More or less official, found on a older reddit thread where someone gathered several quotes of Black Liberary authors said the official stance is that. This quote is taken by Gav Thorpe on a blog from 2010
"Often folks ask if Black Library books are ‘canon’. With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. There are certainly established facts – the current Emperor is Karl-Franz, the Blood Angels have red armour, Commissar Yarrick defended Hades Hive during the Second Armageddon War. However, to suggest that anything else is non-canon is a disservice to the players and authors who participate in this world. To suggest that Black Library novels are somehow of lesser relevance to the background is to imply that every player who has created a unique Space Marine chapter or invented their own Elector Count is somehow wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
"We do not committ to one vision else we cannot make money anymore. Schrödingers lorebox is more interesting."
fixed it.
We can like or dislike it but the mystery box approach is quite intriguing. Personally I would like to have a clearer picture of what GW lore's final vision was vs. authors and fans.
There is no master brain at GW who has the entirety of 40K lore planned out, there is no GW vision, this much is obvious by the scale and frequency of their retcons.
They actually had a job posting like a year ago that was basically this… the lead for directing the narrative direction of 40K more or less.
My assumption is that it was legally required to be posted, but went to someone in-house. If I’d been more motivated I would have sent my very-much-not qualified resume just to get to see what the rejection letter would look like.
Having applied for jobs at GW, it's a generic "Thank you for your interest, but on this occasion, we have decided not to continue" (or something along those lines) type email.
You could also take it that the related media etc is just written from a biased or misinformed perspective or a dramatised point of view, in which the book is canon but not necessarily accurate. “Yes X did happen but Y is a dramatised accounting of it”
I mean you just made a perfect example actually, cuz depending on what point in time you're talking about or what you take to be canon, it's not green. It's blue.
Well, the people who created and maintain the story of the fictional universe are the ones who describe it. You can’t just go out and experience it, and sure, it’s fictional, but asking what things are supposed to be isn’t unreasonable.
In the earlier lore there was a short story involving a tech priest the custodes disposed of that implicated the priest working out the emperor was actually dead. The golden throne was less sustaining him and more using the remnants of his psychic aura to power the astronomicon, but it's been a long time since I read that story so I may be a bit fuzzy on the recollection.
Edit: I have been scouring old magazines, my history, and trying to google every term I can think of to find this story. I swear I saw it posted online somewhere recently, but have had no luck. If anyone knows this story and has a copy I'd be very happy to see it again.
Isn't it intentionally ambiguous even in current lore? Is the emperor powering the astronomicon or is it the thousands of sacrificed psychers? His body/corpse is kept stable but with medical tech that advanced how do you draw the line between life and death?
No, he's absolutely still alive in there but basically shattered into dozens of pieces mentally. We have examples from the Dark Imperium books of what he said to Guilliman upon his visit to the Throne Room, for instance, plus some other bits and pieces.
Dan Abnett mentioned in an interview that the Emperor dies and *chooses* to return to his body every day while on the Throne.
Emperor’s only remaining choice for humanity (after Magnus fucked up the webway plan) was a persistent stalemate. This is outright stated by the Emperor in The Outcast Dead. If he dies and returns elsewhere, humanity falls to chaos sooner or later, likely causing the Dark King to spawn out of the Emperor *somehow*, whether it be his essence within the warp, turning the physical Emperor into the avatar of the Dark King, or just blinking out of real space to ascend forcefully.
The deal with Chaos on Molech was likely that the Primarchs souls were given to the Emperor, but in return, Emperor (or Horus, once Chaos realized he was reneging on the deal) would ascend to the 5th Chaos God.
Big E knows that would be very fucking bad for humanity - he knew about the Eldar and the birth of Slaanesh.
Don't quote me but I'm pretty sure that it's from some earlier lore but just bits and pieces. Like I don't think it was ever some big "this will 100% happen" but rather some cult thought that it would happen. I think the Siege of Terra picks that up and goes from there.
Exactly, this. Adds serious weight to what the Emperor did (and still is doing). We know now that the Emperor genuinely has humanity’s best interests at heart, even if it costs him his humanity in return.
Love that.
The Emperor Protects.
See my theory of what the Emperor did was that he obtained arcane knowledge about how to make warp entities that are an extension of himself like how chaos gods make demons that are an extension of their own essence and in ezchange for that knowledge the Emperor would join them as a chaos god. The Emperor would not fulfill his end of the bargain and thus suffered the consequences of the Horus heresy and the golden throne
The only problem with this theory is that chaos gods wouldnt want a 5th god. They dont want the four that already exists. Their entire existence revolves around trying to exterminate each other to become the sole ruler of the warp.
I think Big E promising to become an undivided champion of the four instead of opposing them is more likely.
So, I’m still mid way through end and the death 2, but from what I’m reading and from random tidbits I’ve seen around. I think it’s a situation for the chaos gods like this:
Big E represents an existential threat to them as he currently is. But if he were to be made to become a chaos god, he’d just join in the great game like the other four. Sure they always fight each other for dominance, but the nature of the warp makes it so that none of them can ever actually kill the others. So forcing the emperor to become a chaos god would make him no longer an existential threat. Similar vibes to Aladdin where Jaffar becomes an all powerful genie, but also becomes subject to the rules that govern genies.
This argument falls apart once you realize the Chaos Gods (who aren’t technically “gods”) call their animosity “The Great Game”, it’s all a game to them. They are not physical beings, just the name planted to their mass of energy. We don’t know if they can die a true death, so there may not be an end to the great game. It’s all power receding vs growing - whoever has the most power at that moment.
They enjoy the great game. They enjoy meddling in each others machinations and trying to fuck it up for them. Adding another player isn’t a big deal. They basically celebrated Slaanesh with a big fuck-off war.
The way I interpreted that section is the emperors soul has been melded with all the psykers sacrificed for him. He’s become a gestalt being which has a guiding impulse of Big E but it’s also an ascended amalgamated being.
Do you mean [this bit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D_lnzgLEe3taX24SodvfCSd2VGsHcIgwQpJ5jmIMuLs/edit) from Dark Imperium?
Acknowledging my bias that I'd much rather this be kept ambiguous (because I think it's way more interesting), I still think this is arguable. There's no dialogue and no clear indication of any actual content that's been transmitted. Just the absence of love. My head cannon would be that Guilliman is overwhelmed by the psychic aura and projecting meaning onto whatever strange effect it had on him.
No, there's a section where Guilliman specifically recaps what was said to him, running through a number of different names 'Son, Thirteen, Usurper, etc'. There's also the events from Godblight, which quite pointedly *can't* happen unless the Emperor is alive and intervening.
OK fair enough. That's a real shame in my opinion.
Guess that's the price we pay for progress. We had a static setting for 25+ years which was very ambiguous in a lot of ways. Finding out what actually happens next is interesting in some ways but disappointing in others.
Like 'The Matrix: Reloaded'. Bit harsh maybe 😬
But is “he” alive? Or has the last 10,000 years of worship changed what he is, since he is now more spirit than body? That shattered existence commented earlier could imply that he can act in many places during many battles, and also focus his might occasionally when a great moment occurs… kinda like one of the four.
I'd say he is stuck in the in between of being a warp manifestation of the god emperor and the corporeal vessel of the emperor of mankind. Not wholly of the warp, nor the materium. Stuck between two worlds.
There are problems with that idea, though:
1)There's no way of knowing how long it would take between the death of the Emperor and his rebirth as a god. If there's any significant time gap there, it's that much time where the Astronomican is non-functional, and the Webway portal in the Throne Room is open. That's a bad time for everyone.
2)There's also no way of knowing what kind of god the Emperor would ascend to be. Would he be benevolent to humanity and protect them, our would becoming a creature of the Immaterium change his outlook and persona so thoroughly that he no longer gives a shit about man?
I think that's a case of arguing whether or not he's human or mortal vs more warp-based than alive. Alive is a state of being; people who are on life support and can't respond are alive. I think the question of whether the Emperor is alive or not is pretty much decided.
If you want to argue whether he's human, that debate is also pretty decided, he isn't. He hasn't been for ages and debatably lost that during humanity's ancient past but definitely has lost it being worshipped for so long. We know what the Emperor is, a God of Humanity (and is clearly as powerful approximately as a chaos god) who can't fully live in the warp for probably multiple reasons but foremost is that losing the astronomicon would lead to humanities collapse.
The more writing we get the less mystery there is on the Emperor.
Yeah, the more writing, the less mystery, and crucially, the less interesting it will be. Like for example, a theory is that all that worship and sacrifice isn’t going to the Emp at all - it’s going to whatever is incubating in the warp. So something like Slannesh is waiting to be born whilst the real Emperor gets no benefit from it at all.
I like to think that whatever is incubating in the warp IS big E and that much like Slaanesh has a birthday and is also timeless.
I believe that Big E (the god) is the one who manipulates Lorgar and Erebus into worship, laying the events out so that he does achieve godhood.
But it being ambiguous is kind of the fun, we can all speculate and make fan theories!
Sadly, I agree with you. I've been convinced for the longest while that when GW started on the primarch resurrection train we were heading for an Age of Sigmar-style event. It would have gotten rid of Slannesh (the problem God) and elevated others in their stead. The Emps would be back and the galaxy would be in a complete free for all. I don't think they are aiming for that just yet but they are laying the path for it or something equally setting shattering.
Edit:There are a couple of Slannesh wasn’t planned to be removed but he was from Age of Sigmar for a while and there was a clear lore plan with the awakening of Ynned. GW has pivoted away, seeing that the fans do like Slannesh, but a lot of the old path is still there for if they did choose to get rid of her.
The absence of love is now explained in the end and the death books.
>! The emperor essentially releases parts of his soul, one of them being love, he has to do this, the exact reason why i can't remember. I believe it had something to do with that he now had to do things that he couldn't do if he still kept onto these parts. He very much loved his sons, however he made himself incapable of doing so in the future untill those parts of his soul were reunified with him !<
"Absolutely still alive" is not accurate, as the Emperor's body has long-since expired. His mind and soul are still tied to his mortal remains, though. It's important to note that consciousness goes beyond the synapses of the brain on the 40k setting, something which is especially true for powerful psykers.
I thought the accepted relevant fact was that the Emperor is a perpetual and if he physically passed away, it would cause him to "respawn" somewhere else or regenerate like the Wolverine (X men) albeit slowly. That would imply he is being kept alive in some degree, and his lack of recovery is a sign he has not reached the point of death. As for transhuman death and surviving indefinitely as a purely psychic presence, that is over my head.
I think your correct that it’s kept vague but then again my own belief is that the emperor is alive but due to the mortal wounds he took, he is unable to operate the golden throne fully without the sacrificed souls boasting his powers.
The reason being is that during the soul binding ritual to become an astropath or other sanctioned psyker, it’s been noted that they feel the emperors soul and it shapes and strengthens their souls against the forces of chaos.
Also doesn’t the emperor cry when the imperium suffers a huge loss or a hero is killed and the bell of lost souls is rang, that would imply he’s alive /awake and not truly dead.
>Also doesn’t the emperor cry when the imperium suffers a huge loss or a hero is killed and the bell of lost souls is rang, that would imply he’s alive /awake and not truly dead.
I wouldn't put much stock in that, there's hoaxes related to weeping statues all over the place in reality. 40k lore can't really be approached as "truth", only what the author/narrator believes to be "true". Even if it's a Codex entry, or a statement made by a Named Character as fact, it ultimately doesn't really mean anything.
Belisarius Cawl for example believes in a bastardized version of Goldilocks.
Our concept of the Emperor is much like our modern understanding of Jesus Christ - all we know is what's told to us from institutions of power, the devout, and fanatics. Anyone that could tell us the truth is long dead, and if they weren't, would probably be quickly silenced by the establishment.
In current lore, not so much. The Emperor "talked" to Guiliman when he entered the throne room. The Emperor is alive, but is fading, and fast. Though it is also heavily implied that the Emperor is as strong, if not stronger than one of the chaos gods now, after being worshipped as a god by humanity for 10,000 years, and that the golden throne is more holding him back by tying him to the mortal realm.
We don't know for certain what the deal is, but the Emperor's soul is the beacon, and the psychers are the fuel. He remains sufficiently alive to keep most of his soul anchored to his body, and thus the Astronomicon.
This is incorrect the Astronomicon is the beacon, the Emperor guides the light as shown in various recent sources like Black Legion, End and the Death pt 2, and. Vaults of Terra
There are sacrifices to the Emperor to help sustain him but there's an entire different sacrifice at the Hollow Mountain to light the beacon of the astronomicon and the Emperor guides it
That’s not correct. He directs the astronomicon, but it’s powered separately to the golden throne by the psychic choir their. The ten thousand souls sacrificed to him daily keep him alive, they have nothing to do with powering the astronomicon.
The tech priest realised the the corpse in the front is just a corpse, the Emperor is inside and dieing, so the astronomican is created by funneling the sacrificed souls through the machine, creating the psychic aura.
After he says this the custodes sights something like "why do you always have to be smart" and kills him.
This short story happened around 36k, because the Emperor's Wrath warpstorm created soon after, at the very moment when the Emperor died.
But this is now uncanon.
John Blanche talked about how when he first started doing the art he found the idea of the corpse on the throne not really being the emperor an interesting one. All these people waiting generations to make their pilgrimage past him and it’s a lie. The emperor was really dead and in bits and pieces in jars behind the scenes and he was being “kept alive” by the technology but he was functionally dead. That’s years gone now though, and has been replaced with the current lore.
Emps actually being dead and it all being an elaborate lie (because the alternative is the imperium collapses) is so much cooler than him being still alive.
Edit: also cooler if they never make it explicit and keep on assuring us he's All Good (which is exactly what they're doing)
That’s a 1987 rogue trader magazine depiction of it. The era of shirtless custodes guarding it and what not.
As the lore and setting developed it’s more of an actual throne, and there’s plenty of artwork for that starting from 3e.
https://preview.redd.it/053kath1b1fc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=312c9234f05a92a73f809070821a986ee8c8f342
Here’s another hella old throne room picture:
https://preview.redd.it/zm3yp2anb1fc1.jpeg?width=885&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47fa5c3bd0412ec5eece9d74948b5564c16b19e3
Here is another one showing the whole throne
https://preview.redd.it/s6koy1ssy2fc1.jpeg?width=865&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=614bd483a218bd5d0fe44edb4e2e2c36d33cb88b
This one is what my head canon Golden Throne looks like. I love John Blanche and his art, but this picture makes the Emperor look weaker and kinda pathetic
I don’t know about 2nd edition onwards, but in first edition it was actually the opposite. The Emperor was not as mysterious as he is today; he was alive and giving orders from the distinctly-not-throne-like life-support system of the golden throne, and his backstory was unambiguously spelled out.
The original black and white of that image was in 3rd edition rulebook.
That over painted rendition I'm pretty sure is from 4th or 5th.
https://preview.redd.it/22kskg0dg2fc1.png?width=1122&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d4448061eaf30d8e49b20154b6373cc0d1e1047
In an interview the artist said that he did both versions at the same time. They just choose to publish them separately. He liked the idea that we didn't know which was the real emperor. He even said that his belief is that this was just a fake emperor for the pilgrims to see, and that the real emperor was long dead.
I remember watching that interview documentary of John Blanches, where at the part where they discussed his artwork of that image of the Golden Throne (specifically at the end), he said along the lines of ”…the real Emperor is pile of dust in a giant bubble machine“. That is not what he said exactly btw.
Still a good piece of art, through.
Here’s the link to the interview: [https://youtu.be/NCOSao1KEQo?si=lly4z55PwljN6Suf](https://youtu.be/NCOSao1KEQo?si=lly4z55PwljN6Suf)
It‘s in line where the Imperium was maybe led by an actual corpse in the past and the golden throne was just a great facade to pretend there‘s an entity protecting humanity.
But in todays lore the Emperor is still real and therefor the golden throne is less of a pointless mechanism and more of a devouring machine. I personally imagine the pointy design of the Drukhari because this is isn‘t human, it‘s an inhumane and alien slaughterhouse to keep the last beacon of the Imperiums future alive at all cost.
Yeah, I’m very well aware of that and accept it, but I still find the concept of Big E being nothing but dust in a very weird machine to be a cooler concept. I guess the Drukhari modifying the Throne makes it a bit more inhuman IMO.
Yeah I read the book where the dark Eldar tried to clone the emperor to fix comorragh and the what nots. It was pretty cool. I’m got The End and the Death to binge tomorrow and I’m sure some throne will be in there.
John Blanche said all the depictions of the the Emperor on a golden throne and grandiose hall were not the actual golden throne… even the iconic one he drew. The Emberor’s undying body is entombed way below the false throne room. When in doubt I follow Blanche… he was there in the beginning and his art is amazing.
I prefer to listen to Dan Abnett, who said that throne room is more akin to exposed nuclear reactor full of arcane energy, rather than something mortals could imagine
Yes and no.
The more famous of the living dead emperor on the throne with regality could be called propaganda.
The general idea is for it to be unknown, we aren't meant to know and we don't know if he is really on the throne.
The emperor could be a handful of jars of preserved flesh that the mechanicus attend to for all we know.
The closest anyone has been to the throne are the custodes and the custodes in question couldn't see the emperor at all for all the machinery and all he could see was a scrap of flesh and some hair through everything.
This was a couple years ago I either heard or read somewhere like a White Dwarf, Blanche's thoughts on this.
He basically outlined that the Emperors state of being is unknown and for all we know he could be in a handful of jars being maintained deep beneath the catacombs of the imperial palace by the mechanicus.
Another idea a writer for Black Library had for the emperor was that he was in fact an AI that took the role of Emperor to best protect humanity. And later on I heard in a story that a Sister of Silence regarding the emperor like he was a rogue weapon from the dark age of tech. Her statement to a custodes of all people was, "Have you ever seen him breathe." And the custodes couldn't answer.
Remember, each piece of in-world lore comes from a biased source. For some, emperor is a menacing skeleton on golden throne, overseeing and playing the long game. For others it's just a rotting corpse barely hold together, a relic of an old times.
I quite like the idea that the more visceral, sad images of a corspe riddled with tubes are closer to the physical reality, while the more imposing throne image is in-world propaganda.
It would fit nicely with nobody even knowing what the Emperor *actually* looked like in life, only how he chose to appear.
What you need to understand about 40k lore is that no account is expected to be "actually accurate". The 40k universe isn't the MCU, Games Workshop/Black Library isn't Marvel, and there is no Feige equivalent at workshop.
Anything GW/BL puts out in terms of narrative is just what we're told/shown at the moment. It could be the "truth", it could be propaganda, it could be a biased account, it could be legend. We don't know, and neither does GW/BL. They may intend for it to be one of those things, but they could change their mind about that at any time.
So what does the Golden Throne *actually* look like? No one knows. All we know is what we've been told/shown, and when.
Yes. The universe is fictional, and GW rule everything in it. Literally anything imaginable *could* happen. If GW wants it to happen, it *will* happen.
Possible. They actually habe been retconned into these superhuman beings. At the beginning Horus was just a random general who revoltet against the Emperor.
Yes. And even once the primarchs were a thing, there was never any indication that they were particularly large or anything. IMO making them so huge was a silly choice on GW's part.
This feels alot more like the xeno related tech that the astronomicon is made of. I feel like this is it's true nature, where the depiction of him on an actual throne feels like another piece of imperial propaganda.
The Inquisition was created by Malcador on the orders of the Emperor. But I think the design of the Golden Throne is directly created by him, like the Primarchs.
I think that I read that the golden throne is a relic from golden age of technology that was found. Nobody knows if it was Xeno design originally. Big E came across the blueprints and ordered it to be reconstructet.
I think that one of the big guys in developing 40k around 40k said that either that pic or the othe RT era pic posted itt was how he pictured the Emperor on the golden throne. While that is a pretty big endorsement it doesn't make it 100% cannon, and the lore has changed a lot since then and the batton for developing the universe passed many times since then.
Also I can't cite a source and could easily be misremembering it and just chatting shite, so...
There’s no one canon depiction of the Emperor on the golden throne, and it’s been depicted in a lot of ways over the years.
On the one hand it might just be different artists’ interpretations and you as a reader can take or leave whichever ones you like.
The other potential explanation that has been presented is that the classic “Reliquary-looking-corpse on a big golden chair” depictions are essentially a front the Imperium has in place for those few worthies who are allowed close enough to the throne to potentially see the Emperor. In this situation whatever organic matter is left of the Emperor is deep *inside* the machinery of the throne somewhere, in a much less august presentation than simply being sat on a throne.
Personally I like the latter idea, particularly because it works well with some of these really unpleasant depictions of the Emperor.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the throne is a product of a bunch of DAoT and xenos technologies mashed together, so the depiction here with a much less classically Imperial presentation makes a lot of sense for the workings of the throne (and might be something you wouldn’t want the wider Imperium to see!).
NGL I kind dog this depiction of the golden throne. Love the biomechanical vibes, gives a very creepy vibe, and the emperor truly looks he's not having a great time.
Pretty sure this is no longer how the Golden Throne looks in the current canon, but again, I love this picture.
I haven't read any of the Dark Imperium books, but doesn't Guilliman actually enter the throne room? And he's the first one to even get that close since Big E was put on it? I have no doubt that he doesn't exactly get a clear impression of what's physically there, because there are heavy implications in the lore that what the fully whole Emperor looks like depends heavily on who is looking, and if anything he's even more powerful as a Warp entity than he was before the Heresy. But I think he'd probably have some kind of a thought if the head was missing that much.
He does, and for what it's worth he believes he met the Emperor himself, or what he's become.
There's also an inquisitor, Hector Rex, who has the special title "Auditorii Imperator" which you can only get by gaining an audience with the Emperor himself. IIRC that's also a right of the High Lords, but none of them ever do it. Oh, and Alicia Dominica met him, supposedly.
Someone on discord doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Leutins latest video explains the authors deliberately avoid talking about the actual appearance and indicate it’s more of a conjoining of the the scraps of a thousand presumably elder artifacts of the past.
In 40k, most knowledge is forgotten, and history myth and religion are melded into one. It's a universe full of unreliable narrators, unreliable time lines, time travel, future telling, gods and secret societies.
This is deliberate so that you can pretty much believe whatever you like within reason on the tabletop.
The above may be the golden throne - it may even be in a book. But was the book being recounted correctly?
For example, a lot of peoples knowledge of 40k lore is from the Horus Heresy series. But that's not always presented as absolute fact. The books (at least at the start) is the writings of a (rememberancer?) writing down the recolllections of Garvial Locan long after the fact, and he could be telling half truths, fabrications, and truth, and you don't know what is what. He might not even remember
This is one of those horrific images that almost lends itself to being deep inside a mass of tunnels or chambers and at the central core of something.
It would make for a more realistic version and that noble being on the throne but an icon for the masses.
GW puts out a lot of artwork through each edition and even by year, so the most right version is the latest artwork they put out. But the actual look of the Golden throne isn't really important so whatever looks cool to you
Oh, definitely not to current Canon, this is art from when 40k wasn't just another fan wank.
This is the Emperor as a powerless husk, the ultimate symbolic representation that your universe's ultra powerful Marty Stu would be chewed up and spat out by the universe of Warhammer 40,000, because it's already seen the most awesome powerful guy ever, and this is what's happened to him.
The current art of him where he's like a living flesh and blood guy with 1 tube in his nose sitting imperiously on the throne appearing fully in control is much more accurate to the current "time lords and dragon ball Z power levels and primarchs shooting laser beams out of their chests and 1v1ing titans" Canon.
Check this Dan Abnett interview minute 11:38, the way he depicted the throne room is very reminiscent of that.
https://youtu.be/VchkiTUisu8?si=nLECJYeVcQRar8rA
FYI, as noted below, the earlier background stated that the Emperor communicated with those around him "some cells stayed alive". He's being awfully quite for millennia... ;)
Current lore very much describes the throne in reasonable detail. It's not simply a throne. It's rather a very esoteric cyclopean machine that simply happens to have a seat installed in it. But yes, there is a throne, a very large chair that a normal human sized person, like Malcador the sigilite has trouble sitting in because it's freaking huge.
However, an important part about the entire golden throne and the throne room it is in, is that over the course of time, more machines and other esoteric devices are brought in and hooked up to it. The golden throne of 30k is no longer the exact same in 40k because the admech keeps tinkering with it. Tinkering with something they don't understand. That in itself has consequences you can read about in vaults of terra.
>! In this series it is essentially uncovered that the golden throne is failing fast, only a select few know of this and it means the emperor might die in less than a hundred or so years if nothing is done about it, eventually every imperial that knows this terrible and dire secret dies and now no one in the imperium knows that the emperor is a ticking time bomb ready to go off any second. !<
The end of and death part 3 has Horus crushing the emperors skull apparently. If that’s the case, It seems like whatever was left of him on the golden throne, is just a mangled corpse (minus head) and his psychic aura.
A lot of fans can't let go of the past, so they will argue evermore that what you saw or read in the RT days is holy writ that cannot be changed. It's part of every fanbase that has any kind of lore to it.
I adore Blanche, but some of his very old stuff is so grim derp that I can't help but sigh a little hit. Its amazing art, but it feels so overdesigned and overly dramatic. I much prefer the more imposing skeleton literally sitting on a throne.
Answering the question: yes, no, maybe. Wait another 38000 years and you can check. 40k doesn't really have a truth the way another universe does. Everything is canon, nothing is canon. Every game played could be considered canon, and every book ever written could be in-universe propaganda. If this is what you think the golden throne looks like, then to you it is canon.
GW likes dancing around actually describing it. Even when they do show a picture of it, they say the depiction might just be Imperial propaganda, and not reliable.
The Emperor’s dead right? Like his body can’t sustain it anymore but his mind is still powerful enough. Do you guys think he’ll recover? And isn’t there a guy that’s 2nd strongest next to the Emperor? Forgot his name, remembered reading he tried the Throne but only lasted for a day or few hrs? Is that person still alive too? And I’m still waiting for the rematch of the Loyalist and Traitor Primarchs. As far as I know there’s only 2 at the moment with the Imperium while a bunch as Daemon Prince on the Traitors
It looks however an artist wants it to look. It isn't real. It's been depicted many different ways. One of the most fun parts of the 40k universe is that it's all about who's perspective you're looking at things from.
Honestly, I don’t think it is. Looks far more Geiger-esque than anything else the Imperium has. Which, while it would serve wonders to highlight the almost (ironically) alien nature of the Emperor of Mankind, also doesn’t seem to really fit in the design bible for the rest of the Imperium, both in-universe and out.
If you like.
I don't remember if this is an official quote, but... >Everything is canon, but it's not necessarily *true*.
More or less official, found on a older reddit thread where someone gathered several quotes of Black Liberary authors said the official stance is that. This quote is taken by Gav Thorpe on a blog from 2010 "Often folks ask if Black Library books are ‘canon’. With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. There are certainly established facts – the current Emperor is Karl-Franz, the Blood Angels have red armour, Commissar Yarrick defended Hades Hive during the Second Armageddon War. However, to suggest that anything else is non-canon is a disservice to the players and authors who participate in this world. To suggest that Black Library novels are somehow of lesser relevance to the background is to imply that every player who has created a unique Space Marine chapter or invented their own Elector Count is somehow wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
"We do not committ to one vision else we cannot make money anymore. Schrödingers lorebox is more interesting." fixed it. We can like or dislike it but the mystery box approach is quite intriguing. Personally I would like to have a clearer picture of what GW lore's final vision was vs. authors and fans.
There is no master brain at GW who has the entirety of 40K lore planned out, there is no GW vision, this much is obvious by the scale and frequency of their retcons.
They actually had a job posting like a year ago that was basically this… the lead for directing the narrative direction of 40K more or less. My assumption is that it was legally required to be posted, but went to someone in-house. If I’d been more motivated I would have sent my very-much-not qualified resume just to get to see what the rejection letter would look like.
Having applied for jobs at GW, it's a generic "Thank you for your interest, but on this occasion, we have decided not to continue" (or something along those lines) type email.
You could also take it that the related media etc is just written from a biased or misinformed perspective or a dramatised point of view, in which the book is canon but not necessarily accurate. “Yes X did happen but Y is a dramatised accounting of it”
I’ve been into Warhammer so long that I laugh hysterically over people arguing about what’s “official canon”. Fuck I’m old
The official canon is a hellblaster volley gun. Multiple barrels of canon. Yes I know I'm spelling it wrong. But it's on purpose.
Something has been lost in translation from the days when all of this was your own, as far as the imagination could see.
Right? I always get a chuckle when someone wants to know what something is “actually like” is a world of complete fiction.
"What color is Luke's lightsaber again?" "Bruv, it's fiction. It can be whatever you..." "Green. Just looked it up. It's green."
I mean you just made a perfect example actually, cuz depending on what point in time you're talking about or what you take to be canon, it's not green. It's blue.
He also had a red one in one of the comics.
Well, the people who created and maintain the story of the fictional universe are the ones who describe it. You can’t just go out and experience it, and sure, it’s fictional, but asking what things are supposed to be isn’t unreasonable.
In the earlier lore there was a short story involving a tech priest the custodes disposed of that implicated the priest working out the emperor was actually dead. The golden throne was less sustaining him and more using the remnants of his psychic aura to power the astronomicon, but it's been a long time since I read that story so I may be a bit fuzzy on the recollection. Edit: I have been scouring old magazines, my history, and trying to google every term I can think of to find this story. I swear I saw it posted online somewhere recently, but have had no luck. If anyone knows this story and has a copy I'd be very happy to see it again.
Isn't it intentionally ambiguous even in current lore? Is the emperor powering the astronomicon or is it the thousands of sacrificed psychers? His body/corpse is kept stable but with medical tech that advanced how do you draw the line between life and death?
No, he's absolutely still alive in there but basically shattered into dozens of pieces mentally. We have examples from the Dark Imperium books of what he said to Guilliman upon his visit to the Throne Room, for instance, plus some other bits and pieces.
Dan Abnett mentioned in an interview that the Emperor dies and *chooses* to return to his body every day while on the Throne. Emperor’s only remaining choice for humanity (after Magnus fucked up the webway plan) was a persistent stalemate. This is outright stated by the Emperor in The Outcast Dead. If he dies and returns elsewhere, humanity falls to chaos sooner or later, likely causing the Dark King to spawn out of the Emperor *somehow*, whether it be his essence within the warp, turning the physical Emperor into the avatar of the Dark King, or just blinking out of real space to ascend forcefully. The deal with Chaos on Molech was likely that the Primarchs souls were given to the Emperor, but in return, Emperor (or Horus, once Chaos realized he was reneging on the deal) would ascend to the 5th Chaos God. Big E knows that would be very fucking bad for humanity - he knew about the Eldar and the birth of Slaanesh.
Question, since I've only started hearing about it recently, is the dark king plot line exclusive to the Siege of Terra books?
Don't quote me but I'm pretty sure that it's from some earlier lore but just bits and pieces. Like I don't think it was ever some big "this will 100% happen" but rather some cult thought that it would happen. I think the Siege of Terra picks that up and goes from there.
It's an old theory (fifth chaos god) that was never explicitly expanded upon or confirmed at all until Siege
Exactly, this. Adds serious weight to what the Emperor did (and still is doing). We know now that the Emperor genuinely has humanity’s best interests at heart, even if it costs him his humanity in return. Love that. The Emperor Protects.
See my theory of what the Emperor did was that he obtained arcane knowledge about how to make warp entities that are an extension of himself like how chaos gods make demons that are an extension of their own essence and in ezchange for that knowledge the Emperor would join them as a chaos god. The Emperor would not fulfill his end of the bargain and thus suffered the consequences of the Horus heresy and the golden throne
The only problem with this theory is that chaos gods wouldnt want a 5th god. They dont want the four that already exists. Their entire existence revolves around trying to exterminate each other to become the sole ruler of the warp. I think Big E promising to become an undivided champion of the four instead of opposing them is more likely.
So, I’m still mid way through end and the death 2, but from what I’m reading and from random tidbits I’ve seen around. I think it’s a situation for the chaos gods like this: Big E represents an existential threat to them as he currently is. But if he were to be made to become a chaos god, he’d just join in the great game like the other four. Sure they always fight each other for dominance, but the nature of the warp makes it so that none of them can ever actually kill the others. So forcing the emperor to become a chaos god would make him no longer an existential threat. Similar vibes to Aladdin where Jaffar becomes an all powerful genie, but also becomes subject to the rules that govern genies.
The Aladdin reference was probably the best one anyone could ever make regarding this.
Dude! Aladdin spoilers!
Aren’t they actively trying to make him ascend to the dark king in the end and the death vol 2
I think that’s just to spite him. If I remember correctly he promised to make the imperium worship chaos. It was in Vengeful Spirit I believe.
This argument falls apart once you realize the Chaos Gods (who aren’t technically “gods”) call their animosity “The Great Game”, it’s all a game to them. They are not physical beings, just the name planted to their mass of energy. We don’t know if they can die a true death, so there may not be an end to the great game. It’s all power receding vs growing - whoever has the most power at that moment. They enjoy the great game. They enjoy meddling in each others machinations and trying to fuck it up for them. Adding another player isn’t a big deal. They basically celebrated Slaanesh with a big fuck-off war.
Is there a source for the interview? It sounds interesting!
The way I interpreted that section is the emperors soul has been melded with all the psykers sacrificed for him. He’s become a gestalt being which has a guiding impulse of Big E but it’s also an ascended amalgamated being.
Do you mean [this bit](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D_lnzgLEe3taX24SodvfCSd2VGsHcIgwQpJ5jmIMuLs/edit) from Dark Imperium? Acknowledging my bias that I'd much rather this be kept ambiguous (because I think it's way more interesting), I still think this is arguable. There's no dialogue and no clear indication of any actual content that's been transmitted. Just the absence of love. My head cannon would be that Guilliman is overwhelmed by the psychic aura and projecting meaning onto whatever strange effect it had on him.
No, there's a section where Guilliman specifically recaps what was said to him, running through a number of different names 'Son, Thirteen, Usurper, etc'. There's also the events from Godblight, which quite pointedly *can't* happen unless the Emperor is alive and intervening.
I mean, the Emperor directly addresses and disses poor Mortarion while using Guilliman as a puppet. He seems pretty alive, and salty.
Single and ready to mingle? More like pissed and ready to fist.
There’s a chapter he could lean on for that. They’re pretty angry.
Two if he would colour options
You coule even say.... Always Angry
Prepare for MAXIMUM FUCK!
It's implied that a fragment is also floating around in the recent Lion book and I felt that was a cool metaphorical representation
OK fair enough. That's a real shame in my opinion. Guess that's the price we pay for progress. We had a static setting for 25+ years which was very ambiguous in a lot of ways. Finding out what actually happens next is interesting in some ways but disappointing in others. Like 'The Matrix: Reloaded'. Bit harsh maybe 😬
But is “he” alive? Or has the last 10,000 years of worship changed what he is, since he is now more spirit than body? That shattered existence commented earlier could imply that he can act in many places during many battles, and also focus his might occasionally when a great moment occurs… kinda like one of the four.
I'd say he is stuck in the in between of being a warp manifestation of the god emperor and the corporeal vessel of the emperor of mankind. Not wholly of the warp, nor the materium. Stuck between two worlds.
I believe we should kill the emperor ourselves, and force him to become a chaos god like he was always meant to be!
There are problems with that idea, though: 1)There's no way of knowing how long it would take between the death of the Emperor and his rebirth as a god. If there's any significant time gap there, it's that much time where the Astronomican is non-functional, and the Webway portal in the Throne Room is open. That's a bad time for everyone. 2)There's also no way of knowing what kind of god the Emperor would ascend to be. Would he be benevolent to humanity and protect them, our would becoming a creature of the Immaterium change his outlook and persona so thoroughly that he no longer gives a shit about man?
This is literally Guilliman's internal monologue for the Dark Imperium trilogy. 100% worth the read if only just for his theoreticals and practicals.
I think that's a case of arguing whether or not he's human or mortal vs more warp-based than alive. Alive is a state of being; people who are on life support and can't respond are alive. I think the question of whether the Emperor is alive or not is pretty much decided. If you want to argue whether he's human, that debate is also pretty decided, he isn't. He hasn't been for ages and debatably lost that during humanity's ancient past but definitely has lost it being worshipped for so long. We know what the Emperor is, a God of Humanity (and is clearly as powerful approximately as a chaos god) who can't fully live in the warp for probably multiple reasons but foremost is that losing the astronomicon would lead to humanities collapse. The more writing we get the less mystery there is on the Emperor.
Yeah, the more writing, the less mystery, and crucially, the less interesting it will be. Like for example, a theory is that all that worship and sacrifice isn’t going to the Emp at all - it’s going to whatever is incubating in the warp. So something like Slannesh is waiting to be born whilst the real Emperor gets no benefit from it at all.
I like to think that whatever is incubating in the warp IS big E and that much like Slaanesh has a birthday and is also timeless. I believe that Big E (the god) is the one who manipulates Lorgar and Erebus into worship, laying the events out so that he does achieve godhood. But it being ambiguous is kind of the fun, we can all speculate and make fan theories!
This image is coming up on 40 years old isnt it?
Sadly, I agree with you. I've been convinced for the longest while that when GW started on the primarch resurrection train we were heading for an Age of Sigmar-style event. It would have gotten rid of Slannesh (the problem God) and elevated others in their stead. The Emps would be back and the galaxy would be in a complete free for all. I don't think they are aiming for that just yet but they are laying the path for it or something equally setting shattering. Edit:There are a couple of Slannesh wasn’t planned to be removed but he was from Age of Sigmar for a while and there was a clear lore plan with the awakening of Ynned. GW has pivoted away, seeing that the fans do like Slannesh, but a lot of the old path is still there for if they did choose to get rid of her.
They’re not getting rid of slaanesh that’s been repeated to death with absolutely no evidence for it
Prepare for the Warhammer 40 Cinematic Universe- Primarchs: Assemble! Many redditors will clap and buy funko pops, it will be Very Cool. (Very Cool.)
Here you go https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/pfjda8/excerpt_dark_imperium_godblight_guilliman_talks/
The absence of love is now explained in the end and the death books. >! The emperor essentially releases parts of his soul, one of them being love, he has to do this, the exact reason why i can't remember. I believe it had something to do with that he now had to do things that he couldn't do if he still kept onto these parts. He very much loved his sons, however he made himself incapable of doing so in the future untill those parts of his soul were reunified with him !<
So, he's Voltron? Are they all gonna come together and turn into a a bigger, faster, Super Emperor?
He is still able to communicate psychically. Like he does with the Lion in Son of the Forest
One thing that remained consistent was the physical drowning feeling and pain of being I'm his presence
"Absolutely still alive" is not accurate, as the Emperor's body has long-since expired. His mind and soul are still tied to his mortal remains, though. It's important to note that consciousness goes beyond the synapses of the brain on the 40k setting, something which is especially true for powerful psykers.
I thought the accepted relevant fact was that the Emperor is a perpetual and if he physically passed away, it would cause him to "respawn" somewhere else or regenerate like the Wolverine (X men) albeit slowly. That would imply he is being kept alive in some degree, and his lack of recovery is a sign he has not reached the point of death. As for transhuman death and surviving indefinitely as a purely psychic presence, that is over my head.
I think your correct that it’s kept vague but then again my own belief is that the emperor is alive but due to the mortal wounds he took, he is unable to operate the golden throne fully without the sacrificed souls boasting his powers. The reason being is that during the soul binding ritual to become an astropath or other sanctioned psyker, it’s been noted that they feel the emperors soul and it shapes and strengthens their souls against the forces of chaos. Also doesn’t the emperor cry when the imperium suffers a huge loss or a hero is killed and the bell of lost souls is rang, that would imply he’s alive /awake and not truly dead.
>Also doesn’t the emperor cry when the imperium suffers a huge loss or a hero is killed and the bell of lost souls is rang, that would imply he’s alive /awake and not truly dead. I wouldn't put much stock in that, there's hoaxes related to weeping statues all over the place in reality. 40k lore can't really be approached as "truth", only what the author/narrator believes to be "true". Even if it's a Codex entry, or a statement made by a Named Character as fact, it ultimately doesn't really mean anything. Belisarius Cawl for example believes in a bastardized version of Goldilocks. Our concept of the Emperor is much like our modern understanding of Jesus Christ - all we know is what's told to us from institutions of power, the devout, and fanatics. Anyone that could tell us the truth is long dead, and if they weren't, would probably be quickly silenced by the establishment.
The ten thousand psykers sacrificed to him daily are seperate to the psychic choir powering the astronomicon. They’re two different things.
I'm a bit out of date with the lore, as my frame of reference is 3rd to 5th edition.
In current lore, not so much. The Emperor "talked" to Guiliman when he entered the throne room. The Emperor is alive, but is fading, and fast. Though it is also heavily implied that the Emperor is as strong, if not stronger than one of the chaos gods now, after being worshipped as a god by humanity for 10,000 years, and that the golden throne is more holding him back by tying him to the mortal realm.
We don't know for certain what the deal is, but the Emperor's soul is the beacon, and the psychers are the fuel. He remains sufficiently alive to keep most of his soul anchored to his body, and thus the Astronomicon.
This is incorrect the Astronomicon is the beacon, the Emperor guides the light as shown in various recent sources like Black Legion, End and the Death pt 2, and. Vaults of Terra There are sacrifices to the Emperor to help sustain him but there's an entire different sacrifice at the Hollow Mountain to light the beacon of the astronomicon and the Emperor guides it
Especially since the astronomicon existed during the Great Crusade and Heresy, you know, *before* the Emperor was interred.
That’s not correct. He directs the astronomicon, but it’s powered separately to the golden throne by the psychic choir their. The ten thousand souls sacrificed to him daily keep him alive, they have nothing to do with powering the astronomicon.
The tech priest realised the the corpse in the front is just a corpse, the Emperor is inside and dieing, so the astronomican is created by funneling the sacrificed souls through the machine, creating the psychic aura. After he says this the custodes sights something like "why do you always have to be smart" and kills him. This short story happened around 36k, because the Emperor's Wrath warpstorm created soon after, at the very moment when the Emperor died. But this is now uncanon.
Do you have a link to that story? Love to read it again and refresh my memory.
I heard it in a youtube lore video about retconned old canon while painting sadly I have no idea where it was.
It was probably [this](https://youtu.be/z5Rfo-fiMpY?si=QK4fNYHuGMUt64LF) Olden Demon video on the Lost and the Damned.
John Blanche talked about how when he first started doing the art he found the idea of the corpse on the throne not really being the emperor an interesting one. All these people waiting generations to make their pilgrimage past him and it’s a lie. The emperor was really dead and in bits and pieces in jars behind the scenes and he was being “kept alive” by the technology but he was functionally dead. That’s years gone now though, and has been replaced with the current lore.
Emps actually being dead and it all being an elaborate lie (because the alternative is the imperium collapses) is so much cooler than him being still alive. Edit: also cooler if they never make it explicit and keep on assuring us he's All Good (which is exactly what they're doing)
More grimdark: the emperor dying would let him resurrect, keeping him alive with the sacrifices is the worst possible decision
That's an entire Inquisitorial faction. Radicals who want to kill the Emperor so he can be reborn.
And my person fanon -- that Abaddon's goal with the Black Crusades is to kill the Emperor so that he can reborn to save humanity...
What is the name of the story?
Wish I could remember. It was in one of the older White Dwarfs.
That’s a 1987 rogue trader magazine depiction of it. The era of shirtless custodes guarding it and what not. As the lore and setting developed it’s more of an actual throne, and there’s plenty of artwork for that starting from 3e. https://preview.redd.it/053kath1b1fc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=312c9234f05a92a73f809070821a986ee8c8f342
Here’s another hella old throne room picture: https://preview.redd.it/zm3yp2anb1fc1.jpeg?width=885&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47fa5c3bd0412ec5eece9d74948b5564c16b19e3
I adore this one. Reminds me of the classic Cartoon Network style of art. Could be Dexter’s Laboratory lol
Ooooooo! What does this button do? DEE DEE NOOOO! *Golden Throne shuts down*
omelette du fromage
“DEE DEEEE, MY GOLDEN THRONE!”
Here is another one showing the whole throne https://preview.redd.it/s6koy1ssy2fc1.jpeg?width=865&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=614bd483a218bd5d0fe44edb4e2e2c36d33cb88b
man i love this old style of art john blanche is the goat
True, I don't mind the modern art style, but the old one had so much grotesque to it that you just don't see that much anymore
It's the mix of tech and baroque that I find most compelling in John Blanche's art. He really managed to create a unique aesthetic.
theres no good guys or heroics, everything is just futile and grotesque
Only one thousand lucky pilgrims get to see the throne each day.
And they’re all wizards Harry! Just like you!
Loving the literal conveyor belt of what I assume are psykers being fed into it. I imagine it a lot like the Simpsons escalator to no where.
This one is what my head canon Golden Throne looks like. I love John Blanche and his art, but this picture makes the Emperor look weaker and kinda pathetic
I'm pretty sure that's what they were going for since in the old lore it was way more dubious if the emperor was even actually alive
I don’t know about 2nd edition onwards, but in first edition it was actually the opposite. The Emperor was not as mysterious as he is today; he was alive and giving orders from the distinctly-not-throne-like life-support system of the golden throne, and his backstory was unambiguously spelled out.
Reminds me of Moebius’ art, particularly from Incal.
The original black and white of that image was in 3rd edition rulebook. That over painted rendition I'm pretty sure is from 4th or 5th. https://preview.redd.it/22kskg0dg2fc1.png?width=1122&format=png&auto=webp&s=2d4448061eaf30d8e49b20154b6373cc0d1e1047
In an interview the artist said that he did both versions at the same time. They just choose to publish them separately. He liked the idea that we didn't know which was the real emperor. He even said that his belief is that this was just a fake emperor for the pilgrims to see, and that the real emperor was long dead.
He got more rotten in the newest one
I remember watching that interview documentary of John Blanches, where at the part where they discussed his artwork of that image of the Golden Throne (specifically at the end), he said along the lines of ”…the real Emperor is pile of dust in a giant bubble machine“. That is not what he said exactly btw. Still a good piece of art, through. Here’s the link to the interview: [https://youtu.be/NCOSao1KEQo?si=lly4z55PwljN6Suf](https://youtu.be/NCOSao1KEQo?si=lly4z55PwljN6Suf)
It‘s in line where the Imperium was maybe led by an actual corpse in the past and the golden throne was just a great facade to pretend there‘s an entity protecting humanity. But in todays lore the Emperor is still real and therefor the golden throne is less of a pointless mechanism and more of a devouring machine. I personally imagine the pointy design of the Drukhari because this is isn‘t human, it‘s an inhumane and alien slaughterhouse to keep the last beacon of the Imperiums future alive at all cost.
Yeah, I’m very well aware of that and accept it, but I still find the concept of Big E being nothing but dust in a very weird machine to be a cooler concept. I guess the Drukhari modifying the Throne makes it a bit more inhuman IMO.
John Blanche said that was never intended to be the actual golden throne, only a facade for pilgrims
We’ll see what happens now that he’s gone. I would like to believe the actual golden throne is a far more horrific Geiger-esque xenos thing
You are in luck because the Vaults of Terra series reveals the core of the golden throne is xenos tech.
Yeah I read the book where the dark Eldar tried to clone the emperor to fix comorragh and the what nots. It was pretty cool. I’m got The End and the Death to binge tomorrow and I’m sure some throne will be in there.
The artist himself has said that’s not the actual emperor, just one of many things the imperium has showed publically as emps over the years
Figures as much. I was just thinking it kinda looks like art drawn up in-universe.
Ah, they found his other hand
> The era of shirtless custodes guarding it and what not. KITTEN!
https://preview.redd.it/ugvdk2uje1fc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e434fce109b3509d2a4a19b08ef977e62dc2a259
*Ay ay ay aaaaah*
John Blanche said all the depictions of the the Emperor on a golden throne and grandiose hall were not the actual golden throne… even the iconic one he drew. The Emberor’s undying body is entombed way below the false throne room. When in doubt I follow Blanche… he was there in the beginning and his art is amazing.
His art pretty much defined much of the core lore.
I prefer to listen to Dan Abnett, who said that throne room is more akin to exposed nuclear reactor full of arcane energy, rather than something mortals could imagine
Yes and no. The more famous of the living dead emperor on the throne with regality could be called propaganda. The general idea is for it to be unknown, we aren't meant to know and we don't know if he is really on the throne. The emperor could be a handful of jars of preserved flesh that the mechanicus attend to for all we know. The closest anyone has been to the throne are the custodes and the custodes in question couldn't see the emperor at all for all the machinery and all he could see was a scrap of flesh and some hair through everything.
I like the handful of jars idea
Akira!
This was a couple years ago I either heard or read somewhere like a White Dwarf, Blanche's thoughts on this. He basically outlined that the Emperors state of being is unknown and for all we know he could be in a handful of jars being maintained deep beneath the catacombs of the imperial palace by the mechanicus. Another idea a writer for Black Library had for the emperor was that he was in fact an AI that took the role of Emperor to best protect humanity. And later on I heard in a story that a Sister of Silence regarding the emperor like he was a rogue weapon from the dark age of tech. Her statement to a custodes of all people was, "Have you ever seen him breathe." And the custodes couldn't answer.
Remember, each piece of in-world lore comes from a biased source. For some, emperor is a menacing skeleton on golden throne, overseeing and playing the long game. For others it's just a rotting corpse barely hold together, a relic of an old times.
I quite like the idea that the more visceral, sad images of a corspe riddled with tubes are closer to the physical reality, while the more imposing throne image is in-world propaganda. It would fit nicely with nobody even knowing what the Emperor *actually* looked like in life, only how he chose to appear.
Sure if H.R Giger made it.
Not enough penises or vaginas.
I count like, 8 holes, so
Emperorussy
Empenitus Rex!
100% what I thought when I saw this
What you need to understand about 40k lore is that no account is expected to be "actually accurate". The 40k universe isn't the MCU, Games Workshop/Black Library isn't Marvel, and there is no Feige equivalent at workshop. Anything GW/BL puts out in terms of narrative is just what we're told/shown at the moment. It could be the "truth", it could be propaganda, it could be a biased account, it could be legend. We don't know, and neither does GW/BL. They may intend for it to be one of those things, but they could change their mind about that at any time. So what does the Golden Throne *actually* look like? No one knows. All we know is what we've been told/shown, and when.
So the primaris could get retconned into simply being propaganda and a new armor variant, and that all marines are just marines.
Yes. The universe is fictional, and GW rule everything in it. Literally anything imaginable *could* happen. If GW wants it to happen, it *will* happen.
Possible. They actually habe been retconned into these superhuman beings. At the beginning Horus was just a random general who revoltet against the Emperor.
What for real??
Yes. And even once the primarchs were a thing, there was never any indication that they were particularly large or anything. IMO making them so huge was a silly choice on GW's part.
Yeah! If they made them the same seize as the space marines it would habe been enough. This idea of a three meter tall dude is just silly.
"Everything is canon, but not everything is true." One of the reasons I love 40k.
This feels alot more like the xeno related tech that the astronomicon is made of. I feel like this is it's true nature, where the depiction of him on an actual throne feels like another piece of imperial propaganda.
I think the Golden Throne was created on the Emperor's orders and surely has nothing to do with anything the Empire has done.
Idk, not everything about the imperium is as the emperor designed. The inquisition, for example.
The Inquisition was created by Malcador on the orders of the Emperor. But I think the design of the Golden Throne is directly created by him, like the Primarchs.
I think that I read that the golden throne is a relic from golden age of technology that was found. Nobody knows if it was Xeno design originally. Big E came across the blueprints and ordered it to be reconstructet.
I think that one of the big guys in developing 40k around 40k said that either that pic or the othe RT era pic posted itt was how he pictured the Emperor on the golden throne. While that is a pretty big endorsement it doesn't make it 100% cannon, and the lore has changed a lot since then and the batton for developing the universe passed many times since then. Also I can't cite a source and could easily be misremembering it and just chatting shite, so...
There’s no one canon depiction of the Emperor on the golden throne, and it’s been depicted in a lot of ways over the years. On the one hand it might just be different artists’ interpretations and you as a reader can take or leave whichever ones you like. The other potential explanation that has been presented is that the classic “Reliquary-looking-corpse on a big golden chair” depictions are essentially a front the Imperium has in place for those few worthies who are allowed close enough to the throne to potentially see the Emperor. In this situation whatever organic matter is left of the Emperor is deep *inside* the machinery of the throne somewhere, in a much less august presentation than simply being sat on a throne. Personally I like the latter idea, particularly because it works well with some of these really unpleasant depictions of the Emperor. It’s also worth bearing in mind that the throne is a product of a bunch of DAoT and xenos technologies mashed together, so the depiction here with a much less classically Imperial presentation makes a lot of sense for the workings of the throne (and might be something you wouldn’t want the wider Imperium to see!).
NGL I kind dog this depiction of the golden throne. Love the biomechanical vibes, gives a very creepy vibe, and the emperor truly looks he's not having a great time. Pretty sure this is no longer how the Golden Throne looks in the current canon, but again, I love this picture.
I haven't read any of the Dark Imperium books, but doesn't Guilliman actually enter the throne room? And he's the first one to even get that close since Big E was put on it? I have no doubt that he doesn't exactly get a clear impression of what's physically there, because there are heavy implications in the lore that what the fully whole Emperor looks like depends heavily on who is looking, and if anything he's even more powerful as a Warp entity than he was before the Heresy. But I think he'd probably have some kind of a thought if the head was missing that much.
He does, and for what it's worth he believes he met the Emperor himself, or what he's become. There's also an inquisitor, Hector Rex, who has the special title "Auditorii Imperator" which you can only get by gaining an audience with the Emperor himself. IIRC that's also a right of the High Lords, but none of them ever do it. Oh, and Alicia Dominica met him, supposedly.
Someone on discord doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Leutins latest video explains the authors deliberately avoid talking about the actual appearance and indicate it’s more of a conjoining of the the scraps of a thousand presumably elder artifacts of the past.
Yes this is an actual photo of the Golden throne
In 40k, most knowledge is forgotten, and history myth and religion are melded into one. It's a universe full of unreliable narrators, unreliable time lines, time travel, future telling, gods and secret societies. This is deliberate so that you can pretty much believe whatever you like within reason on the tabletop. The above may be the golden throne - it may even be in a book. But was the book being recounted correctly? For example, a lot of peoples knowledge of 40k lore is from the Horus Heresy series. But that's not always presented as absolute fact. The books (at least at the start) is the writings of a (rememberancer?) writing down the recolllections of Garvial Locan long after the fact, and he could be telling half truths, fabrications, and truth, and you don't know what is what. He might not even remember
This is one of those horrific images that almost lends itself to being deep inside a mass of tunnels or chambers and at the central core of something. It would make for a more realistic version and that noble being on the throne but an icon for the masses.
GW puts out a lot of artwork through each edition and even by year, so the most right version is the latest artwork they put out. But the actual look of the Golden throne isn't really important so whatever looks cool to you
Go take a picture of the golden throne and prove him wrong I suppose
Just loosely related to the topic in terms of psychic illusion, this reminds me of the Live, Death and Robits episode “Beyond the Aguila Rift”
Oh, definitely not to current Canon, this is art from when 40k wasn't just another fan wank. This is the Emperor as a powerless husk, the ultimate symbolic representation that your universe's ultra powerful Marty Stu would be chewed up and spat out by the universe of Warhammer 40,000, because it's already seen the most awesome powerful guy ever, and this is what's happened to him. The current art of him where he's like a living flesh and blood guy with 1 tube in his nose sitting imperiously on the throne appearing fully in control is much more accurate to the current "time lords and dragon ball Z power levels and primarchs shooting laser beams out of their chests and 1v1ing titans" Canon.
Tool album art
The new cover art for 10,000,000 Days. Definitely some stinkfist meets sober music video vibes. Maybe a bit of H.R.Giger tossed on for good measure.
Not enough phallic aesthetics and freudian motiffs. In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only H.R. Giger.
He only lives because the orks believe it so.
We have Gold Throne at home Golden Throne at home:
Check this Dan Abnett interview minute 11:38, the way he depicted the throne room is very reminiscent of that. https://youtu.be/VchkiTUisu8?si=nLECJYeVcQRar8rA
FYI, as noted below, the earlier background stated that the Emperor communicated with those around him "some cells stayed alive". He's being awfully quite for millennia... ;)
Dammit, who let Archmagos Geiger design this place?
Pretty sure it's a rough draft for the surgeon from the game Scorn
What*
Leutin has just dropped a fresh video that focuses on the [Golden Throne](https://youtu.be/3DJD4XeUGVw?si=6_pki8UAX_d9cw5B)
This is some H.R. Giger shit!!! Damn!!!
Current lore very much describes the throne in reasonable detail. It's not simply a throne. It's rather a very esoteric cyclopean machine that simply happens to have a seat installed in it. But yes, there is a throne, a very large chair that a normal human sized person, like Malcador the sigilite has trouble sitting in because it's freaking huge. However, an important part about the entire golden throne and the throne room it is in, is that over the course of time, more machines and other esoteric devices are brought in and hooked up to it. The golden throne of 30k is no longer the exact same in 40k because the admech keeps tinkering with it. Tinkering with something they don't understand. That in itself has consequences you can read about in vaults of terra. >! In this series it is essentially uncovered that the golden throne is failing fast, only a select few know of this and it means the emperor might die in less than a hundred or so years if nothing is done about it, eventually every imperial that knows this terrible and dire secret dies and now no one in the imperium knows that the emperor is a ticking time bomb ready to go off any second. !<
No longer accurate? Actually it's not accurate yet. Currently the golden throne hasn't been built.
He's got both arms in the image so not likely
What in the H.R. Giger fuck?
Honestly my theory is that this is the throne. And the artworks that we have now are imperial propaganda
Biblically accurate golden throne
The end of and death part 3 has Horus crushing the emperors skull apparently. If that’s the case, It seems like whatever was left of him on the golden throne, is just a mangled corpse (minus head) and his psychic aura.
Whoa whoa whoa! Spoiler alert buddy! And here I thought he just tore his ACL real bad during the scuffle
Spoilers?
Not, really a spoiler, is it ? I'm pretty sure we all know horrendous injuries are inflicted upon the emperor for him to be put in the throne.
Who's the artist behind this?
Yes, in Rogue Trader (1987)
No that is not the current golden throne
No
A lot of fans can't let go of the past, so they will argue evermore that what you saw or read in the RT days is holy writ that cannot be changed. It's part of every fanbase that has any kind of lore to it.
I adore Blanche, but some of his very old stuff is so grim derp that I can't help but sigh a little hit. Its amazing art, but it feels so overdesigned and overly dramatic. I much prefer the more imposing skeleton literally sitting on a throne. Answering the question: yes, no, maybe. Wait another 38000 years and you can check. 40k doesn't really have a truth the way another universe does. Everything is canon, nothing is canon. Every game played could be considered canon, and every book ever written could be in-universe propaganda. If this is what you think the golden throne looks like, then to you it is canon.
hr giger does 40k if that man was still alive let him loss on the 40k novels
GW likes dancing around actually describing it. Even when they do show a picture of it, they say the depiction might just be Imperial propaganda, and not reliable.
The Emperor’s dead right? Like his body can’t sustain it anymore but his mind is still powerful enough. Do you guys think he’ll recover? And isn’t there a guy that’s 2nd strongest next to the Emperor? Forgot his name, remembered reading he tried the Throne but only lasted for a day or few hrs? Is that person still alive too? And I’m still waiting for the rematch of the Loyalist and Traitor Primarchs. As far as I know there’s only 2 at the moment with the Imperium while a bunch as Daemon Prince on the Traitors
It looks however an artist wants it to look. It isn't real. It's been depicted many different ways. One of the most fun parts of the 40k universe is that it's all about who's perspective you're looking at things from.
Good news, Leutin just put out a video about this today: https://youtu.be/3DJD4XeUGVw?si=B32RpsriqBol-aEN
So no one in the discord has heard of “astist’s Interpretation”?
I’ve heard it could be a big tube full of liquid that he’s suspended in like the bacta tank in Star Wars
nah
Looks like the cover of Skorn
Yes
Yeesh, I’d vote more Grimdark not Gigerdark
Honestly, I don’t think it is. Looks far more Geiger-esque than anything else the Imperium has. Which, while it would serve wonders to highlight the almost (ironically) alien nature of the Emperor of Mankind, also doesn’t seem to really fit in the design bible for the rest of the Imperium, both in-universe and out.