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Quick question, why does the golden throne need psykers, and how exactly does it use them? any BL author touch on the subject?

Ten thousand psykers a day have their souls devoured by the Emperor and their bodies waste into nothingness. This is all to keep the Emperor alive so that he can guide the Astronomicon.

Thanks, noob question I know...

they are basically creating a chaos god, (for good or ill, no one knows) the star child theory imo is not grimdark enough but could work.

Yeah

The Emperor eats people. Lots of them. For people who enjoy a dark setting, w40k is top notch.

They be the Emperor's fuel.

Every time you jump to warp, a psyker cries . . . and then withers horrifically into nothing. LOL.

The golden throne has a giant blender in the back of it. No one see's it and the sound it make is drowned out by the loud speakers...

The Emperor doesn't consume them. It's the Astronomicon itself that requires the fuel to run. The Big E merely guides the "light".

Bare in mind that the Astronomicon was in operation during the Great Crusade and that it too required the sacrifice of Psykers in order to run during that time.

Mellow wrote:
The Emperor doesn't consume them. It's the Astronomicon itself that requires the fuel to run. The Big E merely guides the "light".

Bare in mind that the Astronomicon was in operation during the Great Crusade and that it too required the sacrifice of Psykers in order to run during that time.

That was the case when the Emperor was... active. Now he needs sacrifices for him to keep him going on.

The Astronomicon is one thing. The Golden Throne is another. It is the Golden Throne what is keeping the Emperor "alive", or at least somehow able to keep the Astronomicon on. And the Golden Throne requires psykers too.

Actually, the Astronomicon consumes the lives of the highly trained psykers that operate it. It is not a sacrifice. Not the case for the psykers which sacrifices are used to create sigils against the Warp, or the Aegis for the GK. Or to fuel the Golden Throne.

Page 170 Rulebook. Entry 989.M36. The word "sacrifice" is used. It is also getting worse and worse, with more and more sacrifices needed every year.

So The Astronomicon requires 1000 Psykers a day to operate and The Emperor also requires Psykers to stay alive? ... or does The Emperor "drink" their essence whilst they are plugged into The Astronomicon?

The way I have heard it described is that Psykers who are judged too weak to become even Astropaths are paraded in front of the Golden Throne and simply blasted into dust in its presence.

The Astral Choir that is plugged into the Astronomican is a completely different matter. It is inevitable that those will die in the course of their duties, but is not the "one thousand souls per day" sacrificed to the God-Emperor.

The Psykers who are fed to the Golden Throne are processed in some arcane manner that results in a goop that is then used in the construction of Psybolt Ammunition.

"It has been noted in some Imperial sources that the ammunition for the Inquisition's Psycannons and Psyk-out Grenades derive their anti-psychic effect from being impregnated with extremely rare negative psychic energy; the only known source of this energy being the byproducts of the Emperor's metabolism removed daily by the Golden Throne. "

So wait, psy-weapons are basically firing The Emperor's ?

Yep.

Wait so he eats 1000 or 10 000 a day?

That's 3.65 million psykers devoured a year that seems like an exorbitant waste of resources to me...just saying.

This is the Imperium, when they say that lives are the Emperor's currency, they literally mean it.

News flash: Budget cuts in the Empire have forced the emperor down to 10 pyskers a day, the Emperor refused to comment on this new system, but libarians in every chapter of the space marines have shown much rejoicing!

1000. One thousand.

Psykers are a 1-in-a-million event. That means that, on many planets, there are a dozen born every day. Not all of them are going to be good enough to be anything other than a conduit to the Warp. Best to put those kinds to use as fertilizer before they become Patient Zero of a full-blown daemonic incursion.

Here's a good bit from the original RT rulebook:

"The fate of the Adeptus Astronomica is a sad one, for their efforts soon reduce them to empty husks of bone and dry flesh. many die very day. They are not the only psykers who are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, for the Emperor cannot eat as men eat, or drink fluids or breathe air. His life has passed beyond a point where such things can sustain him.

For the Emperor, the only viable sustenance is human life-force (soul) and he has a great and insatiable appetite. Nor will just any human suffice for this purpose, for the soul-donor must be a very special person in their own right, someone with psychic powers. The Inquisition scours the Imperium in a tireless search for emergent psykers, individuals too vulnerable to be left alone. Some of these men and women will be recruited into the Adeptus Terra but many more will serve their Emperor in a much more gruesome way. Given up to the weird machinery that surrounds the master of mankind, their souls will be gradually leeched from their bodies to feed the Emperor's spirit. Hundreds must die this way every day if the Emperor, the Imperium and humanity are to survive."