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Sadly, the Emperor does not, in fact, have dudes on his shoulders. He totally could, though.

"KNOCK KNOCK MOTHERFUCKER, WHO ORDERED A BEATING?!"
The Emperasque, showing off.

Tales of the Emperasque is a Warhammer 40,000 fanfic by Someone else., which was originally posted on 4chan's /tg/ board. It's since been archived, and is also available on 1d4chan.com, as well as other stories by the author.

At the dawn of the forty-second millennium, the God-Emperor is faced with two situations that could prove disastrous to the already-weakened Imperium. Forced to take extreme measures, he summons a Khornate daemon (in the form of a Tarrasquenote ) to the Golden Throne and possesses it, finally freeing him from the constant state of torment he's been locked in for the last 10,000 years. Now able to act on his own, he proceeds to turn the 40K universe on its ear in many different ways.

The story consists of two complete sections: Rise of the Emperasque and Vulkan's Shopping Trip. Two more sections had been planned, tentatively titled How I Learned To Stop Living and Become a Necron and High Plains Matron. However, the series was canceled when Someone else. attempted to continue and found that he could no longer write in that style. The full list of story posts can be found at the bottom of the story's page at 1d4chan.com.


This fic provides examples of the following:

  • Aborted Arc: Corana was introduced to exploit a /tg/ joke that claims Leman Russ was mutated by Warp into Holo from Spice and Wolf. She was supposed to be mutated!Leman and her and canon!Leman's meeting would set stage for some wacky hijinks. Later, though, Someone Else decided the idea to be stupid and Corana was turned into reborn Sister of Silence. She's promptly forgotten about after Leman leaves Cadia.
  • Apocalypse How: The Emperasque causes:
    • A planetary Class 3.5 from orbit on a planet that Gazghkull Thraka and his bodyguard have been chased to, removing him as a threat in short order.
    • Two regional Class 4s, one on Zargh 3 and another on the unnamed daemon world from which Emps rescues Vulkan.
  • Ascended Extra: Canonically Taldeer is an Eldar Farseer featured on two games. Here she is daughter of Eldrad, the most important and renowned Farseer Eldar, and leader of Eldar craftworld Uthwe.
  • Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: More of a 'brotherly love' example, but we're treated to the sight of Russ first badmouthing Guilliman and calling him a bastard, only to hug him and be absolutely overjoyed when Roboute appears a few seconds later.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • All of the loyal Primarchs who are out of commission in canon!40K are brought back in various ways.
    • Eldrad, thanks to the Emperasque.
    • Fulgrim, though not for long.
  • Badass in Distress: Vulkan, Corvus and Leman are all in various distresses before Emperor rescues them.
  • Bash Brothers:
    • The Primarchs, naturally.
    • More specifically, Corax and Guilliman.
  • Batman Gambit: The Emperor didn't want any of the forces he was attacking during the final scenes of Shopping Trip to actually lose outright. He just wanted them fighting each other. If it had backfired, though, it would have gotten very, very bad for the Imperium.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • The Emperasque's rescues of Isha from Nurgle and Eldrad Ulthran from Slaanesh.
      KNOCK KNOCK MOTHERFUCKER, WHO ORDERED A BEATING?!
    • To a lesser extent, The Emperasque's assistance to Dante on Zargh 3. We don't actually see him much there, though; by then the focus of the story is on the Primarchs.
  • Blessed with Suck: The Tarrasque's form gives the Emperor immense strength and (near) invulnerability, but since it's a daemon in this setting, it scares the crap out of people, and the furor over its summoning and the Emperor's subsequent disappearance in the first place causes fits both on Terra and in other Imperial offices. He's also very, very large, which causes a lot of problems. Also, see Painting the Medium below.
  • Blood on the Debate Floor: Averted; Isha takes advantage of Lofn's passive calming effect and has her accompany Taldeer to all the Eldar/Imperial negotiations so things don't get too heated.
  • Breath Weapon: The Emperor in his new body has a powerful roar that can knock over a Physical God and cause small-scale apocalypses. It's probably some combination of his psyker powers and a Tarrasque's native abilities.
  • Brick Joke: When the Emperor appears in the Lords of Terra's room for the first time, he accidentally crushes the legs of Chartist Captain. The Fabricator General promises to give the man rocket knees. Fast forward something like ten chapters and the Chartist Captain nearly crashes into waiting officials, unable to control his new rocket knees.
  • By Wall That Is Holey: Corana exploits this - when a wall is falling on her head, she takes a step to be in the place where hole in it would fall. This serves to tip Leman off that she's more than meets the eye.
  • Cain and Abel:
    • Corax and Guilliman versus Fulgrim.
    • Given the distrust between the Raven Guard and White Scars, and Space Wolves and Ultramarines (and Dark Angels), the Primarchs get along pretty well. Then again, the Imperium's hanging by a thread.
    • Lion and Russ go for each others' throats as soon as the room is clear.
  • Chewing the Scenery:
    • During the battle in the canyon, Dante really is showing off, what with the whole "light points at you, it turns red, you explode" routine.
    • The Emperor's Nigh-Invulnerability enables him to do so in more than one situation, notably the one described by the page quote.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Rather than react with anger or shock at the "The Reason You Suck" Speech below, and possibly humiliate an Imperial legend before two Primarchs and the Emperasque, Logan Grimnar makes an offhand comment that causes Leman Russ to have the sputtering equivalent of a Flat "What" and then collapse into hysterical laughter.
  • Crack Fic: The God-Emperor of Mankind in the body of a Tarrasque. A bunch of /tg/ fanon treated as Canon. Do we really need to explain this any further?
  • Crossover:
    • Merging 40K with D&D in the form of the Emperasque.
    • invokedSeveral pieces of /tg/ fanon are included, including the relationship between Taldeer and LIVII from Love Can Bloom, their daughter Lofn, references to the Pretty Marines and the Blood Ravens' kleptomania, and Faptau.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Pretty much any fight the Emperasque gets personally involved in. That being said, per Word of God, any of the Chaos Gods would easily defeat the Emperasque in a head-on fight.
  • Damsel in Distress: Isha, the Eldar fertility goddess, prisoner of Nurgle and test subject for his plagues since shortly after the Fall of the Eldar.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    Emperasque: I WANT YOU ALL TO LISTEN VERY CLOSELY.
    Administratum Master: I assure you that will be very easy, my Lord God.
  • Driven to Madness: The ten thousand years Corvus spent in Fulgrim's everchanging labyrinth has driven him insane, to the point of his Madness Mantra turning into a string of unrelated words.
  • Evil vs. Evil: The Emperasque puts a dual-layered plan into action that uses this: he tricks a Tyranid Hive Ship into attacking the Dark Eldar city of Commorragh. The resulting carnage feeds Slaanesh so many Dark Eldar souls that it becomes supercharged and starts an all-out war with Khorne.
  • Eye Scream: Eldrad psychically severed his own optic nerves to keep from having to experience that part of Slaanesh's tortures.
  • Facial Horror: Dante's face under his mask of Sanguinus is horribly mangled by ages of brutal combat across the galaxy.
  • Fantastic Racism: Still in effect, but being worked on more or less; see Teeth-Clenched Teamwork below.
  • A Fate Worse Than Death:
    • What Slaanesh has planned for Eldrad Ulthran...doesn't happen, though.
    • Jaghatai Khan has been trapped in a chronovortex for millennia, while Corax has been tortured by Fulgrim for about the same amount of time. To say nothing of what poor Vulkan has been up to: he's trapped on a daemon world, being killed and resurrected over and over.
    • A Tau Fire-caste leader by the name of "Faptau" is launched out an airlock straight into the Warp, and promptly becomes daemonbait.
    • The Dark Eldar casualties whenever they occur, as their souls go straight to Slaanesh. This was one of the canon ideas that Someone else. actually thought should stay unchanged, since it gives an urgent edge to their sadism.
  • Fix Fic: The plot's basically "War Jesus is now a Magic Godzilla who is coming to clean house, and he is pissed."
  • Foregone Conclusion: The Emperor basically states that his ultimate goal in this story is to die... sort of. He plans to get as much mileage out of this body as possible, fixing up the Imperium to the point where it can survive without him for at least nine months, at which point he will kill himself and be reborn nine months later as a human.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: The Emperasque, knowing that Imperial medical technology can't heal Roboute Guilliman's neck wound, brings him to Ulthwé to have the Craftworld's healers work on him. The idea is toyed with, however, as Ulthwé wouldn't have even considered it if they didn't owe the Emperor twice over, for the rescues of Isha and Eldrad.
  • Goomba Stomp: The Emperasque disposes of Abbadon in this fashion, which also invokes another piece of fanon, namely Abaddon not having arms.
  • Large and in Charge: The Emperasque—a fifty foot tall, seventy foot long, 100+ ton monstrosity that houses the soul of the God-Emperor and all his psychic power.
  • Maligned Mixed Marriage: LIVII and Taldeer are an human and an Eldar. And they are a mixed marriage in a setting where xenophobia and prejudice are rampant and genocide became institutionalized millennia ago. Eldar seem to tolerate LIVII, but Imperials would execute him on the spot for "consorting with xenos". The Emperor also accuses LIVII of having been "tainted" by his Eldar wife and makes very clear that the only reason that he has not killed him is because Taldeer owes him favors that he intends to collect.
  • No Indoor Voice: As a side effect of what he's become, the Emperor can't control the volume of his voice, so everything he says is a booming yell. Lofn even calls him "the shouty guy" at one point.
  • Not a Morning Person: Lion El'Jonson has slept for ten thousand years. During his first meeting with his chapter, a few minutes after waking up, he's rather grumpy and appears to have the biggest headache in millennia.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted. Lord Primarch Vulkan and Vulkan He'stan do meet (the latter named after the former), and for the rest of the text Vulkan He'stan is known simply as He'stan to avoid confusion.
  • Painting the Medium: The Emperasque's No Indoor Voice issue is represented by his dialogue being written in all-caps.
  • Patrick Stewart Speech:
    • LIVII's calm retort to the Emperasque's xenophobic comments about the Eldar and their general untrustworthiness. This manages to shut up the Emperor.
    • Guilliman gives a good one when he gets home from the wars. Naturally, his people are over the moon.
  • Poor Communication Kills: The Emperor decides to take the fight directly to the Tyranids... forgetting that the "friendly" Imperial forces might not have heard the news that he's back, and is in the body of something that is on par with a Greater Daemon in terms of power and strength, meaning that not only do they begin shooting at him once the 'nids are gone, they then try to drop a nuclear warhead on him. They apologize sincerely once they understand their mistake.
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: The page quote, uttered as the Emperasque breaks into Nurgle's lair to rescue Isha, is one of many.
  • Precision F-Strike: Quite a few, in various circumstances, many as a result of people seeing the Emperasque for the first time.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bjorn the Fell-Handed's tirade about his disgust with the current state of the Space Wolves.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Space Amish: After the Eldar/Imperial negotiations are wrapped up, Isha retires to an Exodite world. Her adventures there would have been featured in Tales of the Emperasque 4: High Plains Matron, but future installments have been nixed by the author.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: So far, the Emperor lets it slide that people keep on worshiping him, mainly due to it being such an entrenched part of Imperial culture for so long. That said, he has little patience to those who kneel and bow to him like he's a god made manifest.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
    • The Craftworld Eldar and Imperials aren't exactly happy to be working with each other, but each side realizes that they need each other in order to fight their mutual foes and have a chance of actually winning. It doesn't help that the Emperasque irritates Isha constantly with his brusque mannerisms.
    • Pretty much anybody who has to work with the Dark Eldar. Their alien mercenaries absolutely hate them. They lose a space station because of it.
    • The Space Wolves and Blood Ravens dislike each other strongly, but they still stand shoulder to shoulder fighting the Dark Mechanicus on Cadia.
  • Unreliable Illustrator: Most Fan Art depicts the Emperasque as a Tarrasque wearing a giant version of the Emperor's iconic golden Terminator armor, but in this form He's actually running around in The Emperor's New Clothes (at least, in the few days that follow His return). This is mostly due to Rule of Cool.
  • You Have Failed Me:
    • The Emperasque severely dresses down the Chapter Master of the Blood Ravens for their suspicious actions, binding him to the Deathwatch. The Emperor knew that to waste Gabriel's talents by just killing him would be gruesome profligacy. The mission that Gabriel undertakes would have been chronicled in Tales of the Emperasque 3, but the series is now ended.
    • The Emperasque is enraged when the Mechanicus accidentally damages the Golden Throne. Fortunately, he was already out of it. He only sets aside his anger because he has bigger problems coming than his own allies' shortsightedness.
    • He royally grills the Inquisition for routinely summoning daemons, and the Grey Knights for their actions to keep themselves secret.


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