I'm posting this here 'cause I wanna use the Rogue Trader boards as a part of what can only be described as "a vicious anticipation for the game."

Anyways, I'm a 40K vet (~13 years of gaming, and reading in the 40K universe), but one thing I've never really noticed and just struck me is the lack of creation myths for the Imperium.

The Eldar have them, so do Necrons, and Orks, but the humans (with maybe the exception of the Mechanicum. Excuse the pun, but I'm a bit rusty on that part of the 40K universe) don't really have any instance of creation. I don't think the Emperor had a hand in the creation of humanity; if you want to go by the lore from the old Rogue Trader ('87) Realm of Chaos books, then he was created by a group of shamen in Turkey (I think) who combined their consciousness as they died.

Anyways, if I have it all wrong, and there is mention of a creation myth for humanity could someone fill me in? I imagine that if not, the reason could be that for GW to hold to a single creation myth for humans might be a little contraversial for their Earthling customers who do so much fighting over the subject already; thus they left it out, and just focus on a corpse god 38,000 years in the future.

Theological cosmology is dangerous ground in the Imperium influenced by the Ministorum. Consider: to define an origin of Mankind, you must also define an origin for the God-Emperor. Wars have been fought over less.

Some interesting snippets for your consideration:

1) the Omnissiah is eternal, for he Was, Is, and Will Be. The galaxy and the Universal Laws exist by His will, or so it is widely believed by tech-priests. The deeper theological mysteries of the Machine Cult may be predisposed to a view of the God-Emperor incarnate as a facet of a greater omnipotent creator.

2) The deep history of Mankind, that man arose from a primitive past upon a single world and then conquered the galaxy, is known to scholars. That history may not be the dominant one, or even well known in many parts of the galaxy, but it is the Divine and Mandated Truth propagated from Holy Terra by the varied branches of the Adeptus Terra.

3) The Ministorum seems remarkably unconcerned with history on the whole. Its teachings are predominantly timeless screeds that might be a century or fifty centuries old, pronouncements upon behavior and worship that say little about the past. The theologically important events occur in the metaphorical God-Time, to borrow a term, in the past, but at the same time contemporous. The God-Emperor ascended to the Golden Throne to watch over the sins of humanity: this happened, is happening, and is eternally relevant. Or such is the underlying message that seeps from the orthodox scriptures.

4) In the recent history of certain saints you see some interest in history, but again these figures (Drusus, etc) fade into the God-Time as the centuries past.

So you have the interesting state of affairs that the religious cosmology of the Machine Cult is in fact something more familiar to contemporary readers here in the real world, while Imperial cosmology is actually quite alien and more akin to that of primitive human societies. This despite the fact that the Machine Cult appears alien at its surface, while the Ministorum appears familiar at its surface.