[Emperor] What is the daily psyker sacrifice like?

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**Ixion**

What exactly does the ritual sacrifice of 1,000 psykers to the Emperor look like/involve/entail? I haven't really seen it covered in any detail, just the basic statement that 1,000 such psykers are consumed every day.

Are they just herded around the throne and hit by some kind of mind-eating ray, or are there head-tube helmets that suck out their brains, or do they just get thrown in a big vat and smelted into psyker soup, or what?

**Seaward**

I imagine it's a little like that scene in Mechanicus.

At least I think it was Mechanicus.

**Durza**

I always pictured it as a combination of mind-eating ray and brain helmet, but I don't think there's any solid fluff on it. The best horror is the one the reader has to imagine for themselves.

**Harriticus**

I always imagined that there's a massive array of wires around the Throne where the psykers are hooked up to via their head and then they simply wither away into dust. Malcador dissolved into dust after being hooked up to the Golden Throne, I imagine the process for lesser psykers is similar.

**Ixion**

I don't know why it'd have a physical effect on the psykers, since it's the psychic energy itself the Emperor needs (unless there's a biochemical component to it, or some other such thing where the bodies help fuel the process as well).

What about public opinion on these sacrifices? Do people generally know that they happen, or is it something top secret or mythical? I assume all good Imperial citizens that do know about it fully approve of it.

**BrainDeleted**

The Black Ships are Black for a reason. I would figure that the layman would think the witches are just being taken to be burned...Which they sort of are unless they have potential to serve as astropaths or something.

**nomotog**

When I heard about it, it was described as being slowly burned away from your feet to your head.

**KamikazeCanuck**

Probably like that wood chipper scene in Fargo.

**Psienesis**

I believe those who are not powerful enough to be even Astropaths, the weakest kind of true psykers amongst mankind, are simply paraded before the Golden Throne and are then utterly consumed, perhaps leaving bones behind but perhaps not. Absolute annihilation in the furnace of the God-Emperor's psychic mind.

**BrainDeleted**

I think the best answer is terrible and horrible and we don't want to see it ever.

**Soo'Vah'Cha**

I always pictured it as a huge circular room a mile high, with rings of clear crystal tubes, and within each tube a psyker slowly having his/her lifeforce leeched away, and constantly monitoring and replacing of the tubes, would be hooded inhuman appearing adepts with facial mechanical tendrils that probe and evaluate each tubes status, every thing bathed in a sickly green glow, and the faint crystal dampened screams of the supplicants.

Use to be the residue left from this process was the major component in anti-psyker weapons, making it a very rare comodity.

**Harriticus**

Ixion wrote:I don't know why it'd have a physical effect on the psykers, since it's the psychic energy itself the Emperor needs (unless there's a biochemical component to it, or some other such thing where the bodies help fuel the process as well).

The Horus heresy Collected Visions book went into how after being hooked up to the Golden Throne Malcador simply disintegrated into dust. That was a psychic draining, similar to what the sacrifices to the Emperor go through. While the process is entire psychic/mental there is still a strong link between a psykers psychic energy/soul and his physiacl state, as is the case with all psychic creatures. I imagine the Emperor is basically consuming their soul.

What about public opinion on these sacrifices? Do people generally know that they happen, or is it something top secret or mythical? I assume all good Imperial citizens that do know about it fully approve of it.

The average Imperial doesn't even know Chaos exists and their knowledge on psykers is probably that they're just evil heretical monsters and little more. The average Imperial doesn't even know Navigators exist, nevermind the Astronomnican. They surely don't know about the Adeptus Astra Telepathica even, nevermind the sacrifice.

And yes I'm sure those who do know (The Administratum, Ecclesiarchy, Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Astronomica, Inquisition, Mechanicus, etc.) approve of it as psykers as a whole are widely reviled in the Imperium.

**KingmanHighborn**

My problem with the whole thing is I highly doubt exactly 1000 psykers are knocked off a day. Even for the Emperor in a universe of untold billions the logisitcs and reliability of space travel in 40K (i.e. about as reliable as Geo Metro), and the rarity of psykers in general, it's going to be almost impossible to do that. It could also be propaganda in a way though not sure exactly why they'd inflate the numbers, but I seriously think it'd realistically be somewhere in the 10-100 range with even 100 a day being a strecth.

**Soo'Vah'Cha**

KingmanHighborn wrote:My problem with the whole thing is I highly doubt exactly 1000 psykers are knocked off a day. Even for the Emperor in a universe of untold billions the logisitcs and reliability of space travel in 40K (i.e. about as reliable as Geo Metro), and the rarity of psykers in general, it's going to be almost impossible to do that. It could also be propaganda in a way though not sure exactly why they'd inflate the numbers, but I seriously think it'd realistically be somewhere in the 10-100 range with even 100 a day being a strecth.

In a empire of over a million worlds, 1 psyker for every 1000 worlds per day seems small. a 1000 souls per day is cheap in the universe of 40k...welcome to the infinite grimdarkness of the IoM, where hive cities miles tall and palace's that span continets exist, realism is not even a factor.

**Harriticus**

KingmanHighborn wrote:My problem with the whole thing is I highly doubt exactly 1000 psykers are knocked off a day. Even for the Emperor in a universe of untold billions the logisitcs and reliability of space travel in 40K (i.e. about as reliable as Geo Metro), and the rarity of psykers in general, it's going to be almost impossible to do that. It could also be propaganda in a way though not sure exactly why they'd inflate the numbers, but I seriously think it'd realistically be somewhere in the 10-100 range with even 100 a day being a strecth.

Even if a Psyker is 1 in every 100 Million people, you'd still have plenty of Psykers throughout the Imperium when your average Hive World can easily have tens of billions and the Imperium itself is made up of a million worlds. Only several tens of thousand psykers at most are utilized by the Imperium for duties besides sacrifice or as an astropath (not including Space Marines) and the vast majority are sacrificed.

**Iur_tae_mont**

I always imagined it like shoveling coal into a furnace.

Just instead of Coal it's Chloroformed Psykers.

**Ma55ter_fett**

A giant blender, then they give the eom a straw to suck it down.

**Deathly Angel**

I like to picture tubes being inserted into the psykers' throats and eye sockets, their craniums removed and hundreds of wires connected to their brains. Tubes are inserted into all body orifices, including genitals, nipples, rectum, before their life essence is drained out to be consumed by the Emporer. This is done to rows upon rows of bodies, a like battery chicken farm.

Think Matrix:

**megabambam**

I just imagine them being pulled up in hooks, and then left to slowly wither away around the Emperors decaying body

**Lord_Vader**

I wonder, would this eventually happen to Librarians too?

**asimo77**

Is it ever explained what the Emperor does with these souls? Are they completely om nom nommed, like a daemon would do to a soul? Or are the psyker souls merging with the Emperor sort of like how the shamans created in the Emperor in the first place by uniting their souls.

**Paul**

Lord_Vader wrote:I wonder, would this eventually happen to Librarians too?

Are you talking about SM Librarians? In which case, no. There is no way a chapter would let one of there members be treated like this and have there soul totaly distroyed for anyone short of the EoM himself telling them they must. Or are you talking about changes to Local library funding under budget cuts?

**Corporal_Reznov**

Harriticus wrote:
The average Imperial doesn't even know Chaos exists and their knowledge on psykers is probably that they're just evil heretical monsters and little more. The average Imperial doesn't even know Navigators exist, nevermind the Astronomnican. They surely don't know about the Adeptus Astra Telepathica even, nevermind the sacrifice.

And yes I'm sure those who do know (The Administratum, Ecclesiarchy, Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Astronomica, Inquisition, Mechanicus, etc.) approve of it as psykers as a whole are widely reviled in the Imperium.

Psyker are simply disliked and not trusted and for good reason:

Dark Heresy rpg: Daemonhunter pg 21 wrote:At the last, at the insistence of the envoy, Grund declined
to undertake a crucial obligation of an Imperial Governor: he
cancelled the annual psyker cull.

It was several years before the cancellation of the cull took
effect, but when fi nally it did, doom came to Protasia. In a
single day, a dozen rogue psykers came into their powers
and ravaged the land, killing thousands in an orgy of psychic
murder. The very skies above Protasia seethed with witchlights
and arcs of raw psychic power stitched across the
boiling clouds. Grund raged—imploring the envoy to deliver
him and his world from the chaos that had overtaken it. But
for the fi rst time in a decade, the envoy was silent. Grund was
abandoned to his fate.

At the height of the psychic storm, each of the rogue
psykers was transfi gured into a grotesque gateway of pulsing
fl esh, through which spewed hundreds of vile Enslavers.
These utterly alien creatures were native to the Warp, but fed
upon the stuff of reality. They entered the material universe
through the unprotected minds of rogue psykers, and on
Protasia they went forth across the land, turning day to night
and taking over the minds of countless millions of Grund’s
subjects. Hordes of drooling, mind-slaved drones stumbled
across the surface of Protasia, and more and more portals
were opened as the Enslavers harnessed the power of the
entire population to breach the Warp and draw forth more
of their kind.

Deatwatch Rpg: Core rulebook pg316 wrote:Enslaver plagues

“Call them what you will—Krell, Psyrens or Enslavers. Just one
witch, unsanctioned, caused the destruction of Hive Skorpios when
one of those things used her brain as a gateway to this world. Within
three days the entire hive’s population was reduced to drooling mindslaves.
Within three weeks an entire continent was at war. And all
because the governor thought his family should be exempt from the
psyker cull and refused to give his daughter to the Black Ships.”

–Inquisitor Mallen, Ordo Xenos

KingmanHighborn wrote:My problem with the whole thing is I highly doubt exactly 1000 psykers are knocked off a day. Even for the Emperor in a universe of untold billions the logisitcs and reliability of space travel in 40K (i.e. about as reliable as Geo Metro), and the rarity of psykers in general, it's going to be almost impossible to do that. It could also be propaganda in a way though not sure exactly why they'd inflate the numbers, but I seriously think it'd realistically be somewhere in the 10-100 range with even 100 a day being a strecth.

No, warp travel is reliable enough for its job. The incidents we hear about happen every now and then but in an empire of a million plus worlds a few fleets and ships lost here and there mean nothing. Its you who don't have the sense of scale here.

Also the number of Pysker appearing among humanity keeps growing.

Oh read this, its from the 5th edition codex I believe:

Also read this: http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=206495