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UselessSage wrote:Makes sense to me that Big-E is beyond the IoM's help. After Horus was struck down by the amphene (sp?) the Lunar Wolves apothecaries could not help him all that much, they could not comprehend Horus' physiology. I am going to guess that Big-E's plumbing is a step or two beyond that of a Primarch.

Anatheme...

purplefood wrote:

UselessSage wrote:Makes sense to me that Big-E is beyond the IoM's help. After Horus was struck down by the amphene (sp?) the Lunar Wolves apothecaries could not help him all that much, they could not comprehend Horus' physiology. I am going to guess that Big-E's plumbing is a step or two beyond that of a Primarch.

Anatheme...

Anathame?

UselessSage wrote:

purplefood wrote:

UselessSage wrote:Makes sense to me that Big-E is beyond the IoM's help. After Horus was struck down by the amphene (sp?) the Lunar Wolves apothecaries could not help him all that much, they could not comprehend Horus' physiology. I am going to guess that Big-E's plumbing is a step or two beyond that of a Primarch.

Anatheme...

Anathame?

Yeah why not.

To say the Emperor is dead is heresy. The Emperor protects, and while the Custodes watch guard over him and as long as we continue to fight and die in his name and honor, we will persevere, and so shall our lord beloved upon his golden throne keep vigilance over his people. In the meantime, we promise to fight for our dead and bring death to our enemies.

I think it's a fairly central tenet of 40k background that everything we know about the Emperor doesn't entirely rule out the possibility that he's been dead for the last ten thousand years, if you're so inclined to believe that way. It's all part of the lovely grimdarkness that makes 40k what it is. Sure, you could interpret things like the continued function of the Astronomican and crusading Saints as evidence of the Emperor's continued influence on the galaxy, and there is of course the nasty daemon infested webway portal under the Imperial Palace that the Emperor is supposed to be keeping a lid on, but you still can't quite say with absolute certainty that the Imperium hasn't been basing their entire civilization around a corpse for millennia. I don't necessarily subscribe to this obviously heretical line of thought, but the uncertainty is one of the many things that makes me love this universe.

Temujin wrote:I think it's a fairly central tenet of 40k background that everything we know about the Emperor doesn't entirely rule out the possibility that he's been dead for the last ten thousand years, if you're so inclined to believe that way. It's all part of the lovely grimdarkness that makes 40k what it is. Sure, you could interpret things like the continued function of the Astronomican and crusading Saints as evidence of the Emperor's continued influence on the galaxy, and there is of course the nasty daemon infested webway portal under the Imperial Palace that the Emperor is supposed to be keeping a lid on, but you still can't quite say with absolute certainty that the Imperium hasn't been basing their entire civilization around a corpse for millennia. I don't necessarily subscribe to this obviously heretical line of thought, but the uncertainty is one of the many things that makes me love this universe.

Exactly. Lets say the Emperor did die way back then.
There would still be inexplicable, weirdness happening all the time because of the quadrillions of people who venerate his corpse and the thousand psykers that are sacrificed everday. That's enough to make a completely new warp construct by far. A new being may be on the throne but we can't know for sure its the same guy.

Mr Nobody wrote:This will take more than a few band aids.

Where did you take that pic?

I think medical care at least has improved in 38K years of human civilization. If the Golden Throne is only a life sustaining mechanism that takes the space of England I think something is wrong with imperial medicine... Obviously the Golden Toilet is designed to support and project his powers the best way possible. The Emperor should be alive after all and that his soul is chained to the material real as long as his body exist is the tragedy. That he has the same level of interaction with humanity as a flowerpot is another matter, basically I think to conserve the status quo.

Touching the God Emperor?! Heresy worthy of death. But then again all heresy is worthy of death...

I think the Big E is still alive, but I've had a theory that the webway portal opened and whats siting in the Emperor's corpse is a daemon or maybe Mala and it's doing all this to keep humanity alive to feed chaos or if its Mala to kill chaos.

I think GW should say that he has been conserving psychic energy for a long time, and in 6th edition will spring up from the throne and lead a new crusade. Make the emperor a playable model that looks AWESOME, and it worth like 10000pts for apocalypse battle heres his stats
WS BS S T W I Ld Sv
10 10 10 10 10 10 12 2+ 2++
Special Rules:
The Emperor Protects: all units in his squad get a 2+ invulnerable save
Divine Prescense: All units on your side of the field are fearless, have furious charge and are immune to sweeping advance
Destroy Evil: Once a game the emperor uses a massive psychic blast that causes all enemy units to take a S6 wound

Then give him some SICK weapons!
Charge 100-150 dollars for the model. Anyone who ever plays apocalypse is going to buy the model and many others would as well, just to say they have the emperor. That would be sweet, obviously my version is a little...crazy

Ok here is my take on the Big E. I believe that he was honestly dead after the fight with Horus or just about dead, when he was brought to the golden throne and Malcador gave him his last amount of psychic strength it was just enough to keep the Big E slightly stable. Giving him enough sense to tell the mech boys what to do to the throne to preserve him long enough to restore his strength. I view the Emp like a dam his mighty psychic powers being the river and his body being the actual dam. Now, in the fight with Horus he had to open the flood gates to the max releasing the whole force of his psychic power. Yet the damage that Horus caused to his body made it to the point where he could not control his psychic flood gates so to speak. So that power granted to him by Malcador allowed him to close them some just enough to modify the throne to try and heal his body. Well sadly the big E was wrong and his body was way to destroyed to try and repair kinda like a dam losing 3/4 of it's self and trying to hold a raging river back it just doesn't work. I think that big E has way too much psychic power to contain in his destroyed body causing it to decay as it is now. Where if he would have just let himself die he could reform a different persona like the shamen that created him(old shaman fluff). Or, eventually get in the head of the lead Custode once his warp body is strong enough to form a new warp being pull the plug on the throne and show chaos what it is all about.(starchild theory) These are just personal ideas and theories I have no actual fluff to back me on this but think that it is a different way to think of the big E

I think you're not to far off but if you are saying this massive river of psychic energy came from Malcador then I don't agree. I think it comes from the quadrillions of faithful and the millions of psykers that have been sacrificed.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:Time and time again there have been miraculous occurencies throughout the Imperium which lends support to the idea that a benevolent being of incredible potency is watching over the IoM who could that be if not the soul of the Emperor? Dead? Maybe, gone? Never!

Or perhaps this being of incredible potency is created by mankind itself, whose faith in the Emperor occasionally manifests itself in a manner much like Eldar emotions giving birth a Chaos God...

Harriticus wrote:What I don't understand is the 5th edition Rulebook pic of the Golden Throne clearly shows him with both arms, whereas it was clearly stated that Horus ripped one off.

Was that maybe just stated in some novel? Keep in mind GW doesn't really care what licensed products claim. I only recall hard canon saying He was "mortally wounded" or something like that.

Also:

Durza wrote:In the rules from the Inquisition game, there's actually a page where the first four high lords of Terra were given the chance to resurrect him, but refused, claiming it would cause civil war.

^ This.

The Emperor is bascially a skeleton at this point. I'm not sure how he's able to maintain the Astronomicon anymore ...

Noisy_Marine wrote:The Emperor is bascially a skeleton at this point. I'm not sure how he's able to maintain the Astronomicon anymore ...

That's part of the big lie. He never did. He built it and it ran on it's own for centuries without him being part of it. It still runs without him.

Noisy_Marine wrote:The Emperor is bascially a skeleton at this point. I'm not sure how he's able to maintain the Astronomicon anymore ...

It's said that the last bits of the Emperor still 'alive' serve as a anchor (or a fetter) on his true psychic self. The Imperium thinks that only keeping the Golden Throne running, and the Emperor 'alive' will keep the Astronomicon working.

But it is a possibility that they're jsut screwing with the Big E's main over all plan.

The Emperior can be best classified as technological based undead.

Allowing him final rest will release his spirit back to the Warp to be reborn, as he was before. Unfortuneately this will lead to an interregnum during which time the Imperium will be exceptionally vulnerable, the High Lords of Terra are not willing to risk this.

Orlanth wrote:Unfortuneately this will lead to an interregnum during which time the Imperium will be exceptionally vulnerable, the High Lords of Terra are not willing to risk this.

An interregnum isn't the issue - no-one outside the highest echelons of the Senate and the Inquisition would ever know he's even missing.

What the High Lords fear is that an active Emperor actually saying and doing stuff would mess with their own plans. In essence, they believe that would the Emperor return and demand gak to happen instead of the current "Pax Imperialis" status quo, half of the Imperium's ruling class wouldn't follow him ("you want to draft HOW many of my PDF?!"), plunging the Imperium into civil war. And that's not even taking into account all the silliness that changed after He was gone.

The Astronomican might be another problem - I'm not entirely sure if the Big E is truly needed to keep it stable or if that's just superstition/propaganda. If He'd be an essential part of it, then the timespan it takes for Him to be "reborn" might be crucial indeed.

At the end of the day, the High Lords just prefer to have Him exactly where He is right now - on His chair, playing silent figurehead.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think you're not to far off but if you are saying this massive river of psychic energy came from Malcador then I don't agree. I think it comes from the quadrillions of faithful and the millions of psykers that have been sacrificed.

No just saying that Malcador gave him just a small portion of his power to revive the emperor so that big E could try and recover. I'm going off of the Lexicanum I thought the array was a part of big E's spirit that he casted out of himself to help guide humanity?

I have to say I've been wondering for a while whether the Emperor always looked like that anyway? I mean he supposedly predates even our time, which would make him over 30,000 years old by the time of the heresy. And then there's the mileage...

Basically in most of the fluff I've read when someone meets him they either can't bear to look at him or they basically just see this indescribable divine being. that sounds suspiciously like a psychic glamour to me; people just see what he wants them to. Which would make sense if he actually looks like a wizened old near corpse.

I think all four of the Chaos gods have a pinic inside the Throne every morning when all those souls are sacrificed to the Emperor. It's the perfect plan, a free meal everyday and it lets the gods have a time to chat without having all of those hostilities in the way. For a couple of hours every morning, the realms of Chaos have some peace and are united to a single purpose.

I never understood why they didn't just put the emperor in a big dread or titan or something.

nectarprime wrote:I never understood why they didn't just put the emperor in a big dread or titan or something.

Because:
a) He needs to be in the GOldent Throne in order to run the Astronomican, soul bind psykers, etc.
b) He's too valuable to risk on the battlefield.

ChrisWWII wrote:
a) He needs to be in the GOldent Throne in order to run the Astronomican, soul bind psykers, etc.

That's part of the Big Lie. The Astronomicon ran for centuries without the Emperor's presence prior to his incarceration.

Only a few of the Emprah's cells are still alive. There is nothing to heal. The body is just a lifeless husk.

The only way Big E' can ever be rejuvinated, is by (i believe ive read) the sacrificing of the sensei, his children, now im not sure whether this is credable fully, but its on lexicanum so it must have 'some' truth to it. Other then that it would take mass sacrifice of another kind... or a mircale... but i for one believe he's alive...... FOR THE ALLFATHER! *is happy to have got that out of his system*.....

DarknessEternal wrote:That's part of the Big Lie. The Astronomicon ran for centuries without the Emperor's presence prior to his incarceration.

That is certainly true, but I was under the impression that He still controlled it with his awesome psychic powers? From what I've read, it sounds like the Emperor would "channel" all the energy of the psyker choir into a focal point to create this beacon to navigate by, like a "sustained power" He would just keep on running almost subconsciously...

If anyone has some more information on this topic from GW studio material, I'd certainly be interested.

DarknessEternal wrote:
That's part of the Big Lie. The Astronomicon ran for centuries without the Emperor's presence prior to his incarceration.

Even if that's true, the EMperor is still needed in the Golden Throne to help soul bind psykers, etc.

And he's still far too valuable to risk in battle.

ChrisWWII wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:
That's part of the Big Lie. The Astronomicon ran for centuries without the Emperor's presence prior to his incarceration.

Even if that's true, the EMperor is still needed in the Golden Throne to help soul bind psykers, etc.

Quite true. His most important job is keeping the warp portal closed.

The 40k rulebook confirms that the Emperor's physical body is dead.

Page 101 or something.