The idea is that the emperor would stay on the golden throne until humanities dormant psychic potential is realised and controlled and then enter a new era of spiritual and technological supremacy. (The horus heresy: collected visions & epic armageddon rulebook)
A lot of people take great notice of the failing throne on the timeline but above it is something called "the great awakening". A ripple of psychic activity passes through the Imperium, awakening the dormant powers of latent psykers. The resulting backlash creates innumerable warp rifts and a thousand worlds are lost to daemonic incursions. The big E is the only individual capable of doing this and perhaps it was his attempt to accelerate the development of psychic power within humanity.
For intents and purposes the emperor is a god waiting to be born in the warp, this cannot occur because his spirit is still grafted to his decayed body. When the emperor dies (and he will die) his spirit will merge with the unborn god and, in turn, be born anew. But he will be a god of humanity, created as will be from mankind's hope, not from base emotions, and will destroy the chaos gods. The emperor has dueled with the dark gods before and beaten them, with the ultimate power of a deity, fueled by the faith of trillions of humans they won't stand a chance.
Now the Imperium is in a state of fluctuation, it conquers worlds and loses some it is in no way collapsing because of external pressures, let me explain.
The Imperium is constantly at war, however, that does not mean that every world is under attack, indeed dozens if not hundreds of years can pass on a world without being attacked by a hostile alien race. But then there are others that are almost constantly under assault.
There are perhaps tens of thousands of worlds across the Imperium that are under attack at anyone time but even that is a small percentage of worlds compared to the millions under imperial rule, leaving a good 90% or more worlds that are still producing arms, armour and recruits for distant warzones. The Imperium's military resources are practically limitless.
Then you have the astartes, a million or so strong force of superhuman soldiers. 1 per world doesn't sound like much but as stated above only a small percentage of the imperium is under attack. Also there are now 5 times more space marines than there were during the great crusade, with the Black Templars boasting several thousand companies according to the Codex: Black Templars. It is also worth noting that according to The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions the admin have a huge bank of gene-seed stored away in stasis that can be used at any time deemed necessary.
It states in Codex: Tyranids that Leviathan is the greatest AND last hive fleet to assail the galaxy.
Ultimately humanity is it's own worse enemy, the Imperium will not collapse because of invasion, it's downfall will come from within, Imperial society will not last as it is now. Mankind Stands on the precipice, All Mankind has to do is survive until their psychic potential is reached, if they can't then humanity is doomed. (very Dramatic, no?
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1500pts+ Gue'vesa
500pts