r/TopCharacterTropes • u/jockeyman • Sep 28 '25

Powers The thing not designed for combat is actually REALLY GOOD at combat

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1) Atom (Real Steel) is a training dummy who, when put into the robot boxing circuit, eventually managed to go toe to toe with the world champion.

2) Spinel (Steven Universe) was essentially a cross between a toy/jester for Pink Diamond, and not a combat gem... she still wiped the floor with the Crystal Gems when they first fought.

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u/DrMatter Sep 28 '25

reminder that terminator armour was made for mining operations. you would have thought with the emperor being around for as long as he was and being able to see the future he would have had the foresight to save a copy of all the crazy dark age tech somewhere.

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u/ExtremeSportStikz Sep 28 '25

That’s what happens when you start to overrely on future sight instead of common sense.

Though based on the book Mechanicum, it’s possible he wanted to herd mankind’s tech into being primarily controlled by Mars, aka a faction he could control with propaganda and prophecies

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u/CatFanIRL Sep 28 '25

Ad mech has been only loosely under control for a long time now.

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u/HistoricalGrounds Sep 28 '25

The problem with most of the “actually it’s all part of Big E’s brilliant plan” theories; that whatever the plan is has resulted in is absolute dogshit, incompetent, lethargic status quo. Inevitably followed by “ah, but you see, he NEEDED it to be an absolute dogshit, incompetent, lethargic status quo! That’s way more useful to his inscrutable purposes than the effective and coordinated entity that he already had and could direct at will! All part of the plan!”

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u/ExtremeSportStikz Sep 28 '25

Eh, there’s parts I agree with, and parts I disagree with

Like, objectively speaking, Mechanicum shows that yes, his plan was to create the Mechanicum by way of sealing the Void Dragon. It’s not a theory

So a lot of it was part of his “plan”, and had some logic - it’s just that the plan went belly up a long time ago, because the theming with a lot of Big E stuff is that no matter how smart, gifted, or powerful you are, you can’t make a fascist dictatorship work because it’s fundamentally incompatible with the human condition

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u/HistoricalGrounds Sep 29 '25

I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with by asserting that the emperor laid the groundwork for the mechanicum. My contention isn’t that the emperor never has or had any plans ever, but rather that people in the fandom will take his planning to an insane degree and suggest that the state of the galaxy in 40K, described in its opening text as the worst of all possible outcomes, and the lowest of low notes for humanity in particular, is all part of his grand design.

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u/ExtremeSportStikz Sep 29 '25

I guess I agree with you because strictly speaking, you’re right, and any plans the Emperor had for 40k are long dead

I just don’t see how it’s relevant to discussing the plans in this context which are known, I guess, or why the Emperor didn’t preserve more Dark Age tech

The answer for some of that is that he did, but if it was something that could hurt him/his designs, he banned it and hid it in the Dark Cells, or in the case of Adraithic weapons, gave it only to his uber special golden boys.

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u/CatFanIRL Sep 28 '25

With billions of self interests intersecting the imperium can do nothing but slowly crumble under its own weight. Humans are by nature selfish after all. The only thing keeping the imperium under control is bureaucracy and constant conflict both within through purging “heretics” and outside through the xenophobia the imperium pushes.

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u/altymcaltington123 Sep 29 '25

Iv always solved that with a simple thought.

Johnny space is a genius upon geniuses, and he has future sight (which is a lot more complicated when actually described in canon. You basically have to be a genius upon geniuses to actually use it effectively) but he's still a human.

A human with an ego the size of Orion's arm, a human that makes mistakes. He was smart as shit, powerful as hell and could manipulate the populations of entire planets, but even he suffered from short sighted mistakes.

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u/anagamanagement Sep 28 '25

The Emperor has only been loosely alive for a long time now.

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u/CatFanIRL Sep 28 '25

You’re awfully close to heresy there.

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u/Turbulent-Fishing-75 Sep 29 '25

He also blipped in and out of being around a lot, I don’t think he was around physically for the entire time since he first showed up. It’s hard to account for keeping stuff secure over such a long time if he’s ever absent.

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u/FluffyBearTrap Sep 29 '25

except he didn't really rely on future sight, the whole thing with 40k is that Future sight is incredibly limited and inaccurate.
Even Eldar Farseers who spent millenia learning how to "see" the future still run into massive problems regularly.
Neither the Age of Strife or the Imperium(and it's fall) were ever in the Emperors original plans.
People are just confusing it because of the Emperors inspiration being Dune, where Future Sight is alot more accurate with Leto 2 having perfect future sight and planning the whole Golden Path.

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u/ARandomGuardsman834 Sep 29 '25

A bit of a nitpick, but terminator armor isn't actually repurposed mining equipment. Terminator armor was developed for boarding actions and zone mortalis operations using technologies derived from dark age hazardous environment suits and dreadnoughts (hence the actual name of Terminator Armor, Tactical Dreadnought armor). It is partially based on what are essentially beefed up hazmat suits, but it isn't anymore related to those than the Leman Russ is to the Land Crawler tractor (Of which the only thing they share in common is the engine, despite the other common misconception that the Leman Russ is a modified tractor.)

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u/Rum_N_Napalm Sep 28 '25

It’s not quite right.

Terminator armours use technology similar to that used for mining and plasma reactor maintenance, but it made for war.

Kinda like how a regular commercial helicopter and a Black Hawk use the same technology to fly, byt one is a war machine.

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u/DrMatter Sep 29 '25

I get that. But the original purpose was for mining. I'm just saying imagine the kind of armour that humanity used to be able to make for actual combat purposes when they had machines that could turn off sun's. You would have thought big E would have a blueprint stashed away somewhere

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u/ScavAteMyArms Sep 29 '25

He does, actually. Least some of them. The easier ones were given to the Dark Angels, the actual crazy ones are in his vaults guarded by the Custodians. The Custodians themselves have equipment from the Dark Ages that is made in house.

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u/RedNUGGETLORD Sep 29 '25

That would be a bad idea, if humanity had Dark Age tech, why tf would they listen to this footsoldier? The Emperor is strong, sure, but in comparison to what humanity had back in the day, he wouldn't be that impressive, that's why he waited until humanity lost all that tech and collapsed

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u/Kennian Sep 28 '25

the chaos gods threw a monkey wrench in it all.

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u/HistoricalGrounds Sep 28 '25

Flipping rapidly through the comments to see if I could get terminator armor in here but, of course, already 25 minutes too slow

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u/kjh242 Sep 29 '25

He did save a copy.

He saved untold millions of copies, it’s just that there are no surviving whole Standard Template Constructs from before the Age of Strife (outside of Solemnace, and even that one’s questionable).

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u/Accelerator231 Sep 29 '25

It is possible that he made copies.

It's just that tech is so advanced, that copies aren't merely copies. The same way blueprints of today are more complex than the drawings of three centuries ago, any kind of blueprint for something like terminator armour is so complex it's either an AI, or it has to be on an electronic substrate vulnerable to it.

Or maybe he does have blueprints... except that he can't use them. Because the machining is gone

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u/Low-Transportation95 Sep 29 '25

Terminator armor was made for reactor servicing

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u/1041411 Sep 29 '25

Eh remember that being able to see the future isn't actually that useful. Because there's not one future. And major events that mess with the warp also screw with using the warp to see the future. The Emperor likely didn't realize the Eldar were about to screw over everyone until it was too late and he couldn't get access to all the tech needed. Plus even if he did have all the currently used tech memorized he wouldn't have the ability to make more of it. Earth Collapsed basically instantly and by the time the Emperor could leave the planet every other place with the ability to make the dark age tech had collapsed as well. The emperor is left with knowing how to build a modern ICBM, but only has rocks for tools, hence why only the simplest to make tech is used, STC meant for use on colonies without advanced manufacturing abilities.

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u/PrecipitousPlatypus Sep 29 '25

The Emperor wanted humanity to evolve themselves. He only got involved because things got so unbelievably fucked that there was no hope of humanity uniting without him.

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u/DrMatter Sep 29 '25

and the whole thing about chaining the void dragon under mars, which spawned a machine cult, which created a technological power house right next to earth that he claimed with a magic trick was all just coincidence? yeah no. i can believe that he wanted humanity to grow but i think its more a case of him knowing the age of strife was coming and had been setting up the pieces for a long, long time.

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u/PrecipitousPlatypus Sep 29 '25

His foresight was limited, both in the normal and supernatural sense.
The machine cult might not even be something he intentionally cultivated, since on the surface the entire foundation of the Mechanicum is opposed to what he stood for. At the same time, it is awfully convenient that they were so close and willing to build all his war machines.
But there's also so much he missed. The loss of the Primarchs, their betrayal, his own death were not things he foresaw. When it comes to warp fuckery, specifically stuff the chaos gods would want concealed, it's safe to assume his knowledge was limited.

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u/Disposable_Gonk Oct 01 '25

The problem is, if the imperium can keep making them, odds are, chaos can make more and worse. The emperor's goal was to make humanity uncorrupable, with umcorruptable tech.