may have to purchase the book just for the fluff. I have read all of the Abnett stuff and have seen nothing which contradicts the earlier stuff. I must respectfully decline to comment on your analysis of succession until I have seen it for myself. I know nothing about lexicanum, I got my fluff from first editions...

[Jmaximum]

I do believe the Sensei were brought up in Outcast Dead.

As to the Ian Watson series Draco, Harelquin, and Chaos Child are REEEAAAALLLLYY old. Completely different than the current universe of 40K. In those three older books it was damn near impossible to fight Chaos (in one of the books the Imperial Fist captain freaks out when he starts having memories of fighting these outlandish nightmares, and Draco reveals to him that space marines are mind wiped after every encounter with Chaos. Nowadays, an Imperial Guard water boy can spit in a demons eye without his brains turning to jelly, and live comfortably the rest of his life, assuming the demon does not eat him). I did, however, like when Draco finally enters the Golden Throne Room, and we discover that the Emperor has long since become schizophrenic: different parts of his personality are doing things at the same time.

But besides that, both old and new fluff I find quite excellent. Very fulfilling stuff, the way 40K has been fleshed out over the years. And sometimes, contradictions are good, it makes for richer mythology.

I was just hoping that perhaps there was more exploration of the topics in my original post.



EDIT: HOLY MONKEY FLINGIN CRAP!!!! I went here http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Chaos_Child_(Novel)#.UUeFX2bD-M8 to get my sources right, and just realized the Imperial Fists captain in Draco, Harlequin, and Demon Child has his origin story in Ian Watson's 'Space Marine' novel from 1993.