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I don't think the traitors would be any more active with the arrival of a loyalist Primarch. I get the impression that they are tired/lazy/feel guilty/feel content. Take your pick. A couple have been unrelenting, but in many ways the others appear content enough with their position in the hierarchy and with Abaddon running the show in terms of real world forays.

Honestly, I just wish that they had never done the HH tabletop stuff. I think they should have just made a few of the Primarchs come into the oridinary 40k as Lords of War.
examples:

Leman Russ: Returns from the Eye of Terror along with the 13th Great Company after spending the last ten thousand years battling Magnus and the Thousand Sons all throughout the Eye of Terror. 13th Great Company has many Wulfen in order to resist Chaos, every time that they encounter Space Marines in the Eye, they press them into service amongst them (reinforcements - survival).

The Lion: Omegon assaults Alduruhk (DA) and teleports into the chamber where the Lion is held. The Watchers in the Dark allow him to interact with the Lion, the Lion is mysteriously healed. Omegon enters a drug into Luther's system that cleanses him of Chaos corruption.

Roboutte Guilliman: The Lion discovers his brother's condition, and in order to acquire an ally (so he can become High Lord along with Guilliman) he removes Guilliman from stasis in order to extract a sample of the poison in his body, then develops a cure for it and Guilliman returns to lead the Ultramarines and the Lion tries to convinces him of the IoM's need for him to lead.

Vulkan: All 9 artifacts are found, and then interred into the Salamanders' Fortress Monastery. A Vault opens inside of it, and then Vulkan walks out like the donkey-cave he is and takes control of his Chapter once more.

Khan: Discovered in a smashed Dark Eldar Citadel, tortured and broken. After several decades of R & R and visits from the other surviving Primarchs, he returns to command of his Chapter.

The Daemon Primarchs: Goaded into action by the presence of worthy foes in the Galaxy once more, they and their Legions leap to the forefront of Chaos once more and lead a Black Crusade accross the Galaxy. Except for Fulgrim. Fulgrim just starts annihilating planets seperately until he is finally stopped by like a Titan Legion or something. Because Fulgrim is a dick and can't play nice with his Daemon Prince brothers. He has to try to murder their children.

So, basically Warhammer 40,000: The End Times? I could get get behind that. Anything to actually progess the damn timeline.

Oh, and as long as we get news on the whereabouts and current status of my Chapter's Primarch, Corax.

It's a setting, not a story.

 Psienesis wrote:
It's a setting, not a story.

I don't care.

I enjoy the fluff/story more than I do the game itself (which I haven't played for 2 years now).

Right, but the setting is there for you to write your own stories. Or read what BL publishes (or not, depending on the author).

Yes, but that doesn't and shouldn't stop Black Library from advancing the timeline. Moving the timeline forward and creating new events doesn't stop players playing games and "creating stories" at various points in the past.

I want BL to publish more stories set in the future and raise the stakes, not just rehashing old stories about events of which we already know most of the details (Horus Heresy).

I want to know more about the current status of certain Primarchs such as Corax. I want Guilleman to be cured, or otherwise brought out of stasis. I want the Lion to wake up. I want Russ to return from the Eye of Terror, or at least find out about what hes been up to.

Hell, have the 13th Black Crusade actually be successful and conquer Cadia thanks to the participation of several Daemon/Traitor Primarchs, and Chaos starts rampaging across the Galaxy maybe even reaching Terra before being repulsed.

Just having the timeline permanently frozen at a fixed point in time means the fluff is getting stale with nothing new actually happening. All we're getting is more information on past events.

BL doesn't advance the timeline. BL gives you stories from a score different authors that present "what ifs", "maybe sos" and "it could happen like this" scenarios. BL novels are not consistent with one another, and are not intended to be read as a continuous whole. What one author writes in his BL novel in no way dictates that it must be that way to the next author. There is no canon in BL novels, apart from a self-contained canon to a given author's interpretation of the setting and the presentation thereof within works by that author.

Dan Abnett would have us believe that Servitors have personalities, can crack wise with an Inquisitor and his retinue, and can freak out when crazy things start happening in the manner of a mortal man.

Dan Abnett would also have us believe that the pinky finger of a White Consuls Space Marine is "the size and shape of an arbiter's truncheon". He would also have us believe it possible for Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn to send the Primarch of the White Consuls a letter of thanks in M40.

I love Dan Abnett's books, but none of the above meshes with what I know of the setting. Servitors are mindless. Space Marines aren't *that* big, and no current Chapter has a living Primarch leading them.

One author can write that Russ had red hair. The next can write that he had black. Who's right? Both of them. There's no canon to BL, nor to GW.

Just having the timeline permanently frozen at a fixed point in time means the fluff is getting stale with nothing new actually happening. All we're getting is more information on past events.

Which is 100% GW's intention. The stories you described wanting to read? Write them yourself. Forge that narrative.

 Psienesis wrote:

Just having the timeline permanently frozen at a fixed point in time means the fluff is getting stale with nothing new actually happening. All we're getting is more information on past events.

Which is 100% GW's intention. The stories you described wanting to read? Write them yourself. Forge that narrative.

Which is a little challenging, considering I havne't played in two years.

I mean, I get what you're saying, but GW is in no way, shape or form interested in providing what you desire. They've created a scenario where they have scores of different factions fighting over resources, ideologies and beliefs, all wrapped in a thick layer of dystopian science-fantasy fiction.

Moving the storyline forward would mean that one or more of these factions (read as: Product lines) would cease to be viable. Alternatively, they would seek to have their cake and eat it, too, which means doing something like bringing back the Loyalist Primarchs amounts to nothing of note whatsoever, and then they have to deal with fans who are butthurt that their favorite Primarch cannot, in fact, defeat a million Tyranids by himself (or tear Commoragh apart with his bare hands or whatever).

And so they don't. It's an era of myths and legends, lies and propaganda, where the stories we read are related to us by biased, unreliable narrators, perhaps filling in the blanks with supposition, guesses and outright fabrications.

I don't necessarily agree. I think the Fantasy End Times is a prelude to what we will soon be seeing in 40k when all books are finished updating. They need to be planning something, I think this is a likely goal.

Explain The End Times for Warhammer Fantasy then. What is the return of Nagash, if not an advancement in the Timeline? I just want something similar for 40K.

Have some of the loyalist Primarchs return.
Change the status quo in the Imperium, by having certain factions suffer a near crushing defeat (e.g. Ultramarines losing half of their number) and another faction ascending to the fore (Imperial Fists take over as the foremost Space Marine Chapter).
A Tyranid fleet overruns the homeworld of a Space Marine Chapter, the survivors of which vow to reclaim their world.
Maybe a Black Crusade has penetrated deep into Imperium Space and now threatens Terra itself.

I don't see how advancing the timeline will make entire product lines non-viable, short of wiping out a faction entirely and announcing "No future content for this army". (i.e. Squatting). Thats not at all what I'm suggesting.

They need to be planning something, I think this is a likely goal.

The Fantasy End Times have been being set up since the game was first launched. Nothing of significance has changed in 40K in twenty-some years. Some planets we'd never heard of before got blown up or eaten, other planets we'd never heard of before got colonized and turned into Forge Worlds, Shrine Worlds, Hive Worlds or whatever. It didn't matter, because it didn't really change the setting.

The basic "gist" of 40K hasn't really changed since 2nd and 3rd Ed, the latter of which can be said to be the first edition of what we would now recognize as 40K. Things in RT/2nd Ed were... extremely different. Sometimes unrecognizably so.

Shoot, in 2nd Ed, the Emperor was still walking around on Terra, lighting candles for his Space Marines who fell in combat. He was also basically Karl Franz in Space... kind of a nice guy, kind of an incompetent, out-of-touch leader, who was not, himself, so terrible, but the nobles/bureaucracy under him was nightmarish.

This obviously changed going into 3rd Ed, which was the last time we had any truly major alterations to the setting.

GW is setting up (correction: has set up, that is the whole point of 40K) the Fantasy End Times for *you* and your local gaming group to determine who wins and who dies. GW has no interest in telling you who wins and loses.

Maybe a Black Crusade has penetrated deep into Imperium Space and now threatens Terra itself.

I don't see how advancing the timeline will make entire product lines non-viable, short of wiping out a faction entirely and announcing "No future content for this army". (i.e. Squatting). Thats not at all what I'm suggesting.

In order for that to happen, Cadia must fall. Once Cadia falls, there are no more Cadian units (those still in the field exist until casualties dictate they do not). Once the Cadian Gate falls, Abaddon has free reign to enter Realspace at his leisure. When Cadia falls, so falls with it the Necron Pylons on it that are basically keeping the Eye of Terror where it is. Lose those, the Eye gets bigger. This is how the EoT world-wide campaign ended, but GW was not willing to go through with that, and thus 6th Ed reset the clock and rolled back to the beginning of the 13th Black Crusade, rather than its end.

The UM aren't the largest Chapter. The UM's only claim to fame is the most-stable of modern geneseed, which allows them to have a lot of Successor Chapters. There's still only 1000 Ultramarines in the Ultramarine Chapter. Switching the "default" Space Marine Chapter from UM to IF doesn't really change anything except change the color of their armor from blue to yellow.

As I mentioned earlier, for some factions, they have to exist exactly as they are, as GW has set them up, or otherwise they'll be wiped out. The Tyranids, if they arent existing in the billions and eating planets, become a non-factor. They're just a particularly mindless swarm of aliens that, if a Primarch (say) were to have a decisive victory against them, they lose any sense of threat they now possess. It would be "well, they were nasty, but now that Roboute 'Bug-Squisher' Guilleman is out there with his Ultramarines, they're kicking their butts from one side of the galaxy to another". The converse of this is that Roboute and the UM go up against them, fail to do anything of note, and there is now no real point in bringing the Primarchs back, because they're no more effective than the Space Marines were.

Or then you have the Tau. Either they exist exactly as they are, remaining "under the radar", or they suddenly explode, taking the lower quarter of the galaxy into their empire and getting to sit at the Big Kids' Table on the galactic stage, or they don't, and they draw the attention of, say, Russ, who gathers his Space Wolves and a bunch of other Chapters, a few billion Guardsmen, and goes in and Ends them. Next book released is: Codex: Tau Enclaves, all of which are the tiny cells of surviving Tau scattered across the galaxy. Or Russ and Co. get there and get into some long, interminable fight with the Tau, and nothing changes, so why did you bring Russ back in the first damn place if he can't do any better against the Tau than the Imperium did without him?

And this is the main problem with bringing the Primarchs back. They are, by some depictions, "game changer" characters, the sorts of people that, when they arrive on a battlefield, have determined who will win by their very presence. This is not good for the setting. On the other hand, it may prove that the Primarchs always have some narrative conceit that keeps them from doing anything against the other factions or, alternatively, they get bogged down in some trench war or whatever... which then begs the question, "What good are these guys if they can't actually do anything?" Anything in the middle is just maintaining the status quo as well, which is again, "what good are these guys?".

 Psienesis wrote:
I mean, I get what you're saying, but GW is in no way, shape or form interested in providing what you desire. They've created a scenario where they have scores of different factions fighting over resources, ideologies and beliefs, all wrapped in a thick layer of dystopian science-fantasy fiction.

Moving the storyline forward would mean that one or more of these factions (read as: Product lines) would cease to be viable. Alternatively, they would seek to have their cake and eat it, too, which means doing something like bringing back the Loyalist Primarchs amounts to nothing of note whatsoever, and then they have to deal with fans who are butthurt that their favorite Primarch cannot, in fact, defeat a million Tyranids by himself (or tear Commoragh apart with his bare hands or whatever).

And so they don't. It's an era of myths and legends, lies and propaganda, where the stories we read are related to us by biased, unreliable narrators, perhaps filling in the blanks with supposition, guesses and outright fabrications.

Though I suppose if they believed they could make more money by devouring an unprofitable product line and introducing another, they'll certainly do so.

They could move storylines forward if they really wanted to, similar to the way the Battletech universe did once they introduced the Clans. People could continue to play in the era they chose and ignore the new stuff if they wanted (3025-era for life!!!!), but that certainly isn't the mode GW ever takes, where it's newest edition or nothing!

Anyway, it really boils down to preference: some people like the open-ended, sandbox-style universe that doesn't "move forward" in a traditional sense (you can advance your own personal stories however you wish) while others want a more story/narrative driven setting or are more interested in the fluff. .

Well I read Black Library books more often than I play the actual game, so I fall under the latter.

I, too, read more BL than I play these days (well, actually, I play more 40K RPGs than either of the two combined, but the end result is the same).

I can adapt my RPG campaigns to suit whatever elements of the 40K setting I like, discard that which I do not, and use elements taken from other sources to create new, "homebrew" content that exists only in my vision of the setting.

For example, in my games, the 13th Black Crusade is currently underway, Cadia has fallen but Abaddon has not yet consolidated his hold, and the Imperium is focusing most of its attention on the Eye, to retake Cadia, and the regions immediately around it. Meanwhile, lesser Xenos and Cults are springing up in other parts of the galaxy, and it is up to the agents of the Inquisition (read as: the Player Characters) to deal with those threats before they become another front in the Crusade.

In my setting, the Emperor is... different than as presented in the table-top game. Forget that whole "reborn from the souls of thousands of shamans" schtick. No, he's just one guy who's been alive for a really, really long time... not from Anatolia, either, that's a rumor he fostered, he's actually East Asian... and developed himself into the Most Powerful Psyker Ever purely through his own efforts (and luck).

It is also, through means and rites blasphemous and sorcerous, to actually visit his Warp Presence. This is highly, highly ill-advised, as most mortal humans do not have the ability to not be devoured by his psychic presence if you drop in unannounced. He can shield you from having your mind and soul consumed by His psychic presence, if you ring ahead and let Him know you're coming, but no one has His number, so this isn't actually possible. You don't call the Emperor, He calls you.

He's also, if you *do* happen to meet Him, really kind of a jerk. Almost no one ever meets Him, though, at least, not knowingly. The Emperor works in mysterious ways... mostly through projected Avatars that resemble what he looked like at some point in His history (though not always), not that anyone in M42 would know that.

There's also a lot more Chaos Gods and actual Gods of Law present in my setting. The latter, the Elder Gods, are "distant and uncaring", and are virtually unknown to Humanity, or any of the "Young Races". The Necrons and the Eldar remember the Fifty Names, however, though they do not venerate them.

It is theorized by some heretics that the Emperor is actually a Champion of these Gods of Order. Others theorize that the Emperor *is* one of these Gods of Order.

I disagree Psi. The Fantasy and 40k fluff was no more or less flexible than the other. A 40k end times is no harder to do and given the success of the fantasy version, on a much less popular system, they would be fools to not do something similar in 40k.

It is because 40K is their more-popular setting that prevents them from doing it.

The status quo has worked so well for them, to date, why would they risk alienating a large portion of their customer base by changing it?

I don't think is is working that well now. It would be a license to print money and the period of time that is current has almost no impact on the stories that can be told on the battle field. They could nudge it forward with some stories while still keeping their all openendedness intact.

Since GW doesn't do market research, and does not listen to feedback from customers, convincing them that their current model doesn't work is a Herculean task.

I think the end time event will do enough to convince them.

 Psienesis wrote:

They need to be planning something, I think this is a likely goal.

The Fantasy End Times have been being set up since the game was first launched. Nothing of significance has changed in 40K in twenty-some years. Some planets we'd never heard of before got blown up or eaten, other planets we'd never heard of before got colonized and turned into Forge Worlds, Shrine Worlds, Hive Worlds or whatever. It didn't matter, because it didn't really change the setting.

The basic "gist" of 40K hasn't really changed since 2nd and 3rd Ed, the latter of which can be said to be the first edition of what we would now recognize as 40K. Things in RT/2nd Ed were... extremely different. Sometimes unrecognizably so.

Shoot, in 2nd Ed, the Emperor was still walking around on Terra, lighting candles for his Space Marines who fell in combat. He was also basically Karl Franz in Space... kind of a nice guy, kind of an incompetent, out-of-touch leader, who was not, himself, so terrible, but the nobles/bureaucracy under him was nightmarish.

This obviously changed going into 3rd Ed, which was the last time we had any truly major alterations to the setting.

GW is setting up (correction: has set up, that is the whole point of 40K) the Fantasy End Times for *you* and your local gaming group to determine who wins and who dies. GW has no interest in telling you who wins and loses.

Maybe a Black Crusade has penetrated deep into Imperium Space and now threatens Terra itself.

I don't see how advancing the timeline will make entire product lines non-viable, short of wiping out a faction entirely and announcing "No future content for this army". (i.e. Squatting). Thats not at all what I'm suggesting.

In order for that to happen, Cadia must fall. Once Cadia falls, there are no more Cadian units (those still in the field exist until casualties dictate they do not). Once the Cadian Gate falls, Abaddon has free reign to enter Realspace at his leisure. When Cadia falls, so falls with it the Necron Pylons on it that are basically keeping the Eye of Terror where it is. Lose those, the Eye gets bigger. This is how the EoT world-wide campaign ended, but GW was not willing to go through with that, and thus 6th Ed reset the clock and rolled back to the beginning of the 13th Black Crusade, rather than its end.

The UM aren't the largest Chapter. The UM's only claim to fame is the most-stable of modern geneseed, which allows them to have a lot of Successor Chapters. There's still only 1000 Ultramarines in the Ultramarine Chapter. Switching the "default" Space Marine Chapter from UM to IF doesn't really change anything except change the color of their armor from blue to yellow.

As I mentioned earlier, for some factions, they have to exist exactly as they are, as GW has set them up, or otherwise they'll be wiped out. The Tyranids, if they arent existing in the billions and eating planets, become a non-factor. They're just a particularly mindless swarm of aliens that, if a Primarch (say) were to have a decisive victory against them, they lose any sense of threat they now possess. It would be "well, they were nasty, but now that Roboute 'Bug-Squisher' Guilleman is out there with his Ultramarines, they're kicking their butts from one side of the galaxy to another". The converse of this is that Roboute and the UM go up against them, fail to do anything of note, and there is now no real point in bringing the Primarchs back, because they're no more effective than the Space Marines were.

Or then you have the Tau. Either they exist exactly as they are, remaining "under the radar", or they suddenly explode, taking the lower quarter of the galaxy into their empire and getting to sit at the Big Kids' Table on the galactic stage, or they don't, and they draw the attention of, say, Russ, who gathers his Space Wolves and a bunch of other Chapters, a few billion Guardsmen, and goes in and Ends them. Next book released is: Codex: Tau Enclaves, all of which are the tiny cells of surviving Tau scattered across the galaxy. Or Russ and Co. get there and get into some long, interminable fight with the Tau, and nothing changes, so why did you bring Russ back in the first damn place if he can't do any better against the Tau than the Imperium did without him?

And this is the main problem with bringing the Primarchs back. They are, by some depictions, "game changer" characters, the sorts of people that, when they arrive on a battlefield, have determined who will win by their very presence. This is not good for the setting. On the other hand, it may prove that the Primarchs always have some narrative conceit that keeps them from doing anything against the other factions or, alternatively, they get bogged down in some trench war or whatever... which then begs the question, "What good are these guys if they can't actually do anything?" Anything in the middle is just maintaining the status quo as well, which is again, "what good are these guys?".

My main issue with this post is the fact that it has little to no logical backing as far as the lore changes discussed in this forum go. If GW were to advance the storyline, here is one way that they could do it:

Emperor forsees the End of the IoM coming and revives his Primarchs so that they could save the Imperium from them. Primarchs return as described in my earlier post. Primarchs' influence was the only reason that Imperial forces didn't attack Eldar and Necrons when contacted by them.

13th Black Crusade comes about, turns out to be the worst in history, conquers Cadia, eye of Terror begins slowly expanding. The expansion only stopped due to Imperial forces (Primarch-led) allying with the Necrons and the Eldar (who saw the threat of the Eye expanding and stepped in). Necrons begin building Pylons to close off the Warp, Eldar and Imperium turn on the before they can finish, though enough Pylons were built to stop the Eye's expansion. Eldar and Imperium part ways peacefully.

Tau Ethereals communicate with non-chaos renegade Space Marines, and they are converted to the Greater Good. Tau and new Astartes allies conquer a few human Systems and after holding them for some years, acquire from Astropaths and Navigators from amongst the human populations. Tau Empire explodes outwards with use of Navigators, and the Tau conquer the entire Galactic Southeast. Tau gain Guard allies (Tau guard?), Space Marine allies (potential for other chapters to follow example of Crimson Fists, or perhaps the Fists gain enough Gene-seed stocks that they found successor chapters), and Eldar allies (from Exodite worlds converted or coerced into the Greater Good). Imperium unable to reconquer worlds due to resurgence of Chaos and increasing Tyranid threat (plus the Tyranids act as a sort of shield against many Hive Fleets). Tau stop expanding so that they can get their Empire in order and combat the invading Hive Fleets. Tau human allies able to use Tau plasma weapons.

13th Great Company (under leman russ) discovers that the people of a Death World near the Eye are able to withstand the Canis Helix just as well as the people of Fenris are. Space Wolves begin to establish successor chapters on Death Worlds around the Eye.

Necrons pretty much remain the same.

Eldar pretty much remain the same, except able to take Tau as allies.

Orks pretty much remains the same

Cadian IG survivors slowly die off, and Cadian survivors are integrated into other IG forces, and eventually become a Special Forces unit in the Imperial Guard.

It would be interesting if Abadon's 14th Black crusade gets crushed by Leman Russ the 13th space wolf clan, Legion of the damned, forgotten space marine chapters etcetera.
Only for Leman to disappear again into the eye of terror.

And Vulkan Lives!

Lot of faction-fanning in that layout. Personally, sounds like crap to me, not only because Navigators are not found in regular human society (they aren't born like Psykers), but having one or two doesn't permit the Tau to expand their Empire any faster.

Emperor forsees the End of the IoM coming and revives his Primarchs so that they could save the Imperium from them. Primarchs return as described in my earlier post. Primarchs' influence was the only reason that Imperial forces didn't attack Eldar and Necrons when contacted by them.

This would require GW to actually take a side on the question of whether the Emperor is dead or not. So far, GW has left this question unanswered. Acts of Faith are actually just better kung-fu, there's nothing space-magic about them. Other examples of the Emperor's power are circumstantial (such as the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath)

Primarchs' influence was the only reason that Imperial forces didn't attack Eldar and Necrons when contacted by them.

Which of the surviving Primarchs is going to be the one to open a dialog with a faction of undead robots who seek either the subjugation or the eradication of all life in the galaxy?

Why would the Necrons even bother to open a dialog with the Imperium? They're not worried about Abaddon. Daemons, yes, are of some concern, but the mortal forces of Chaos are of no worry to the Dynasties. The Necrons have the numbers to hold their Tomb Worlds, and expand further, in the galactic NW during a BC, meanwhile also staving off the naval assets of the Chaos Fleet in space. You do *not* want to get into a space battle with the Necrons, because you will lose, and lose very, very, *very* badly.

The Imperium has far more to gain from the involvement of the Necrons than the Necrons have to gain from siding with the Imperium, and the Necrons will demand prices the Imperium will not pay for their aid... and when those prices are not met, the Imperium will lose entire worlds.

Unless the Necrons are somehow going to magic-up some Pylons, the span of time required for constructing them doesn't mesh well with the "Happening Right Now" speed at which the Black Crusades are performed. Inside of two years during the 13th BC, Abaddon's forces ransacked the entire western half of the Imperium, took Cadia, and caused at least one world (St. Josmane's Hope) to be subject to Exterminatus.

Space Wolves are fine as they are. They neither need nor deserve a Successor Chapter. They do just fine as an over-large Chapter of Space Vikings.

Well hold on, isn't it pretty well understood that the Emperor is "alive" inso far as he is able to run the Astronomicon? That doesn't require consciousness though, so maybe that is what you mean?

I thought he's in a more or less vegetative state. His withered corpse sits the Golden Throne, but his mind and spirit are holding Chaos at bay and preventing it from bursting through the webway into the Palace of Terra, and helping to power the Astronomicon?

I thought he's in a more or less vegetative state. His withered corpse sits the Golden Throne,

Yes.

ut his mind and spirit are holding Chaos at bay and preventing it from bursting through the webway into the Palace of Terra, and helping to power the Astronomicon?

Maybe.

The Astronomican pre-dates his internment on the Golden Throne. It existed during the GC, after all, and he was flying around doing this, that and the other thing.

The keeping the web-way gate closed is also a guess, since no one in the galaxy actually knows what was going on with that, save perhaps the Custodes. This may also be a line fed to the populace by the High Lords, when they ask what the Emperor is doing in there.

 Psienesis wrote:

I thought he's in a more or less vegetative state. His withered corpse sits the Golden Throne,

Yes.

ut his mind and spirit are holding Chaos at bay and preventing it from bursting through the webway into the Palace of Terra, and helping to power the Astronomicon?

Maybe.

The Astronomican pre-dates his internment on the Golden Throne. It existed during the GC, after all, and he was flying around doing this, that and the other thing.

The keeping the web-way gate closed is also a guess, since no one in the galaxy actually knows what was going on with that, save perhaps the Custodes. This may also be a line fed to the populace by the High Lords, when they ask what the Emperor is doing in there.

Yes but during the Great Crusade he had Malcador the Sigillite to aid him, and planned for Magnus the Red to eventually take over and sit on the Golden Throne. And the warp was likely considerably calmer prior to the Horus Heresy and the 10,000 years of incessant warfare ever since.

Yes, but Malcador was also running around, doing things, not just warming a chair. The Astronomican may not require active control, this may simply be something that the people of the Imperium believe, as absolutely none of them actually know how it works.

It is, after all, just a light, to be used by Navigtors as a point of reference. The Navigator knows their current position, and can see the Astronomican, and can then triangulate from those two points a heading to reach a desired destination. It's not a particularly complex procedure.

And the warp was likely considerably calmer prior to the Horus Heresy and the 10,000 years of incessant warfare ever since

Most certainly. It was, after all, the stabilization of the Warp, immediately following the birth of Slaanesh, that allowed the Great Crusade to begin, as the Warp Storms subsided. This is not to say that the Warp was "calm", just "calmer". But, to a lighthouse, the state of the sea doesn't really matter, it's still going to shine its light.

Again though, there is no question that the Emperor is "alive."

It is just a question of what he is doing or capable of doing.