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[Rolan7]

Howzat?  Would the Geller fields stop working or something?

About the Emperor: Wasn't there some speculation that he is an eternal, so if he ever truly dies he will be reborn? I think there is even a cult that has that as one of its core tenets.

Nobody really wants to find out for sure though, and even if he is eternal what if it takes a while for him to return?

I'm partial to the idea that he would die and become a warp god.  Maybe he wouldn't have at first, explaining why he designed this way to stay around, but after feeding on all these psykers for millenia.  Super speculative though, yeah nobody knows and everyone's afraid to find out (maybe even Chaos, haha!)

I have a theory regarding machine spirits. Everything has a psychic imprint in the warp, including non-living things. The more complex those things, the more complex the imprints. Since machines are complex things, they would have complex imprints, and that complexity in the warp is why machine spirits are as weird as they are.

I like that as a theory, though Necrons are really good at commanding machines (at least in DoW, maybe fluff?).  Machines having too much warp presence would make that weird.  My favorite explanation is that they're AIs the Mechanicum doesn't know about (or secretly delight in), but it probably is a combination of stuff yeah.

[milo christiansen]

If the Emperor died (assuming the custodes could keep it quiet so there wouldn't be immediate panic):

1) The astronomicon would go offline. Bad. Very Bad. Navigation would still be possible, but it would be very difficult and dangerous. Many ships would be lost to the warp (particularly since modern navigators are not used to doing without).

2) Astropaths would be hideously vulnerable? AFAIK astropaths are made up mostly of those psykers strong enough to send messages, but too weak to protect themselves properly (those strong enough to protect themselves are used for other things). To this end they are basked in the Emperors light, and have protections imposed on them from without. Are these protections held by the Emperor, or are they set once and left?

3) Miracles in the Emperor's name may not be possible for a time? This depends on if it is the faith that matters, or if it is the faith plus the Emperor's will.

Is there anything else?

[Neonivek]

Don't forget the Psychers would all go insane at once... Demons would have no problem teleporting right into the imperium city... and not to mention it would break everyone's heart.

[GiglameshDespair]

If the Emperor died it might well cause a second Eye of Terror to open and consume Terra and nearby systems, removing the heart of the Imperium. The Golden Throne is a damaged portal to the Webway, after all, and Emps has held a rift nearly shut for 10k years.

[Tack]

implode the imperium.

I think it's a bit late on that front...

[Rolan7]

If the Emperor died (assuming the custodes could keep it quiet so there wouldn't be immediate panic):

1) The astronomicon would go offline. Bad. Very Bad. Navigation would still be possible, but it would be very difficult and dangerous. Many ships would be lost to the warp (particularly since modern navigators are not used to doing without).

2) Astropaths would be hideously vulnerable? AFAIK astropaths are made up mostly of those psykers strong enough to send messages, but too weak to protect themselves properly (those strong enough to protect themselves are used for other things). To this end they are basked in the Emperors light, and have protections imposed on them from without. Are these protections held by the Emperor, or are they set once and left?

3) Miracles in the Emperor's name may not be possible for a time? This depends on if it is the faith that matters, or if it is the faith plus the Emperor's will.

Is there anything else?

That seems like a good summary, and I didn't know about 2.  I knew about navigation, but Neo was saying "even for a second" would be disastrous.  Based on 2, I guess likely so.

[milo christiansen]

I am not 100% sure about #2, but I am fairly sure I got it right... I think I need to spend some more time on the 1d4chan wiki

[GiglameshDespair]

I am not 100% sure about #2, but I am fairly sure I got it right... I think I need to spend some more time on the 1d4chan wiki

I think you're pretty close.
Astropaths are soul-bound to the Emperor, so if he died it'd probably go poorly for them.

When a big psychic xenos called the Cacodominus was killed, it distorted the Astronomicon with its death scream and killed around a billion astropaths, causing the loss of millions of ships and the collapse of several subsectors.

So it'd be grim for the Imperium as a whole as suddenly no one could communicate over interstellar distances.

[Rolepgeek]

imperial tarot is one of the fine examples of superstition that might be real via belief..
humans are on the way to becoming orcs

Aren't machine spirits very much the same thing? Pretty much every human thinks human machines have spirits in them, so they do. And nobody but humans themselves and orks can actually use human tech.

Machine Spirits are healthy mix of technology so advanced it seems like magic, leftover AIs, not-actually-AIs but advanced programming, brains-in-jars, psychic imprint of dead crews and people who worked on those machines and yes, indeed, a belief it works, so while the concept exists, it's not like it's just simply "it happens because we belive it happens", there are a lot of actual causes for stuff to happen even without belief.
Also, Chaos, Tau and Eldar can use human tech, Eldar just usually refuse to because it's so infernor, Tau just reverse engineer it and while Chaos usually doesn't use the newer stuff, but that's only because they lack the facilities to mass produce that shit.

I had an idea at one point about the Tau creating an ansible (FTL communications device, which was originally proposed to work via quantum entanglement of particles on either end) which their resident heretek Enginseers described best as a machine spirit astropath. The story continued by having most ansible stations suddenly drop out of contact as daemons said hi (and were probably very disappointed by a distinct lack of delicious psykers), which also cut off contact with the long distance colonies they'd been trying out.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not sure about astropaths, but I know that Navigators can be replaced with machines, because that's what was used for warp jumps in the DAoT. Warp cogitators are still on some ships as archaeotech. I also vaguely recall that in Dark Heresy even normal ship cogitators can be used in a warp jump without a Navigator. It's recklessly suicidal, but it can work. In theory.

[nenjin]

You can have cogitators do the calculations for very small jumps, like less than a light year. Beyond that the computational power required becomes enormous, and starts relying on subjective judgments about the state of the warp only Navigators are qualified to make.

I imagine if you had an incredibly old archeotech ship with a huge, bad ass cogitator, it could mostly replace your navigator though.

[sprinkled chariot]

There was one bit of lore, how tau tried operating captured imperial ships : they tried to do, what techpriests do, but they refused to do anything, what they thought to be insane guela superstitution like servitors dancing in geometrical patterns and singing in binary to please Omnissiah,endless litanies, candles, purity seals and all the things we love adeptus mechanicus for. And imperial ships  just were not working without " insane guela superstitution ".
So at least imperial navy literary works on faith.

[Rolan7]

Faith, or AI that demands certain rituals (or is just loyal to humanity).

Really the point is that it's a mystery...  Humanity doesn't understand its own tech at all, and that's sad.

[nenjin]

Really the point is that it's a mystery...  Humanity doesn't understand its own tech at all, and that's sad grimdark.

Fix't.

There was one bit of lore, how tau tried operating captured imperial ships : they tried to do, what techpriests do, but they refused to do anything, what they thought to be insane guela superstitution like servitors dancing in geometrical patterns and singing in binary to please Omnissiah,endless litanies, candles, purity seals and all the things we love adeptus mechanicus for. And imperial ships  just were not working without " insane guela superstitution ".
So at least imperial navy literary works on faith.

That's more or less shamelessly taken from the lore behind Ork tech. Contrast that to stories about Imperials completely disregarding the religion behind technology, cutting out all the bullshit, and having full command of its capabilities. Still there's other stories about ship machine spirits with wills, personalities, taking independent action....so it's the usual "Nothing is forbidden, everything is permitted" 40k lore.

[Neonivek]

That's more or less shamelessly taken from the lore behind Ork tech

Yes... Yes it is.

To admit though the Eldar has also said that Imperium Science is just nonsense. The Imperium has invented science that may or may not be true.