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How did the emperor go from being a dude clad in power armour and mortally wounded to this:



Is there even any flesh left? If so then won't it rot away at some point? And if not, what is the point of his corporal form still being plugged in?
That body must have been giving off an almighty stench for the past 10,000 years

You'd be surprised.



But honestly, it's sci-fi tech - just look at the Dreadnoughts and how old their "drivers" can become.

My interpretation is that the Golden Throne indeed did not stop the Emperor's decay completely but merely slowed it down long enough for Him to continue "living" for thousands of years. And then there is the issue of nobody knowing anymore how the Throne actually works, so lack of maintenance has caused the system becoming unreliable in supporting the Emperor's body.

As to why the Imperium is keeping Him around - by now it's obviously because He is the figurehead around which the entire IoM is built. But also because His mind, by nomming thousands of psykers each day, creates and maintains the Astronomican, which is essential for all Imperial space travel and, with that, the Imperium's continued existence. Without the Astronomican, countless systems will be cut off from one another, unable to mount a unified defense against the many enemies of Mankind.

Is he in a stasis field? I thought I heard that somewhere...

IGdude354 wrote:Is he in a stasis field? I thought I heard that somewhere...

I thought this as a possibility at first as well, but if he were in a statis field he'd literally be frozen in time, wouldn't he? No guiding the Astronomican, and no body that would require weird fluids being pumped into it.

Of course, these images are merely artist renditions (and the ones we have seen so far differ in details), so all those pumps might not be actually "there".

Lynata wrote:

IGdude354 wrote:Is he in a stasis field? I thought I heard that somewhere...

I thought this as a possibility at first as well, but if he were in a statis field he'd literally be frozen in time, wouldn't he? No guiding the Astronomican, and no body that would require weird fluids being pumped into it.

Of course, these images are merely artist renditions (and the ones we have seen so far differ in details), so all those pumps might not be actually "there".

Isn't both the Lion and Guilliman in stasis field, and said to move of heal? Or is that just the religious beleif of those that idolize them?

The Lion definitely has the possibility of being reborn, specifically because it's said only the emperor knows of him being locked away in a stasis field.

Edit: tags

So he's rotting...in fact he appears to be almost completely gone in all renditions of him. Wouldn't that suggest that in a few decades he'll be gone completely and merely be a skeleton?

Lynata wrote:

IGdude354 wrote:Is he in a stasis field? I thought I heard that somewhere...

I thought this as a possibility at first as well, but if he were in a statis field he'd literally be frozen in time, wouldn't he? No guiding the Astronomican, and no body that would require weird fluids being pumped into it..

Hmm, I don't know how it works but I would guess that you're right here. Unless the mind is still able to act, It's a bubble of time around the body isn't? If that's true, poor Guilliman

Testify wrote:So he's rotting...in fact he appears to be almost completely gone in all renditions of him. Wouldn't that suggest that in a few decades he'll be gone completely and merely be a skeleton?

I guess all those tubes are pumping him full of err ... stuff to keep his body from deteriorating too rapidly.

I was lead to believe that his body can become a full skeleton and it wouldn't matter as long as his body is on the golden throne and his mind in the warp.

Testify wrote:Wouldn't that suggest that in a few decades he'll be gone completely and merely be a skeleton?

Given how much time has passed already since they put Him in there, I'd say "a few millennia" might be more accurate.

That said, it is perhaps ironical that this very "forced link" between spirit and body may prevent Him from being reborn in the first place. There are powers in the Imperium that prefer Him being "locked away" in the Warp, his body nothing but a figurehead for people to rally around.

van Riemsdyk wrote:I was lead to believe that his body can become a full skeleton and it wouldn't matter as long as his body is on the golden throne and his mind in the warp.

Spoiler:

Even as the Emperor's slowly rotting physical form sits inert within the Golden Throne, his mind remains active in the Warp...

If his mind is in the warp then what is the point of his skeleton? Couldn't they just dump it in the trash?
I assume there must be some brain tissue left anyway. Although if the emperor is capable of holding back an unrelenting force of daemonic nightmares without a corporal body, makes you wonder what he was doing with it in the first place when he could have just put a gun to his head and become a fully-fledged kick-ass pyscic god when he was still walking around kicking ass.

Testify wrote:
If his mind is in the warp then what is the point of his skeleton? Couldn't they just dump it in the trash?
.

You would dump the most holiest of holies into the Trash?! BURN HERETIC!!!

No, I don't think they would do that, it's an Icon to the Imperium and a symbol that he is still with them I imagine. People are allowed an audience with the Emperor, if there was a sign saying AFT, people might be a bit, WTF?

If they wanted to, I'm sure the powers behind the Throne could fake an Emperor. Who would know the difference?

However, if the body serves as an "anchor" for the God-Emperor's spirit, the very last thing that those certain people in the Imperium attempting to prevent His rebirth would want to do would be shutting down the Golden Throne and throwing Him away, as that may trigger his resurrection.

Also, I suppose the body is somehow connected to the whole psyker eating stuff, acting as a conduit for the psychic energy released by the tithe sacrifices which is then sent "up" and used to power the Astronomican.

Lynata wrote:If they wanted to, I'm sure the powers behind the Throne could fake an Emperor. Who would know the difference?

True enough. I guess they could have a hologram of him there and no one would know the difference. I don't know how they would pull an Emperor switcheroo though. Wouldn't the Astronomicom stop working and the Webway breach be reopened if you removed him?

Pilau Rice wrote:True enough. I guess they could have a hologram of him there and no one would know the difference.

Or even just a metal husk.

"The Emperor's body is conserved within. Trust us. No picts and no stepping beyond the line pls."

Pilau Rice wrote:I don't know how they would pull an Emperor switcheroo though. Wouldn't the Astronomicom stop working and the Webway breach be reopened if you removed him?

If His body is truly required for that, yeah. Which is why I think that'd be some of the reasons they wouldn't do that.

On some level, I also like the idea that it's all a scam and that the Astronomican is ( "nowadays" ) powered entirely by psyker sacrifices fed to some sort of machine, and that the Emperor's corpse is basically just decoration. However, I only like this thought because it would be even more grimdark than what we have already, and because it would be an awesome twist in a narrative. I do not believe it to be actually "true" (in my interpretation of the setting, at least), as the sources I'm going by (-> GW) contain so many things contradicting that theory.

Lynata wrote:On some level, I also like the idea that it's all a scam and that the Astronomican is ( "nowadays" ) powered entirely by psyker sacrifices fed to some sort of machine, and that the Emperor's corpse is basically just decoration. However, I only like this thought because it would be even more grimdark than what we have already, and because it would be an awesome twist in a narrative. I do not believe it to be actually "true" (in my interpretation of the setting, at least), as the sources I'm going by (-> GW) contain so many things contradicting that theory.

I think this is the case now, that the psykers are used to feed the Astronomicon, but how do they do it? I think the feed the Emperor, to sustain him, who in turn feeds the 'nomicon.

Also, if the corpse wasn't required, where would they take the potential Astropaths for the Soul Binding?

Well, they could still use the Throne Room. It's got to be connected to the machine somehow, as it is mentioned how psykers are led into His presence for the sacrifice and for the Soul Binding. The part left open is how much the Emperor actually has to do with it. For all we know it could be some sort of magnet that pulls psychic energy out of people's heads, or it could be a grinder for psyker brains to produce a pulverized drug (there is such a thing in Dark Heresy RPG, actually), ...

... we know very little about what exactly happens in this "conversion process". But hey, that only leaves even more room for crazy theories, doesn't it?

Lynata wrote:Well, they could still use the Throne Room. It's got to be connected to the machine somehow, as it is mentioned how psykers are led into His presence for the sacrifice and for the Soul Binding. The part left open is how much the Emperor actually has to do with it. For all we know it could be some sort of magnet that pulls psychic energy out of people's heads, or it could be a grinder for psyker brains to produce a pulverized drug (there is such a thing in Dark Heresy RPG, actually), ...

... we know very little about what exactly happens in this "conversion process". But hey, that only leaves even more room for crazy theories, doesn't it?

Yeah, I know, I'm just firing off ideas, pew pew

He lends them a portion of his power as far as I know, so he has to have some form of conduit.

Psychic VR headset maybe?

I thought the whole thing was pointless and the imperium was basically just murdering millions of pyskers every year for no actual reason?
Not unlike barbarian cultures that sacrificed people in order to bring the rains or make the sun shine.

Testify wrote:I thought the whole thing was pointless and the imperium was basically just murdering millions of pyskers every year for no actual reason?

They wouldn't have to ferry them all the way to Terra then. And psykers being used to "power" the Astronomican (channeled through Emps) has been a recurring theme for ... I think always? Still the Astronomican has been getting weaker lately, even after they had upped the number of tithe sacrifices some time ago. I guess it's a sign that the Emperor's hold on His body is slipping, either as a resulf of the Golden Throne malfunctioning or of his body simply becoming too decayed to be sustained even with this kind of tech.

Or that this phase of his plan is nearing completion.

Manchu wrote:Or that this phase of his plan is nearing completion.

If He were that omniscient, yeah. He'd put Tzeentch and Eldrad to shame with such foresight, tho.
Personally, I think He'd just die for reals, then reincarnate, and be all pissed why someone left him to rot for several thousand years. But, since He is the Emperor, He won't go on a mad rampage through the travesty His Imperium has become but rather (grudgingly) work with what He has left now and begin the great work of stabilizing His realm. Can you say Great Crusade II?

At least that'd be my vision for the 42nd millennium.

Meh, M42 is exactly as he planned. Again, this is what makes 40k so grimdark. The Imperium-as-is really is the best we can do at that scale. No Star Trek jumpsuits and treating robots like your brother for human beings, I'm afraid.

I wouldn't exactly compare the Great Crusade with Star Trek. ;P

But yeah, I suppose it would be slightly less grimdark due to being more centralized, with less internal strife and a bit more sense. A little more like ... hmm, the movie "Starship Troopers" springs to mind. (yeah, I've never read the book)

According to a lot of folks around here, the point of the Great Crusade was to usher in Star Trek 40k.

Manchu wrote:According to a lot of folks around here, the point of the Great Crusade was to usher in Star Trek 40k.

Ugh. Well, I'd rather compare it with Roan Fel's Galactic Empire. You can actually be a benign dictator without turning everything into an unrealistic utopia.

And either way, Mankind isn't gonna change in only a few hundred years, regardless of the Emperor's ideals. Just look at the real world, even today we're still experiencing the "feedback" from a couple centuries of racial/cultural bias, religious bigotry and gender division/suppression. Just imagine how much slower any development would progress if we were to talk about an entire interstellar Imperium where travel from one world to another is not an everyday occurrence!

I also believe that the Emperor Himself wasn't quite so naive, and instead fully aware that humanity would have to pay a price for survival.

I have waited for this topic for a loooong time.

Personally, when I first saw that image, I thought it was a mask, as you can clearly see the skin in his hands remains natural looking.

Furthermore, in the Helsreach novel by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chaplain Grimaldus' silvery deathmask is said to have been made "in the image of the Emperor's very own deathmask".

This would also explain the abundance of skulls in Imperial architechture. Maybe it is so because his face actually looks like a skull? Usually even statues depicting him have a skull in the place of their heads.

Battle Brother Ambrosius wrote:This would also explain the abundance of skulls in Imperial architechture. Maybe it is so because his face actually looks like a skull? Usually even statues depicting him have a skull in the place of their heads.

Hmmh, I always thought the skulls would be a symbol for Humanity as a whole rather than for a single person. Though one could argue that the Emperor is so closely aligned with Mankind that it's the same, anyways, and he'd have a skull-face regardless of whether it would be real or a mask.

As for the statues, I guess this - like the whole idea of a death mask - depends on the source one is looking at. I know the stylized images in the Uplifting Primer depict Him as a (rather handsome) normal guy with long dark hair.

Lynata wrote:Hmmh, I always thought the skulls would be a symbol for Humanity as a whole rather than for a single person. Though one could argue that the Emperor is so closely aligned with Mankind that it's the same, anyways, and he'd have a skull-face regardless of whether it would be real or a mask.

As for the statues, I guess this - like the whole idea of a death mask - depends on the source one is looking at. I know the stylized images in the Uplifting Primer depict Him as a (rather handsome) normal guy with long dark hair.

Yeah, he was a handsome guy with kind of an Italian physiognomy. Maybe the skull-face image of him is only used like christians use the picture of a crucified Jesus sometimes in the place of him being alright and well.

And yeah, the skulls can mean any number of things, like how people many die so the Imperium can survive, that there is no peace, that their armed forces bring death to the Imperium's enemies and so on. But I for one always saw it as a symbol of the Emperor's sacrifice so that humanity could live on.