Hello

I keep wondering about the construct named the Golden Throne & how it seems to be the only thing binding the Empire of Man together (what if it fails... hmmm... what would happen?) Any of you guys know details about it, please?

Also, is the chapter illo on page 245 of the corerulebook a depiction of the Godemperor (& the throne)?

Thanks

Lete

Who?

I keep wondering about the construct named the Golden Throne & how it seems to be the only thing binding the Empire of Man together (what if it fails... hmmm... what would happen?) Any of you guys know details about it, please?

The Golden Throne has two functions: Keeping the Emperor alive and channelling His power to the Astronomican. Both functions are fueled by psykers linked to it - it's said that He consumes somewhere around a thousand psykers per day.
Regarding the prospect of it failing, that's what the 5th Edition of the tabletop is on the verge of finding out. Most likely, the Emperor would die and the Astronomican would falter, thus making human warp travel impossible and isolating the worlds of the Imperium from each other, making them ripe for the picking of any other race that happens to come along.
However, there are some that believe that the Emperor would either reincarnate into a new body or become a Warp Entity on the power level of a Chaos God, thus bringing back the Golden Age of the Imperium - which is why some radical Inquisitors are just itching to pull the plug...

Also, is the chapter illo on page 245 of the corerulebook a depiction of the Godemperor (& the throne)?

It's probably supposed to be, though a more stylizised one. I doubt that's how it actually looks and I can't imagine who would draw it that way in-universe...

Cifer said:

Why wouldn't the emperor be painted in such a manner? After all, have you ever wonder why the Ecclesearchy symbol is a skull with a halo? I'm sure there are sects within the church that chose to focus on the Emperors sacrifice and living death like state...

Everything you wanted to know about the emperor is here:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Emperor

The Golden Throne

Originally built to provide access to the Eldar Webway, the Golden Throne took the form of a bulky machine-like chair suspended over gigantic mechanised doors made of gold metal. The doors were said to be large enough for a Warhound Scout Titan to walk through unbowed. The chair was linked to the portal by huge bundles of cables, wires and conduits. The whole machine was made of the same golden metal. The throne was built at one end of a vast hall big enough to house up to six fully equipped Space Marine Companies. This was the Emperor's main laboratory, which was itself at the centre of his underground complex, known as the Imperial Dungeon. Even after the throne's construction, the lab remained littered with other huge machines and storage crates. Hundreds of red-robed technicians and labourers worked in the lab.5

The Emperor built the throne as a means of entering the Webway. Having this fixed point of entry was meant to free humanity from its reliance on warp-ships and astrotelepathy, since humans could simply enter the Webway and emerge wherever they chose in the galaxy. He sent armies of workers through the portal and had them construct a new short section of Webway linking to the rest of the abandoned Eldar network. Since the original Webway was built of a psychically resistant material which the humans could not replicate, the Emperor used his powers, via the Golden Throne, to protect the human-built section from the Warp.5

The Golden Throne is connected to a massive warp beacon known as the Astronomican which generates a system of signals making faster than light Warp travel in the Imperium possible2.

In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered failures in the mechanisms of the Golden Throne that are far beyond their ability to repair1.

Consequences of the Horus Heresy

The Emperor on the Golden Throne

At the outset of the Heresy, when Magnus the Red used his sorcerous powers to warn the Emperor of Horus's treachery, he inadvertently created huge holes in the Emperor's psychic shield. Daemons poured into the human-built portion of the Webway and slaughtered thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus workers there. The Custodian Guard and Sisters of Silence were left fighting a desperate battle to prevent the daemons from reaching the portal through into the Imperial Dungeon. Eventually the Imperial forces had to abandon the Webway and retreat back into the Imperial Palace. The portal was closed but only the psychic power of the Emperor was enough to keep it that way so he was forced to remain on the Golden Throne or find a suitable replacement. When the Emperor was forced to battle Horus on board the Sons of Horus flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, his place on the throne was taken briefly by Malcador the Sigillite. Malcador perished performing this endeavour, and the mortally wounded Emperor was reinstated upon the Throne after his battle with Horus. At his instruction, it was then enhanced and converted into the life-sustaining form it currently bears.5

Having re-read the Golden Throne description above, I'm reminded of how similar the Emperor's situation is to the Fisher King, especially if you consider that the original french word for "fisher" is spelled identically, save for a slight accent mark, to the french word for "sinner". As the Imperium wanes, so does the Emperor, or more specifically, so does his throne. Which begs the question, if there is a fisher king-esque association with the Emperor, is there a "promised one" who is capable of mending the emperor or his throne? And what precisely would "mend the emperor" entail?

After all, the Fisher King sustains himself via the Grail, which is a source of eternal life. As far as I know, only the golden throne has the ability to maintain "unending" life/death. As was mentioned above, the throne was used to connect to the webway originally and to power the astronomicon. In "mending" the emperor (in whatever vague interpretation that might entail), the golden throne could be used for "other" purposes than to keep the Emperor alive.

This might make for an interesting campaign. The acolytes discover either the equivalent of Percival, who could restore the throne, or find lore pertinant to maintaining the Emperor's throne. Obviously, any xenos or warp spawn who finds out about this would have great interest in killing or destroying this salvation, and you could even include radical inquisitors, the temple tendency, and just about any other faction you could think of. Imagine going from persecuting the Tendency to being sheltered by them.

I might have to work on this campaign concept.

Varius said:

No other race has Navigators, and humans didnt have them until well after they were already using the Warp and building an empire, a singular fact that seems to be completely overlooked in all but a few works. If the Emperor was vital to Warp travel, you wouldnt have Orks and other races using it!

Incidently, that Golden Throne description reinforces why I refused to read the Horus Heresy series after Horus Rising; if even Dan Abnett isnt able to handle the legendary times of the Imperium in a manner that isnt utterly absurd, then there's no hope for the series ever doing anything except ruining my enjoyment of the 40k background... I much preferred things when we didnt 'know' the 'truth' behind the mythology.

Eldar don't travel the warp in the same way.

Neither do Tau. (So says BFG). Humans with Navigators are faster.

Orcs travel by luck, not skill. Activate the drive and hope you survive.

The Tyranids follow a psychic beacon put out from the Genestealers.

I don't know a whit about the necron.

aramis said:

If memory serves, the Necron don't precisely travel through the warp. They wake up, and if something is in the planet/system, they devour it.

aramis said:

Eldar dont use the Warp, correct. It has also been hinted that the Hrud have something vaugely akin to the Webway, and theres more concrete stuff on the Saruthi having it too. Necrons (and one other minor race I forget) dont even use even vaguely Warp-related tech, instead using purely material universe scientific means.

But that list is the known limit to species with faster-than-light that doesnt involve the 'normal' Warp.

Everything else just reinforces the point. Almost all races use the Warp in the same form as the Imperium (remember, the above list only includes those tiny handful that are represented on the tabletop, when there are many, many more also in the background) . There are a myriad of races that dont appear in the tabletop game, all of which also must use the Warp. The Tau especially reinforce the point: their Warp technology is so primitive they are forced to make very shallow, short and slow jumps, because they cant even safely access the deeper parts of the Warp at all! All the other races will travel the exact same way as Orks, so putting it down to just 'luck' is way off base, because it is possible to navigate the Warp without Navigator. The Orks and a number of other races (Jokaero, Xenarch and Kroot, are just a few official examples) especially are actually very good at specifically targetting worlds, which rather more than implies that they have some specific knowledge of how to navigate even without a specialised Navigator gene, rather than just drifting wherever the currents take them. They wouldnt nearly be as much a threat if they just went 'meh' and drifted at random; most would simply be lost in the Warp, whilst many of the survivors would be scattered and even sent into heavily defended systems.

As for Tyranids, they do not home in solely on genestealers (who incidently, also use the Warp top move around, though this is one race that does do it ; they are quite capable of navigating to untouched desinations (they even analyse nearby star spectrums, and then travel to specifically selected ones by the Warp), all genestealers/lictors do is help narrow searches. However, of all races, the Tyranids seem to me to be most likely to actually have some capacity similar to Navigators. The very existance of the Immateria Novis as being part-xenos also suggests that there are some races that even have some limited technological means to navigate the Warp, though far below Navigator capability.

And there still remains the point that humans havent had Navigators the entire time themselves, so its possible to travel the Warp in a non-random fashion is pretty clear without even looking at how alien races do it.

IIRC Necrons actually have true FTL technology, they simply move faster than the speed of light within the material universe. The Tau method is still "normal" warp travel just in its most limited form. Not only do they not have navigators they dont have any psykers which means that they have trouble trying to map out warp routes as they have no one even close to being able to sense them. They kind of just nudge the barrier and get a springbored like effect from it. Thing is Tau ships will be getting faster but the only way to do that will to be to enter the warp more fully so the chances of avoiding the danger like they do now decreases alot.

Orks have an ability which was passed on to the Kroot I think when they aquired ork genetic material which is to basically home in on planets with a psychic signature and instinctively direct the ship to it thus arriving only at destinations that they can invade or in the Kroots case eat. Because Orks are psychic they do have a bit more control over the process than the Kroot do and some of thier psykers can probably control it "fully" or as much as that applies to an Ork or the Warp.

Kaihlik