To Kill a God

By Aermas, in Dark Heresy General Discussion

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In an upcoming game I plan on the players eventually travelling the Webway chasing daemons & the BBEG. They will end up fighting their way through the Webway to the doors of the Golden Throne, bust their way in & then kill the Emperor of Mankind.

Yep, I know it is hugely out off the box & one of those thing that you aren't supposed to change. It's against the spirit of the game. But from what I've read in the lore I think it would be an interesting story arc

It doesn't end with him dead. He is reborn in the Warp. But in the intern the Astranomicon gutters & dies, huge warp storms burn with his fury & humanity is pushed to the brink.

Right now I just need to figure out the best way for him yo be reborn. Should it be as Ynnead in the core of the Eldars Infitity Circut? As the Starborn, who us only born with the deaths of the Emperor's anti-warp children? Or something else?

What are your guys' opinions on how I should handle it?

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Change whatever you want.

Killing the Emperor would have immediate, immensely powerful effects. You could really go anywhere you want with it. Does the Astronomicon still work? How long before he is reborn? Is he born as a child, or emerge fully reformed from the warp? Which factions saw this coming, and may have had a hand in making it happen or trying to prevent it?

Go with whatever you think your group would find most interesting.

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Or nothing happens, the Emperor died a long time ago and his supposed activity like the Astronomicon has a different cause. :lol:

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Your players are going to kill him or the NPCs are? This can have largely different effects obviously on the resulting backlash obviously. And something to consider with the PCs if they're the ones pulling the trigger, they're gonna be a bit different from your standard PCs RP wise. Just curious more than anything

Eitherway change whatever you want in the setting. Whether it's the current status quo (Emperor dies/Cadia is wiped out/Eldar succeed at their god thingie) or the underlining ideas of the setting (the Horus Heresy never happened/there are female space marines/the Imperium has split up into 4 groups that are themselves fairly united/ the warp is a kinda chill place/the Imperium is monodominant/the Imperium is chill with some Xenos). Do what works for your table

Like CPS said run through all the possible results of what could happen. And choose the most interesting combination for your game. Imperium splintering worse than ever, Imperium having a house cleaning and tying it together, Tera being destroyed by deamons, how well can the warp be navigated without the Astronomicon, how long does it take, does the Empra come back as a warp god/child/empra/something else, what is his agenda when he comes back? How does this effect your small team of acoltyes? Are they mere witnesses, trying to survive in their corner of space, are they caught up in the center of it? Sky's the limit.

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Many ways to go about it...
Perhaps he would not be reborn at all - instead, a soul already fractured by having remained torn between realspace and the Immaterium for 10,000 years finally shatters the moment its physical anchor is terminated. Just like how the Emperor was a product of a thousand shamans committing suicide and merging their spirits, the essence of this spirit is now once again scattered and bestowed upon a thousand unborn children across human space. Some of them will never be born, some of them will not survive their childhood, and some will wander far from the path of virtue, yet others are destined to become great heroes who may forge local resistance against the encroaching forces of Chaos, and perhaps, just perhaps, some day even meet one another and combine their efforts in a desperate push to reclaim humanity's worlds, with the final target being Harrowed Terra where the Arch-Traitor Abbadon is said to have usurped the throne of a god.
In another vision, the Emperor's soul remains in the Immaterium altogether. The long-delayed birth of a new entity in the Warp, a new "god" who thirsts for the emotion of hate and joins the other so-called Chaos Gods in their everlasting struggle for supremacy, abusing sections of humanity to pursue its alien, instinct-driven goals and machinations just like its cousins Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch and Nurgle do. Indeed, many scholars will later speculate that the Corpse-God has already done so for thousands of years, whilst part of it was still shackled to the physical realm, although the ultimate act of freeing its spirit would condemn mankind to what would later be known as the Thousand Years of Darkness - a period of purges, cleansings and brutal wars that would have the Age of Apostasy pale in comparison.
... but the subversive side of me is also greatly intrigued by Gridash's suggestion:

Or nothing happens, the Emperor died a long time ago and his supposed activity like the Astronomicon has a different cause. :lol:

Imagine if the Astronomican was once fuelled entirely by the Emperor, yet his "absence" has warranted the daily sacrifice of a thousand psykers to keep the light burning. The Golden Throne, once a device to help the Emperor focus His psychic power, now acts as an independent conduit for the choir, and the figure on it is nothing but a completely dessicated skeleton inside an ancient suit of golden armour, unmoving for millennia. Only a select few people are aware of this, the Imperium's darkest secret, and by entering the throne room your players do not only have to face the realisation that their greatest plan thus far was for naught, but that they will very soon have to deal with some powerful figures wishing to remove unsanctioned witnesses from the picture in order to protect their conspiracy. Powerful figures behind the scenes, whose influence would put even the High Lords to shame.

... But it all comes down to what cps has said. Try to get an idea what the people in your group would enjoy, and roll with it. :)