*Minor Addendum* : So it would appear that Horus didn't have The Talon specifically at this particular point in history, but instead utilised a regular stormbolter. My bad! However, the point regarding Perpetuals being able to regenerate from fatal wounds caused by "mundane weaponry" still holds true.

"Death to the false emperor!" "What?!!! How dare you?! Heretic!" "No no no the other false emperor" "Oh...right fair enough, as you were then"

he was a backup plan installed by the Emperor. in case he failed there'd be an approximation of the Imperium out in the void to carry on humanity. Silver being the color of choice - second place but still almost as good as first place.

It's so _weird_ to hear Horus and Abaddon being the reasonable ones

I was there when Horus slew the Emperor

The fact that everything wasn't plastered in Gold, including the Silver Invisibles, is a clear sign of a false Emps.

I always just assumed it was just a whole line of Emperors, each taking the name and title of their predecessor. Sorta like how Persian Immortals got rotated out if they died or got sick. So when the 6319 Emperor dies, the 6319 Emperor's son takes over, but pretends he's the original 6319 Emperor.

5:59 "No official art of the Invisibles exists". Well yeah, they are invisible

I mean for a false emperor that guy has the hugest balls for not only killing Horus’s favorite son but then killing horus’s enquiry as well before declaring all out war against a primarch.

I just chalk this up to more 4th degree, interdimensional warp-fuckery. The gods of chaos probably set all this up just to see how Horus would do against something similar to daddy.

Abaddon begged this false imperium to see reason lol

How to know a false man-emperor: *not having beautiful hair*

Chaos plot to kill Hastur Sejanus, so that he wouldn't stop Horus from falling.

Good stuff as always, Grand Master. :). Loved how you broke it down. :).

I first read this story at the beginning of the first Horus Heresy book, knowing very little about 40k. When the 'false Imperium' described here sounded exactly like our solar system, I thought the implication was that this was actually Earth and the Solar System, and while Horus and his forces believed they came from the original Solar System, maybe they actually didn't, and they ended up slaughtering the true origins of mankind in their ignorance.

" _All this has happened before. And all this will happen again._ "

Is it possible that the False Emperor was a Perpetual, and that Horus didn’t witness his regenerative abilities?

If one assumes that the "true" Emperor was actually a genetically engineered weapon from the Dark Age of Technology, then he may not have been the only one.

It's just a fragment of the Emperor. Nothing to worry about except the Inquisition.

Perhaps he was a sensei, an offspring of the Emperor, and through warp trickery aligned his life with that of Big E.

Seeing all the theories that have sprung into the comments is a testament on how diverse and interesting the "smaller" bits of the lore are, although knowing GW nothing will ever come of this or most the various mysteries scattered in the books.

This has always been one of the more intriguing 40K stories. If I had to hazard a guess on the origins, i'd say that it's linked to the ruinous powers somehow. There are really strong parallels between it and Horus's future conflict with the real Emperor. It's also odd that the 4 companies randomly chosen for the assault were lead by all four future members of the mournival. That Horus's favoured son would die and would later be used as fuel by Erebus to corrupt him. On the flip side of that, there's always the potential that it was orchestrated by the real Emperor somehow. The death of Horus's favoured son opens the door for Loken, who'd eventually go on to be the 4th member of the mournival and play a massive role in future events that ultimately aid the Imperium/Emperor.

The false emperor had a false false emperor pretend to be him. How many more false emperors can there be?!

There's one glaring omission from the theories in this video, Chaos was present on the planet, most notably, Samus, this "Sol system" could simply have been the Chaos gods planting the seeds of the Heresy to come thanks to Erebus and the Word Bearers

_"I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor."_ -Garvial Loken I think that false Emperor must have used cloning tech. He must have cloned his body and was some how able to transfer his memories onto this new body. That's how he must have been able rule for so long. Great video as always 👌

Sticking with my Men of Gold theory....The emperor betrayed the rest, plunged mankind into a war with their own machines and waited to sweep up....This was just another surviving man of gold.

"We are yours from of old; but you have not ruled over them, they have not been called by your name" Issiah 63.19 63.19 is the true earth, the original earth. Our earth. We are but man, and the origin of humanity, and Holy Terra is not the true crucible of humanity. 63.19 ultimately is what we become, before our descendants come back to our ruination. Whoever picked 63.19 was a very clever writer and knowledgeable in old scripture and interpretation. Basically we became what we where never controlled by, it is our destany to be the same, but radically different. As if we are the same people but not.

Maybe the False Emperor was given a psychic vision of the Emperor and it screwed with his head and made him think the visions were his own memories. This also preps Horus's mind to fight Big E (laughing squid-thing in the distance)

I've re-read the story 2 weeks ago, I was wondering why nobody talks about fake Terra and False the Emperor. Thank you for the video

Maybe some Tzeentch plot in order to somewhat train Horus for the battle of Terra? The chaos gods cant make something as powerful as the emperor himself, which would explain why the false emperor died so easily.

This just makes Imperium's analogy to the Holy Roman Empire that much closer if that world Horus went to war with was the true Earth.

I believe 6319 was an alternative dimension where the Emperor reveals himself much earlier and does not makes the deal with chaos to achieve super powers

Not sure the exact fit for the timeline, but is it possible he's one of the lost primarchs? A defect could explain him thinking he IS Emps, and in fact theres some parralels with other legions like the Blood Angels and the rage, thinking they ARE their primarch. Though a defect concerning memory would make alot more sense, maybe in the Omophagea.

I always thought the false emperor was just a narrative device used to throw the reader off guard

“You mean there is another Imperium, much larger and more powerful than my own out there in the stars?” The false Emperor asks looking towards the stars. “Always was.” Horus replies as he shoots the false emperor in the back of the head with his combi-bolter.

I thought a key thing was that 6319 resembled the *later* Imperium, complete with superstition, cults, and Imperial Church, and *not* the Imperium of the Crusade. That makes me think it was a Warp influenced microcosm of what was to come, a living, breathing analogue to the visions Horus would soon see. Also, as has been noted in other comments, the False Emperor could have just played possum after he "died" and sneaked off...

Emperor created a clone of himself to start using for the primarch project, said clone escaped. Or the 'false' Emperor created a clone of himself, raised it as his son, who created a clone, etc etc. Could be just someone who happened to stumble onto the right STC or tech and actually did shepherd his people thorugh the dark times

The idea that 6319 is actually Earth and Terra is just some other world is something I have to admit I don't entirely buy. The metaphor for me seems more solid the less 'real' it is. If 6319 is Earth, then what is Terra? Why does Mount Everest exist there, why is it even called Mount Everest? Why does The Emperor have so much ancient earth historical artifacts and technology, why do the continents look the same, *what happened to the fucking oce-*... See what I mean? Warhammer has always loved its thematics and disdained great realism. So starting the Horus Heresy novel series by, as the pinned comment so fittingly says, Horus slaying the Emperor, is just perfect. But that's all it is. The Issiah 63.19 connection is something fitting, yes, but as I've outlined above it only works as part of the broader metaphor. One where the normal human species is being overtaken and conquered by their own transhuman immortals. One where Horus presides over the death of the dream of a humanity unified and ascendant again.

Plot twist of the highest heresy : He actually was the true emperor

I remember when first reading this book I was incredibly confused throughout the entire thing

Does he have a fabulous hair???? No? Must be a *HERETIC*

It's really starting to look like the Emperor was just a very intense, very motivated member of the perpetual race developed by the former human empire of the Dark Age of Technology. The perpetuals throughout the story not only know him from the past, but also indicate that at least some of them were geneticist colleagues of some sort. We know that the Emperor spent possibly thousands of years in the warp, and came back with previously unparalleled psychic power. However, he didn't do this until thousands of years into his plan. I think he started with the baseline of being a perpetual, joined some kind of grandiose plan whose ultimate goal was the reestablishment of the galactic human empire, had a falling out and initiated some kind of takeover. He went rogue on his former colleagues and formed a new goal of basically becoming a mini chaos god as part of his own plan, causing an obvious rift amongst he and his race of altered humans.

This gentleman, is what happens when Tzeentch tries to be funny. I can even imagine him literally taking thousands of years looking for the correct star system, them finding a perpetual, sending him visions of how everything on the Imperium looks, and everything else required to pull this up, just for a quick laugh. *_Slaneesh_*_ : I hope you have a good reason to summon us here Tzeentch, you have interrupted one my biggest orgies ever, even Fulgrim came this time._ *_Nurgul_*_ : Nobody cares about your orgies Slaneesh, you do them all the time..._ *_Khorne_*_ : Yeah, fuck your orgies woman, I just want to know how dare you to interrupt my movie night! I was having so much fun rewatching the Fall of Cadia, and you made me cut It seconds before the Blackstone Fortress falls and blows everything up. I love that part..._ *_Tzeentch_*_ : My apologies to all of you brothers and sister, but this will be worth It. I am here tonight proudly announce that Horus Lupercal has officialy encountered the IMPERIUM OF MAN! Hahahahaha..._ *_(AFTER A LONG PAUSE, THZEENTCH IS STILL LAUGHING...)_* *_Khorn_*_ : That's It?_ *_Nurgul_*_ : It wasn't even funny..._ *_Slaneesh_*_ : Your catarsis about It is really disturbing dude, you should find help._

What matters is that I vouched for Garviel Loken as the next member of the Mournival.

Used silver instead of glorious gold definitely a hectic

I had often thought about that. One conclusion is that the false emperor may have been preserved thought warp shenanigans by the daemon Drachnien(I know I misspelled that) considering that the Luna Wolves had to turn around and bring the world back into compliance where some of them witnessed one of their number get possessed by the daemon.

when the imperium killed the last rebel forces on 63-19 the found out they were worshiping some sort of gods, maybe those where Chaos gods. couldn't the Chaos gods have gifted the false Emperor with eternal life so he would expand their domain's?

here is a thought, the Aquila has 2 heads and we know that he (the emperor) worked in the lab to make the primarchs, so this could be the guy that had helped the emperor, and then made the same bargain with the dark gods to leave and build his new world if he makes the explosion that scatters the pods? @40k Theories

What if the false emperor was a survivor of some disaster on a ship in the warp which flung him back in time to before the great crusade and thought incorrectly that he was destined to become the emperor and didn't know who horus was because he was born post great scouring?

Something also to note is that the people of this world might have possibly been at least partial Chaos worshippers, due to their worship of the daemon prince Samus. Also, due to the fact that this system was cut off by warp storms, it is possible the people there might well have been driven mad and simply come to believe that their capital world was Earth. When Loken goes to kill a soldier, the soldier begs for a blessing so that the gods will accept him into some form of heaven. While it isn't directly stated that these are the Chaos gods, with everything else that happens, this is heavily implied. The False Emperor might not have been viewed as a god by his people, but instead as some mediator between the people and the gods, the kind of puppet ruler that Chaos always wants. With the Chaos gods watching both them and the true Imperium, this other Imperium might well have been set up as some kind of possible rival and yet another plot to stop the Emperor, with the gods whispering in the False Emperor's ears about ideas that would lead him to set up a state that outwardly looked very much like the real Imperium of Man, so as to create a facade of legitimacy. Or it could have been just another stepping stone in Chaos' plot to corrupt Horus, which is indeed how things panned out.

The entire planet smells like a chaos trap. I think this is a stage prepared for Horus and the Lunar Wolves. There was also monestaries on the planet so the false emperor was not such a staunch enemy of religion, which speaks against him following big E's goals. So I think that the false emporor was just a puppet of the ruinios powers.

Is it even Possible that this imperium is some how from a parallel Universe that teleport from the warp to Mock Horus ?

It would be funny if that actually was the real emperor.

Having just reread this book... the false Emperor throne was also a "golden" throne. Couldn't it have served a similar life support function?

Intresting topic today, thanks for covering my friend.

This was the very first 40k audio book I ever listened to and was what got me interested in the universe as a whole. I'm glad to see this.

Alivia Sureka was impaled by Horus and left for dead, but later was shown to have survived. So the idea that the 'false' emperor may have tricked horus into believing he was dead and still be out there somewhere is an interesting loose plot thread. Be interested to know if anyone actually recovered his body.

Or, something that was excluded. Maybe the Imperium wasn't the Emperor's idea, but one of his companion?

I think that 63-19 was the true planet earth. The descriptions in the books seem to imply exactly that.

Oh man I listened to this when it was new and could not remember who's channel it was on , been dying to hear this story again!

Once again great stuff as always!!! Thanks for all the hard work!

I’m also pretty sure sixty three-nineteen was originally named terra

Dan Abnett FORESHADOWING the end!

I still like to imagine Horus curb stomping the Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars

Perhaps it was some kind of foreshadowing hallucination of some kind...

Great book and awesome intro into the heresy series. I was always a little confused on the false emperor thing and why it wasn't more discussed on the similarities of the true imperium, so I was glad you covered this a little! 🤘😁🤘

Every saga has a beginning...

Sejanus as hyped up by Loken: _The perfect specimen of a marine, near unrivalled warrior and a diplomat of equal measure_ Sejanus in the book: _gets killed on a diplomatic mission by fucking up in a way even an administratum clerk could have known to cause trouble_

it has been three years and i only *just* now realize why Tzeentch turned Kitten's armor silver *He was serving a False Emperor in the eyes of the Chaos Gods. **_As an Invisible._*

I've always veiwed it as entirely likely that Terra isn't in fact Earth, given that it's in entirely the wrong part of the galaxy, and that the Emperor rather than being some ancient Amalgam of Psyker powers was just a more powerful proto-primarch that Malcador or the Sygillites put together with the intent of uniting humanity. It makes all of the dumb crap in 40k, like Terra's oceans "vaporizing in a nuclear war", and Terra being in the wrong place make sense. Of course, whether that makes 6319 Earth is anyone's question. There's more than just those two earthlike systems around, and I don't think we ever see it placed on a map.

I was thinking that he maybe was a daemon of some sort. It is possible that he was a warp entity that knew of the Imperium and tried to imitate it, and that would explain his longevity.

I think it was either one of the Emperor's Sensei, or an Emperor from another universe, dimension, or timeline.

My favorite part of sexty-three nineteen was Loken soloing a death room and Vipus goes like : "that's generally called showing off". I can't help but imagine everybody looking at him: >_>

Talon of horus was part of the new suit the dark mechanicus had produced during their bargains with horus in false gods or galaxy in flames not horus rising, because it also melted the throne the false emperor was sitting in, possibility of it being a volkite of highest artifice, a plasma pistol or an artificer melta pistol, but horus's weapon's loadout was never hinted at during that portion of the story.

This was the real emperor and it's small size and generally weaker status is a commentary on how weak the human empire actually is, only being held aloft by Anathema

Regarding the longevity question, the false emperor could have used cloning technology, similar to what Fabius Bile would later on use, transferring his mind to a new clone each time the current starts to fail.

How could a true Emperor have an Invisible guard? How could anyone admire their FABULOUS, QUIVERING abs?

The real event I'd like to know more about, is the Omnitask Blasphemy of 998M41. Only reference I have is in AdMech special Dominus Edition

A very extremely awesome video as always 40k Theories.

6:25 silver knight of slaanesh? it all sounds like chaos preparing horus for his role to me.

63.19 was a plant by The Emperor to see how the Warmaster would react to warring against the Imperium

Something that I’ve always wondered about, and could possibly make for a decent alt-history vid: What if the Great Crusade didn’t start on Terra? What if it started on another world that was stable during/after the Age of Strife, and/or had sufficient technology to kickstart/maintain a Crusade-level force? (For example, 6319, “Necromunda” (before it got destroyed), or any of those other STC-blessed worlds.) For one thing, having a more-stable/more-technologically-advanced homebase would allow the Crusade to start more easily, without relying on outside powers like the Martian Mechanicum or the Lunar Gene Cults. As a result, there’d be less/no spread of the Machine Cult, which would affect future technological development. Having a stable homebase would also preclude the need to grow an army dedicated to Unification Wars, meaning no Thunder Warrior equivalents, and possibly a quicker/smoother development of Astartes (especially since the world wouldn’t be an irradiated hellscape like Terra). What do you think?

fantastic as always

"Bubba Ho Tep" comes to mind. The real Elvis needed a break, so he enters into a contract with an impersonator to switch places for a time. The real Elvis manages to barbecue his only copy of the contract...in a real barbecue. The plant refuses to abdicate upon learning Elvis had no legal recourse to stop him. So while the plant died essentially from over-indulgence, the real Elvis lived to be remanded to a nursing home and found himself battling a pissed off Egyptian mummy alongside John F. Kennedys brain in a black man's body.

I would love to see an orbital view of Sixty-Three Nineteen, with some slight continental drift still looking like earth does today. The imperium would ofc not have a reference as nothing, or at least very little from old earth remains. Could explain why so many historical locations/regions are misspelled, because the original source isn't derived from "terra". How they lied that the oceans were evaporated by wars, when in fact the oceans never have existed at all! And why there are no evidence of the emperor in our timeline, because he was never here on the real earth! that he himself is simply a construct made during the dark age of technology!

Funny enough, I always thought that 63-19 with its armies that were like scaled down versions of the astartes and its human emperor relying on trickery and invisible assassins was meant to be the dominion from starcraft, or at least very similar to the dominion.

Just started reading Warhammer 40K and loving it. Horus Rising has been a great book so far.

At the moment, I'm 5 audiobooks into The Heresy, and never having read any 40K before a few months ago...despite having had a gist of the lore for years...I was more than a bit confused with the opening battle of 6319. It was a great way to start....I appreciate why the first book is rated so highly.

Emperor with a sock on his back... WE'VE GOT A SIXTY-THREE NINETEEN!!

Another Good report inquisitor Remleiz!!

I like the idea that the false emperor was powerful perpetual psychic who unknowingly leech/peak at the true emperors psyche and stuff and started acting like him as well. It would explain so many coincidental parallels, stylistic similarities, and psychological/personality profiles.

63-19 secretly was a world within the warp, showing a warped reflection of the anathema as the first step to corrupt Horus. Thats why Samus was chilling there

GW missed a huge opportunity to make a 23-19 joke.

More knowledge for the chapter

What if the false emperor is a Sensei that used some genetic memory of his ancestor to build this new imperium. Plus, was the imperium of man, the title of emperor of humanity were existing 5000 years ago when the perpetual leaved ?

This seemed like a foreshadowing of thefuture of Horus killing the emperor

No idea what the truth is, but I can name my favorite takes on the matter. 1. 6319 is actually the true Sol system. 2. 6319 is a stellar power similar to the Interex (which Horus would also destroy) that managed to survive the Age of Strife by happenstance (perhaps with Perpetual assistance early on?). 3. The False Emperor was one of the Sensei, perhaps sired prior to the onset of the Age of Strife.

Ok, now I want to see a video on “All known Perpetuals, and their fates”.

i think he was just a regular guy who had forgotten tech, like the gravity guns his guard used

Literally listening to the Horus Rising book right now and decided to got watch some youtube and this popped up.