History Characters / Warhammer40000ImperialFounders

* HorrifyingTheHorror: As Ka'Bandha and Angron will testify.

* OneManArmy: During the Siege of Terra, he singlehandedly went up against a Chaos Warlord Titan; Daughter Of Torment, a Chaos Reaver Titan; Ka'Badha, arguably the strongest Greater Daemon in the battlefield; Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters and the Chaos forces' greatest warrior; an endless swarm of traitor and daemonic forces [[{{NoHoldsBarredBeatdown}} and won.]]

* OneManArmy: During the Siege of Terra, he singlehandedly went up against a Chaos Warlord Titan; Daughter Of Torment, a Chaos Reaver Titan; Ka'Badha, arguably the strongest Greater Daemon in the battlefield;Angron,Primarch of the World Eaters and the Chaos forces' greatest warrior; an endless swarm of traitor and daemonic forces [[{{NoHoldsBarredBeatdown}} And won.]]

** He was so reasonable and heroic that Jaghatai Khan, the resident reasonable Primarch, looks to him for counsel and approval. When Dorn forbade Khan from leaving the Palace's grounds during the Siege, Khan turns to Sanguinius and asks if he will save lives by venturing out. When Sanguinius says that he will save many, Khan says, "That is what I was made for. I will ride out." To which Dorn permits.

* OneManArmy: During the Siege of Terra, he singlehandedly held off an endless horde of Chaos forces at the Eternity Gate of the Imperial Palace when every other Loyalist fled at the sight of the horror. [[{{NoHoldsBarredBeatdown}} And won.]]

* AdoptedIntoRoyalty: Unlike most of the Primarchs who, at best, were adopted by local tribal chieftains before rising to great power, Guilliman was adopted by one of the planetary rulers of Macragge and therefore was brought-up in a privileged position.

* PuttingTheBandBackTogether: [[spoiler:Dorn never fully accepted Guilliman's Codex Astartes reforms, and secretly made contingency plans for allSuccessor Chapters of the Seventh Legion to unite under a quasi-legionary structure in times of grave crisis. Known as the ''Last Wall'' protocol, this had been invoked once thus far, in M32 during the [[Literature/TheBeastArises massive Ork WAAAGH! led by The Beast]], which saw Terra under siege for the first time since the Heresy.]]

* SuddenNameChange: Used to be named Lyyn Elgonsen. This was changed fairly early.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: The Thunder Warriors were crucial in unifying Terra, but had no place in the vision the Emperor had for humanity afterwards. There's a great deal of ambiguity in what happened when their role was over, but it's speculated that he either sent them to their doom in the last battle on Terra or just eradicated them when the wars were done.

* ThePatriarch: Many Space Marines see their Primarchs this way, and the Emperor as that to their Primarchs. Given that all Space Marines are implanted with geneseeds descended from their Primarchs, and the Primarchs themselves were engineered with genes from the Emperor, this is almost literally the case. They have many rituals revering both Primarch and Emperor, resembling almost a form of filial piety and ancestor-worship, compared to the more distant and divine worship common to the rest of the Imperium.

* DoesntTrustThoseGuys: Corvus was the only Primarch, loyalist or otherwise, who did not trust Horus before the Heresy started. Due to his background as a freedom fighter and the incident on Gate 42, Corvus was the only one who wasn't taken in by Horus' ridiculous charisma, seeing instead an ambitious megalomaniac who was insecure, incredibly arrogant, cocky and easy to corrupt. Whilst other Primarchs either congratulated Horus or became jealous once he was promoted to Warmaster, Corvus felt incredibly uncomfortable at the prospect of Horus having so much power and authority. He felt that, given Horus' bad habit of glory hogging others' achievements, his constant need for validation, and his general disdain of mortals ruling over transhumans, that being promoted to Warmaster would only worsen Horus' already-oversized ego. Corvus feared that sooner or later, Horus' arrogance and insecurities would get the better of him, and that it would only be a matter of when, not if, Horus would eventually attempt a coup on the Emperor. Corvus' predictions became tragically very, ''very'' correct.

* MyGreatestFailure: Witnessing and having to [[ShootTheDog put down]] the horrific abominations that resulted from his attempts to expedite recruitment after the Drop Site Massacre nearly wiped out his Legion nearly broke him.

** After his ascension to the Golden Throne, the people of the Imperium looked to the Emperor for answers and hope in the form of faith. The Imperial Cult only grew and institutionalized, and even became a backbone Imperial authority. The faith of uncounted trillions placed in him eventually did cause the Emperor to [[{{Irony}} metamorphose into a pseudo-deity]]. It's established that the Emperor is the God of the Imperium, but only to so long as his physical body survives; the elephant in the room being that nobody knows what will happen if and when his physical remains die. Some suspect that he'll regenerate into a living being once more and lead his empire in person but at terrible cost to the Imperium, others think he will truly transcend the physical realm and become a true deity capable of challenging Chaos on its own turf, others think that his soul, exhausted and dependent on psychic human sacrifices, will cease to exist in any meaningful term and that he would truly die.

** The original Chaos sourcebooks for ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' and ''40K'', ''Slaves to Darkness'' and ''The Lost and the Damned'', gave the Emperor an origin as the gestalt embodiment of a thousand powerful human psykers who had existed before the coming of the Chaos Gods, who realised that the dawning gods were consuming or corrupting all of their fellow Shamans and so ritually sacrificed themselves to create a single mighty Warp entity in human flesh that would be able to protect against and eventually defeat the Chaos Gods. This has been subtly {{Retcon}}ned out with the passing of the editions, most notably the recent emphasis that Chaos came into existence during the war between the C'tan and the Slann, making all of the Gods (bar Slaanesh) older by far than the human race.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The Imperial Secundus, Guilliman's attempt to restore some modicum of order to the Imperium while the Horus Heresy was still ongoing, was the biggest mistake he made during the period. The endeavour not only diverted crucial troops and resources away from Terra during when they were most needed, [[spoiler:his attempt to find a substitute for the Astronomican attracted the Tyranids to the galaxy in the first place according to the ''Horus Heresy'' novel ''Pharos''.]]

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: "Ferrus Manus" means "Iron Hand" in Latin. His hands are made of xeno-necrodermis iron. His legion is called the Iron Hands. His flagship is called, "Hand Of Iron".

* HurtingHero: In his private moments, Guilliman displays just how deeply horrified and saddened he is seeing the state of the setting: Everything he valued is ancient history, the Imperium he and his brothers fought so hard to build has devolved into an insult to all that it was intended to be, and the galaxy has been split in half by nightmares made real. The fact that he's somehow expected to fix it and save a seemingly-doomed galaxy alone only makes his misery deeper.

'''[[Characters/Warhammer40000XenoRaces Xeno Races]]:''' [[Characters/Warhammer40000Eldar Aeldari]] ([[Characters/Warhammer40000CraftworldEldar Asuryani]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000DarkEldar Drukhari]]) | [[Characters/Warhammer40000LeaguesOfVotann Leagues of Votann]] | [[Characters/Warhammer40000Necrons Necrons]] | [[Characters/Warhammer40000Orks Orks]] ([[Characters/Warhammer40000OrksCharacters Characters]]) | [[Characters/Warhammer40000TauEmpire T'au Empire]] | [[Characters/Warhammer40000Tyranids Tyranids]]]]-]]]

* OneWingedAngel: [[spoiler:He is revealed to have accomplished this after journeying into the Eye of Terror. He unleashed his full psychic potential in the Warp and transformed into an [[LivingShadow raven-shaped sentient darkness]]. As a being of pure shadowy Warp energy (though he can assume his material form at will) he completely decimates an entire company of Word Bearers before [[CurbStompBattle utterly crushing]] the now-daemonic Lorgar one on one. The Daemon Primarch and his sons wind up fleeing the planet. He has spent his time since hampering the Traitor Legions from the shadows and freeing their slaves whenever possible.]]

* TheFundamentalist: A rare non-religious example; despite his militant, genocidal hatred of religion, the Emperor in life was still possessed an incredibly dogmatic, absolutionist view of the universe, and ruthlessly persecuted anyone who didn’t conform to what he believed was the “only path” for humanity. Namely, that humanity itself was the destined dominant species, that all other sapient races are abominations, and that any human who didn’t conform to those ideals was a traitor to the species and deserving only of death, and demanded blind faith in these ideals from all his subjects. It took remarkably little effort for the Eclesiarchy to repurpose those beliefs into the theocratic religion it would become.

* TheFundementalist: A rare non-religious example; despite his militant, genocidal hatred of religion, the Emperor in life was still possessed an incredibly dogmatic, absolutionist view of the universe, and ruthlessly persecuted anyone who didn’t conform to what he believed was the “only path” for humanity. Namely, that humanity itself was the destined dominant species, that all other sapient races are abominations, and that any human who didn’t conform to those ideals was a traitor to the species and deserving only of death, and demanded blind faith in these ideals from all his subjects. It took remarkably little effort for the Eclesiarchy to repurpose those beliefs into the theocratic religion it would become.

* TranshumanAbomination: It's not clear if the Emperor could ever have really been considered a true human, but after all his time being worshipped on the Golden Throne, it he's become something far beyond anything resembling human in thought or ability. Guiliman's "conversation" with him after his return shows that even the superhuman Primarchs are unable to comprehend his thoughts enough to so much as communicate with him anymore.

* TranshumanAbomination: It's not clear if the Emperor could ever have really been considered a true human, but after all his time being worshipped on the Golden Throne, he's become something far beyond anything resembling human in thought or ability. Guiliman's "conversation" with him after his return shows that even the superhuman Primarchs are unable to comprehend his thoughts enough to so much as communicate with him anymore.

* ILied: In exchange for Cypher's aid in escaping captivity by the forces of Chaos in the Maelstrom, he swore to bring Cypher to meet with the Emperor himself. Upon arriving at the entrance to the Golden Throne, he ordered to Custodes to arrest the rogue Dark Angel instead, believing the sword Cypher carried to be an ill omen and Cypher too dangerous to allow near the Emperor. [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness For Guilliman to break his word so blatantly to a man who had saved both his life and those of his men is not something he would have done lightly]], but the safety of the Emperor and therefore the Imperium itself was far too much to risk for Cypher's ambiguous aims.

* ArchEnemy: He always had problems with his brother Konrad Curze for his brutality, but their enmity became much more intense and [[ItsPersonal personal]] before the outbreak of the Heresy. By then, Curze was so far gone that he decided to put all his effort into breaking Vulkan physically and psychologically just to prove that Vulkan wasn't that different than he was.
** On a less personal level, he and his Legion despise the Dark Eldar for their history of raiding Nocturne to kidnap citizens for torture.

'''[[Characters/Warhammer40000Imperium Imperium of Man]]: Founders''', [[Characters/Warhammer40000Astartes Adeptus Astartes]] ([[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesChapters Chapters]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesChaptersFirstFounding Chapters of the First Founding]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesCharacters Characters]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000PrimarisSpaceMarines Primaris Marines]]), [[Characters/Warhammer40000ImperialGuard Astra Militarum]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Sororitas Adepta Sororitas]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Inquisition Inquisition]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Mechanicus Mechanicus]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000CurrentImperialFactions Other factions]]\\

'''[[Characters/Warhammer40000Imperium Imperium of Man]]: Founders''', [[Characters/Warhammer40000Astartes Adeptus Astartes]] ([[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesChapters Chapters]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000AstartesCharacters Characters]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000PrimarisSpaceMarines Primaris Marines]]), [[Characters/Warhammer40000ImperialGuard Astra Militarum]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Sororitas Adepta Sororitas]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Inquisition Inquisition]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000Mechanicus Mechanicus]], [[Characters/Warhammer40000CurrentImperialFactions Other factions]]\\

* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: When Kairos Fateweaver tries tempting to El'Jonson into the service of the Ruinous Powers on behalf of Tzeentch, El'Jonson stabs him and sarcastically asks if he had foreseen that. Essentially, the Lion by proxy tells ''Tzeentch'' to piss off.