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[Grim Portent]

Wait did the new version actually let the Emperor die and he isn't a Lich?

No, but he's dead by all useful definitions of the word. Not really undead either.

Also I think he is clinically dead, not enough organ meat left to call him alive.

I like to think of it as a very long death. He's already on the dead side of dying, but he's not able to finish.

[Neonivek]

So... he is dying and is kept alive via baby eating.

So still a lich, got it!

[pisskop]

He gains sustenance from the sacrifices, and totally not warp magic, right?  His daily psyker brunch is not a blood sacrifice, yes?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Latest fluff is that the "1000 psykers" thing is actually just the daily death rate for the choir that powers the Astronomicon. Emps doesn't eat them one way or another.

[Neonivek]

Latest fluff is that the "1000 psykers" thing is actually just the daily death rate for the choir that powers the Astronomicon. Emps doesn't eat them one way or another.

Ok so the Emperor is no longer a Lich?

[pisskop]

ahh yes, im sure people are scrabbling for the honor being kidnapped by silent sisters, boarded onto an unmarked ship that murders anyone who happens to hail them, gagged and chained once insidde, and led into a department specifically dedicated to powering a machine that murders them.

i dont doubt there are enough faithful, i doubt the idea that its a 1000 dead a day.  unless the amount of magi owering it is numbering in the thousands or they suck the peasant psykers for every ounce of vitality they have.  while the imperium is no doubt capable of that level of heartlessness, the inefficiency of itbis appalling in a world where the mechanicum exist and would have top crack at working on any machine.


if thats the latest fluff im very disappointed at this clear drifting away from 'grey morality', but weve seen that with chaos being 'only evil'.

[GiglameshDespair]

ahh yes, im sure people are scrabbling for the honor being kidnapped by silent sisters, boarded onto an unmarked ship that murders anyone who happens to hail them, gagged and chained once insidde, and led into a department specifically dedicated to powering a machine that murders them.

i dont doubt there are enough faithful, i doubt the idea that its a 1000 dead a day.  unless the amount of magi owering it is numbering in the thousands or they suck the peasant psykers for every ounce of vitality they have.  while the imperium is no doubt capable of that level of heartlessness, the inefficiency of itbis appalling in a world where the mechanicum exist and would have top crack at working on any machine.


if thats the latest fluff im very disappointed at this clear drifting away from 'grey morality', but weve seen that with chaos being 'only evil'.

Pretty sure a thousand psykers a day has been long-standing canon.

I'm also pretty sure someone did the maths in this thread before which showed a thousand psykers a day is easily supported by the size of the Imperium. And by keeping the Astronomicon lit, one could argue it's the most effective use of psykers (Navigators perhaps excluded but I doubt they're fed to the Throne anyway), as without it the Imperium would crumble within a day.

[Grim Portent]

Navigators perhaps excluded but I doubt they're fed to the Throne anyway

I don't think they could be fed to it anyway since they aren't true psykers, just another type of mutant who happens to be similar.

But yeah, most of the psykers the Imperium finds are useless anyway, possessing such a pathetic amount of power they could never amount to anything and will just go insane and/or become possessed. A big chunk of the psykers who are sent to be trained wind up getting culled anyway because they can't meet the required standards of willpower to be safe to wander around unsupervised or go too insane to be controlled. Even the ones that pass are mostly only barely useful and get assigned to the Guard as Wyrdvanes.

[pisskop]

were talking about whether 1k is attrition or sacrifice

[Grim Portent]

I think the 1k is currently attrition, the Astropathic choir on Terra is huge and suffers frequent burnout.

The sacrifices number well beyond 1k a day currently I think. I can't be bothered to check the wording, but the current rulebook says something along the lines of 'ever more souls are needed to power the arcane technologies sustaining his life.'

[Neonivek]

OK! So Lich. Still a lich.

[Rolan7]

I agree that he's probably essentially a lich, but I wouldn't try to nail it down like an absolute
The current nature of the emperor is complicated and somewhat mysterious.  Chaos claims he's a dead rotting corpse.  The loyal claim he's immortal and actively protects them.  It seems like there's truth to both.

He's not able to communicate, which to me suggests he's no longer conscious in a human way.  Sometimes I picture him as a dreaming god: being channeled by the faithful to perform the many acts of faith we see.
Or those acts of faith could be a mixture of archanotech and/or some misunderstood psyke-ability.  Humanity barely understands either except what they have manuals for.  He could be long dead and gone, with the true power being within them all along.

My own guess would be that his body is completely dead, skeleton and dusty flesh, really just a focus for his psy-ghost.  The power of the 1000 psykers a day keeps him from passing into the afterlife.  He instinctually acts as the astronomicon, guiding humanity and being channeled by the most faithful, neaaaaarly a full god.  But not really aware of what's going on.  Either too brainless to think, or (knowing 40k) fighting through an endless nightmare for humanity's sake.

So sorta-lich like in that he's preserved and magic...  But more like a mummy, IMO.  Or even a ghost, since the body never moves.
But that's just a theory.  A GAY THEORY

[MetalSlimeHunt]

By all accounts he is aware, he can stop time in the throne room and talk to people. This does have a certain tendency to drive them insane, but what can you expect?

[Egan_BW]

The emperor's corpse is basically the most holy artifact ever (think how powerful a staff made from emperor bones would be. But it's a whole body.) so his ghost uses it as a focus. He eats a bunch of souls in order to not dissipate.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

There was something I heard once about them preserving a patch of living cells on the Emperor's mostly dead body, but I forget if that was official or written by someone else.

Which makes me kind of depressed, as I'm now reminded that 2016 basically murdered /tg/ and all the good 40k stuff that comes out of it by flooding it with /pol/ people.