jareddm said:

Point your gun towards the hoards, tape down the trigger and go for lunch

I think that when the Golden Throne craps out and the Emperor's body finally dies he will fully manifest as a God. Not in that cheery Star Child theory way though. He would just join the ranks of the other Gods as a God of order/dominance. I've got a nagging suspicion that everything the Emperor did durring the Great Crusade (The Imperial Truth, The Horus Heresy, etc) was orchestrated so that he would become a God and be assured power and immortality for as long as sentient life exists.

So, in a post-Imperium society, I expect that the Sol system will have been enveloped by a new Warp Storm created by his birth as a God. Although, when the Eye of Terror exploded into existance it "blew out other warp storms like candles" or something. The Warp Storms that isolated the Sol system puttered out when the Eye of Terror was born. So I expect the same thing to happen again. The Maelstrom and the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath could quite possibly go out or at least shrink. The Eye of Terror would probably shrink a tad too.

And to keep with the theme 40k has going with humans being a superstitious lot, I expect the Imperial Cult will take a hit. The various scattered empires that the Imperium would collapse into would form theologies of their own. Some would still worship the Emperor, some would fall to the power of the Dark Gods or Daemons, some would form their own religions and philosophies, some would worship powerful warlords or psykers that unified a certain are of space. It would be a very case-by-case thing.

As for the Tau, the predictions of them asimilating humanity are quite preposterous in my opinion. The realm of Ultramar is one of the most powerful and self-sufficient parts of the Imperium and I fully expect for them to become one of the most powerful Human empires. They are also the Tau's neighbors and I doubt thaty would take kindly to Tau expansionism. Then there are the many Ork Empires and Hive Fleets in the area. The Tau will have plenty of problems to deal wih before taking the Imperium's place as the galactic power.

I think it would be a very exciting time period for us gamers of both the RPG and the war game. We'd be free to come up with our own empires and characters of note. Our own little detailed bit of space with its own politics and theology and history of its own. I'm not saying that we can't do that already, but to have that Imperial Creed be optional would be quite cool. Stories of heroism in an age of collapse. Also the idea that Emperor worship having more tangible effects now that he is handing out boons like other gods would be cool as well. On that note, I think that the Legion of the Damned Astarte chapter is actually the Emperor's first batch of Daemons shaped to his will. And if he is a proper God like the other four, that also adds the potential for xenos to worship him.

On a side note, I'd like the Eldar to have birthed Ynnead in this time. All the Craftworlds and Exodites and Dark Eldar will merge their collected souls they have kept over the years into a Godly being. When I say Godly being, I mean that he wouldn't be a god in the sense that the Big 4, The Ork Gods and the Emperor are. They are spiraling vortexes of energy in the warp given form and sentience by particular emtions of sentient life forms. Ynnead would be more akin to a powerful Daemon in that he is a life form that inhabits the Warp. There would be some Eldar left-overs though. Pirates and some Rangers don't exactly always add their souls to the collective. I think that they'd be pleseantly surprised to find out that now that Ynnead is puttin some heat on Slannesh, that the old Eldar reincarnation would work again. A period of revival may grip some of these dregs and they could form small cultures and empires of their own.

Out of all the theories that have been presented this seems most likely due to the envitable staleness of a fixed timeline and GW's thrist for the mullah.

macd21 said:

The Tau don't have the numbers to take on the Calixus Sector, let alone dominate any major power. They're only alive because the Tyranids distracted the Imperium.. Their tech isn't the equal of the best the Imperium can field. Some eldar faction seems to have plans for them and have tampered with them, but that's about it. They're one major Waargh or hive splinter fleet away from extinction.

There are huge hordes of Orks and Tyranids and that's leaving out the Necrons and Chaos completely.

The Tau won't be in the running anywhere but locally.

In the novel Eye of Terror, the oldest Lord of Change expects the Emperor to ascend to full godhood upon death and fight the gods of chaos with the intent of absorbing them into a single, sane whole. He doesn't know who will win.

I think that when the Golden Throne craps out and the Emperor's body finally dies he will fully manifest as a God. Not in that cheery Star Child theory way though. He would just join the ranks of the other Gods as a God of order/dominance. I've got a nagging suspicion that everything the Emperor did durring the Great Crusade (The Imperial Truth, The Horus Heresy, etc) was orchestrated so that he would become a God and be assured power and immortality for as long as sentient life exists.

So, in a post-Imperium society, I expect that the Sol system will have been enveloped by a new Warp Storm created by his birth as a God. Although, when the Eye of Terror exploded into existance it "blew out other warp storms like candles" or something. The Warp Storms that isolated the Sol system puttered out when the Eye of Terror was born. So I expect the same thing to happen again. The Maelstrom and the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath could quite possibly go out or at least shrink. The Eye of Terror would probably shrink a tad too.

And to keep with the theme 40k has going with humans being a superstitious lot, I expect the Imperial Cult will take a hit. The various scattered empires that the Imperium would collapse into would form theologies of their own. Some would still worship the Emperor, some would fall to the power of the Dark Gods or Daemons, some would form their own religions and philosophies, some would worship powerful warlords or psykers that unified a certain are of space. It would be a very case-by-case thing.

A valid theory, especially since there have been cases of angels appearing on the battlefield, and the miraculous abilities of the living saints. (I have a theory of my own that the Astronomicon is constantly undersiege by daemon hordes, and they're held back by human souls transformed into His angelic legion.) The only problem with this theory though, is that if the Emperor indeed did become a God, and the Astronomicon did not fail, the Imperium of Man would not fall. The Emperor's only has two actual roles that remain to him in the Imperium. The first and most vital is the matainence of the Astronomicon. The second is his light boons and miracles around the Imperium, as evident in the Inquisition War. However, the actually running of the Imperium is carried out by the High Lords of Terra, who's job it is to "interpret" His will. Now, I will say that if the Emperor becomes a true God, thus freeing up his attentions to more things than just His solemn duty, very likely mankind would reach a new golden age.

As for all the comments on the Tau, I will not attempt to change the naysayer's minds, but I will say that you are highly underestimating the bluies. I have no doubt that after the fall, they shall expand a great deal larger than they were, but it is probably correct to assume that they will not span the entire galaxy. The humans who do not join them will likely scatter into many empires underneath the Adepta Astartas. In this regard, I don't know why, but I keep relating humanity's situation to that of the Orks. Especially with so many Space Marine chapters not being the best of friends.

Then when it comes to the Eldar. I believe they'll still be around, and still be dying off slowly. I don't know why, but a quote in the Tau codex honestly has me seeing at least some of them join the empire. Probably not until the Tau have matured more as a species.

When it comes to the baddies, maybe we should stop beating around the bush and just get to the inevitable deathmatch between Chaos, Necrons, and the Tyranid swarm that will inevitabley envelope the entire galaxy (61st Millenium mayhaps).

Actually, this is an interesting question.

After giving it a little thought, I ll assume that, for better or worse, mankind will quickly have to dispense with a lot of the progress-inhibiting bull of the imperial creed, both due to necessity, and lacking supervision.

There are essentially two big things the Imperium will lack once the Emperor dies: The Astronomican and thus safe warp-travel via navigators, and a central unbreakable focus of belief, which is a strong social glue at any rate.

Once the Emperor dies and warp travel is ruined, the Imperium will split up into countless small fragments, single planets or smaller systems, limited in size by the distance that can be traveled within reasonable real time, probably not more than a handful of worlds at once. At that point, it becomes crucial to find a way to warp travel again... and luckily, with the central control of Terra and the Adeptus Mechanicus gone for the moment, several sources are suddenly viable.

Its perfectly reasonable to assume the Tau and the Eldar, both having mixed, sometimes amiable relationships to small parts of the Imperium, will be able and probably willing to help out, if at a price. Remember, the Eldar do have dealings especially with the Inquisition frequently, and they NEED the humans in order to prevent the galaxy going up into flames. The Eldar are fundamentally interested in an enlightened, powerful and eldar-friendly human race, and helping them out with stuff like warp travel, in exchange for influence and power, perhaps with limitations like requiring warlocks on any ship that travels etc., is the perfect opportunity.

The Tau, on the other hand, know full well that they have little to gain by antagonizing a falling empire which is the last line of defense for them against the tyranids at this moment. Current Canon, as far as I know, is that the Tau have come to realize how dangerous the situation in their area of the galaxy is, and are interested in not having to fight the Imperium for now. They would likely give up a lot of tech knowledge in the spirit of teamwork, asking for information, resources or whatever the Tau want in return. Remember, the Tau Empire is not quite THAT united, and a lot of powerful, warp-travel-less imperial worlds would make excellent powerbases for guys like Commander Farsight, so its in their best interest to maintain stability.

The Imperium will certainly suffer badly around the Eye of Terror and in the outer regions due to Ork Attacks, Chaos, and the occasional dark eldar or necron threat, but it its huge, and frankly, it still takes a long time for a Chaos Incursion to chew threw a planet, isolated or not.

The tyrandids arent exactly stoppable by military power anyway, and warp travel wasnt usable to fight them due to their shadow, so it doesnt hurt much there.

I think the Imperium in the 60th millenium may well be a more technologically advanced realm, possibly with a less powerful but more knowledgable race pulling the strings in some areas, and will probably start to expand and re-conquer with a much higher level of science and less inhibiting religion the areas lost.

Of course, if the Eldar never step in, and the Tau get absorbed into little blue tyrands, the entire galaxy would be pretty much the Chaos/Tyranid deathmatch. I dont find that to sound very sensible in light of what we know of the Eldar , though.

I been thinking about it and the real question is what would be interresting to play ?

Hmm as I would think is that the Tau would more than likley take in any humans who are willing to join, many planets like cadia and catachan wouldn't be effected by the lack of other planets to help them. I'd wouldn't be suprise to see that the space marines would probably give up the whole 1000 limit and probably go into hiding. The rest of the Imperium that isn't under tau control, hiding with space marines, or bunkering on their own planet would go into guerilla warefare mode and thats where i would place the game, average civilians forced into war to fend off the horde of chaos.

Actually I think that the Tau and Eldar would probably help Humans the best they could sence both are against Chaos aswell.

The eldar might offer a limeted guide in use of webway gates to the imperium in order allow them to keep their enemies at bay.

But in some region the ad- mech will merge or be replaced by the logicians or another science community.
Aand my ulitimate prediction is mankind returns to the dark age of technogy like never before and kill the entire galaxy includeing necrons and tyranids, only to be defeated be the Men of Iron MK.II, who kills all life to stop all wars, sorrow, hunger and misery, where after they will choose some planets from where to insure life does not rise again.

Cynical Cat said:

The Tau don't have the numbers... yet. Their technology is constantly leaping forward, in a millenium they will probably equal, if not surpass, that of the Dark Age of Technology. Their empire expands rapidly, at the moment the only thing really stopping it is the Imperium. Once the Imperium shatters, the Tau will be able to absorb human worlds with ease. Again, their culture was designed with this in mind - their willingness to accept non-Tau into their empire allows them to expand quickly, especially with the amount of human worlds out there that will be just waiting to be gobbled up.

This will, as I said before, take a long time. And it's true that another force could wipe them out before they succeed. But it is quite definately a possibility. That is the horror of the Tau - they are the successor race for humanity. They have been designed with the fall of the human race in mind. Someone out there (the Eldar) have forseen the end of the Imperium and coldly decided that they needed an alternative race to impose order on the galaxy.

Basically, the Tau plot is clearly taken from Asimov's Foundation series, which is pretty much exactly the same accept all the factions are human.

I've got two factions working against each other in my part-time game which revolves around the Illuminati against the Missionaria Protectiva. They've both got ideas on what will happen on the failure of the golden throne, probably neither of them being actually right and mostly fuelled by superstition, hokey theories, wildly improbable philosophical ideas and acute desperation... but that's never stopped anyone from believing in something of a religious nature
Neither group is very pleasant and they're both extremists in their methods

The Illuminati, the cabal of psykers are rounding up Sensei for extermination, believing that if they wipe out enough of them, then when the throne fails the surge of the emperors soul going into the warp will cause an eventual rebirth or reformation of the collective psyker consciousness in some form which is beneficial to humanity. Either as a god or another Emperor. Their members are indiviually fairly powerful, including some of the more radical inquisitors and some of the non-soulbound psykers in positions of power in Imperial society, they're also not a force to be trifled with, they might tread very quietly but they've got a big stick in terms of access to information and a very large following. Not to mention a lot of ‘bang’ when it comes down to it.
They figure that it'll all work out in the end if they kill off enough of the emperor’s descendants for it to come to fruition, to some extent they’re also willing to act as a suicidal death cult, killing off their own members as a method of bringing about that critical mass.

The Missionaria Protectiva I unashamedly stole the Bene Gesserit out of Dune, mostly because GW was happy enough to steal most of the other good bits out of the Frank Herbert novels, I decided they needed a quiet little place to practice their religious and social conditioning somewhere in the Imperium as a power by not being in power modus. They're a smaller force limited mostly to a core group of the SoB's and most of their higher ranks are specially trained Dialogous, but they do have a few outside the SoB's in support roles. Extremely influential, I wont document every aspect of them here but they've got hooks in fairly much everything that matters in the Imperium and have a number of covert programs of Sensei hoping to get one or two ‘breeding true’ so to speak capable of holding the soul of the emperor when the throne falls. They also have fairly much the talents of a Bene Gesserit I wrote up in a background-career path for Dialogous, not to be messed with unless you really want to literally fall on your own sword and they take no crap from any psykers...
The Missionaria wish to have things 'back to the good ol days' of the emperor walking around smacking the enemies of humanity and vehemently oppose the idea of change from the status quo, they understand a change is coming, but they want to control that change. For that they need specially controlled circumstances for it to happen. If you oppose them, they'll burn you as a heretic, if you're useful to them, you can go far in life walking an easy road to power and influence going all the way to the high lords of Terra. They also have a smaller breeding program of nulls which supplies the Culexus temple and have access to the deployment of Assassins with fairly close ties to the Assassinorium from an old debt.

(But the great thing is, knowing about either organisation is going to get the average person really dead! )

The tau plot follows the cyclic nature of the galaxy in 40k.

The Old Ones rule the galaxy, get booted out and then the Eldar take over as their successors. The eldar rule the galaxy for millions of years until their very technology brings them low. Without the need to do anything they desperately seek something to keep their minds active, until they debauch themselves into Slannesh and humanity takes over as their successors. The Imperium is crumbling because of the loss of the Emperor during the heresy. When it finally falls apart the Tau will be their successors.

However the tau have it pretty tough. They are far smaller than humanity was when they took over from the eldar and they don't have demi gods to lead them. The ork waaaghs! and nid fleets in the vicinity may stall their advance altogether.

I wouldn't mind seeing the eldar attempting to recolonise their planets and reinstating their empire. You can only take so much 'woe is me' dying race crap before you want them to just kill themselves or get over it..

It would be I think a much more interesting world with multiple mini empires rather than the traditional over empire assailed on all sides that 40k keeps going with. A human enclave, perhaps even set up by the LOGICIANS in a cruel twist of fate become the most advanced and enlightened humans. An eldar empire nascently growing again and a tau empire as well as dozens of other alien races.

More Babylon 5 and less Star Wars.

Hellebore

So when the Emperor becomes the next Chaos God, what will he embody?

That's one of the inherent flaws of the idea that the Emperor will defeat chaos. Chaos is formed from the basic emotional components of sentient life, the god emperor couldn't defeat it without somehow preventing sentient races from emoting.

The problem with gods like the emperor is that they are very narrow and focused deities, built from specialised abstract concepts. The chaos gods are inherently more robust because they are the core of emotional states that all sentient races exhibit. You can point to the emotions that feed khorne as rage and anger are universal. It's much harder however to point to that which feeds the Emperor. Is he the god of duty? Duty is only present as a societal concept, individually duty is to oneself.

I don't think the emperor could embody any real emotions. He seems to be an abstract sentient construct and is only fuelled by humanity. The chaos gods on the other hand are powered by the rage, lust, despair, and hope of the entire galaxy...

Hellebore

He is the focus of so much Death, he could become the Chaos God of Death, but he is also a "Hungry" God consuming so many Souls, Hopes & Lives so perhaps Famine. their are also less basic concepts that as a Chaos God he could embody, but so far the major four have bean the embodyment of basic concepts.

He will embody all emotions of man. And starve the other 4 to death. And thus defeat them.
And since he takes all emotions, is main goal is Enlarge the imperium of man, so that more emotions will feed him.

Or he will embody all good related emotions.

I was talking with a friend of mine about this, and he came up with an interesting theory regarding the Tau. If the Tau are indeed ment to be the successor race of humanity and eldar, both of which having some form of godly backing, it would seem only logical that only a race with godly backing could raise to that mantle. Our theory is that the Tau do have this in the form of the Greater Good. If the warp is the physical manifestation of emotion, there should be nothing preventing a society that has wholly dedicated itself to altruism, to create a warp entity in the same strain as the Eldar accomplished and the Emperor is attempting. Clearly their numbers aren't enough to succeed at the moment, but perhaps this is the reason for their lack of warp pressence. The warp entity they created from the Greater Good can do only one thing, masking the Tau from the warp as much as possible to prevent drawing the ire of the other warp gods. Clearly this doesn't work when the Tau end up conquring planets controlled by chaos. Perhaps this is also why there are no psykers among the Tau, to prevent them from giving away their own existance to chaos, as dictated by the Greater Good.

I know it's certainly sketchy, Tau-fanboyish, and blown to smoke if the Emperor does end up embodying all emotion, but I had never heard it before so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Actually in the "grand scheme of things", when it comes to Tau, I always figured that they were nurtured in their primitive state by a previous race of overseers that gave them ability to evolve so quickly and operate as psychic blanks. I used to think the Old Ones or the Eldar, but recently I'm starting to think the remnants of the Slann could have done it. At any rate I believe the plan was to create a species naturally immune to the lure of Chaos; one that could conquer without being dependant on a god. Though good in theory, this does fall through in the Tau's all-welcoming attitude, since it is possible for Kroot and Human auxilaries to be psykers (that's not to mention the very psychic race they have it Battle Fleet Gothic.) So I think the Tau were meant to be one thing, a shining beacon of hope in the galaxy, which we see now. As their empire grows, however, they are likely to have large internal problems with corruption in the assimilated races, with the resulting societal conflicts undermining the Greater Good, leaving the Ethereals as the real backbone of the empire.

A few questions.

1 What If the Emperor became a new "good" chaos god, upon death?

2 What of the 2 "lost" legions?

3 What of all the missing Primarchs?

4 What of the Old Ones?

5 What if humans stopped being like elves in DnD (Fing Retarded)

Dagda said:

1. Discussed above.

2. What about them? As we discussed before after the fall of the Imperium the Astartes Chapters would likely carve out their own empires, and granted, the lost Legions would be of much larger size, but since next to no information exists on them, there's almost no speculation that can be used with them right now.

3. Well, likely those that are not dead would continue to persue their own goals. One or two (if there's that many still even alive) might attempt to return and take His Holy Majesty's place as leader, but for the most part, the same applies as #2.

4. If they're not dead, they're gone. Though some believe that that Tyranids are in fact controlled by one who left the galaxy. Either way, some of their servants should still be lingering around in the Slann.

5. I think you'll need to clarify, in which way are the humans "retarded"?

First I think we need to separate things here.

One is this is a very nice fluff but it need to sell stuff so wiping out a faction is not a good idea (I KNOW ABOUT STOUTS), specially Humans, because is what we are.

So in a sense of merchandising, you will change stuff without changing everything, you have to feed the stale mate, the grimdark and everything about it.

So probably the flaw will generate something that does not make the Imperium fall, just sink it in more grim dark, like saying the beacon is now weaker so the outer limit is srhunk or could go with now it needs 1000000 souls per day to maintain the beacon, or psyker are now more rampart than ever some stuff like that, maybe even that the NIDS are atraccted to terra even more and want to eat it all. It chages stuff but in the end it changes nothing.

In the other hand if you want a prediction about what would happen if the things flow without selling minis in mind, thats really hard but what everyone seems to forget that deep space probes sent by the imperium only picked "orkish" chatter so it could mean that the greens are ounumbering everyone, even the nids, I mean after all they are a FUNGUS!!!. One could argue that nids suck the atmosphere of a planet, so not even orks could flourish, if that is the case, well Necrons don't need pansy atmospheres. Then you have dark eldar with a whole city in the webway they could survive everything and just **** each other when there are no more slaves.

Face it TAU are just in here because they sell mecha, they are not a real faction, they can't conquer the galaxy as Chaos will gangbang the minds of these childs.

So what I would personally like, Emperor restored, kicking ass, galaxy conquered, only orks prevail because green is good.

For the other fanboys just change the faction and you will have very differents vies of a subject that has not enough information to predict an outcome.

Face it TAU are just in here because they sell mecha, they are not a real faction, they can't conquer the galaxy as Chaos will gangbang the minds of these childs.

You do know that they're immune to Chaos don't you? That's their whole big thing...

Not inmune, very low signature, and after all I am pretty sure they are not inmune to an AXE wielded by a Khornate.

And if I recall right Tau has a mayor problem in Melee.

The way things are currently going in the fluff it will be Necrons vs Tyranids in the end. With the nids providing an almost endless source of life energy for the C'tan's clanking armies. The great hive fleets could potentiall be exhausted to the point that they are forced to halt their advancement and just buzz around a few sectors. Then the Necrons will finish "weeding" the galaxy and then take another nap for a million years or so while their gods have wicked fat and happy dreams.

I think that there would be pockets of all the races that would manage to survive. They would just be truly tiny such that the necrons could pass over them. Humanity is harder to kill than cockroaches. The Eldar have their hot rod craftworlds with dual exaust and spinners. The Dark Eldar would continue to invent new bondage gear in the corrupted web ways. The Tau would just hug their way to some corner of the galaxy and make their special koo-aid until it was time to drink it. The Orks will always be around in a much more annoying way than even the Tyranids so there's no wiping them out. The forces of chaos are just as vile to the C'tan as any other warp-disturbing life force so they would be reduced to whispers in the ears of the remaining living things.

It would provide an etch-a-sketchlike clearing of the board for almost everyone. Fast forward a few millennia to the galaxy of the 61st millenium would be an interesting place to have some adventures rediscovering and reconnecting with old colonies, other races and firing up the warmachines yet again as everyone realizes that in the post-grim future of the 61st millenium that living in peace is as impossible as it always has been.

Once the various living forces in the galaxy get to a certain point then the Tyranids that have been building back up this whole time will start to feast again, and the Necrons will wake back up and be like...wtf die you jerks.

Rinse...Repeat until all the stars are dead and the entire universe is done with.

Then you just change channels to alternate reality B1 where the eldar wear pants on their heads and it's the 21st millenium.