publication croisée depuis : https://lemmy.world/post/1892386
Behold, envision a figure of unparalleled greatness, a majestic legend whose name echoes through the ag- Ok I’m doing too much. So, Imagine the king is an absolute legend of a hero, and people think he’s ruling over the land but he’s been dead for 50 years and no one knows, and people create a Mythos about him, saying things he never actually did to want to look cool and say they saw him
Wait are you telling me the Emperor is actually dead (I only read lore about the Tau because they were the one I was interested in)
The Emperor’s body is physically about as dead as you can get, but he is such a powerful Psyker (read: magic user) that they keep his body alive on life support in order to harness the powers of his brain. The life support system (Called the Golden Throne) is so demanding that they literally need to provide him ~1000 human sacrifices per day, specifically people with psionic/Psyker capabilities.
However, a huge amount of the Empire’s logistical infrastructure depends on him, since his mind provides a beacon (called the astronomicon) that allows ships to navigate the Warp (another dimension, full of Eldritch horrors, useful for FTL travel, similar to D&D’s astral plane).
Most of the empire has become convinced that the Emperor himself is a living God, that he is omniscient and can enact his will around the galaxy. They are somewhat justified in this as well, since praising the Emperor is an effective way of repelling demons (IIRC this is just because believing in anything with enough zeal will repel demons).
Also, as soon as someone begins to doubt the divinity of the emperor, the chaos gods are able to start influencing/corrupting them, so it’s generally considered a dick move not to praise the emperor. Agnosticism, atheism, and even just having your own interpretation about the imperial cult literally represent a threat in the same way a terrorist might.
I especially like the theory that the people known as Living Saints are, in effect, the Emperor’s Greater Daemons.
The canon keeps it pretty ambiguous whether or not he’s actually alive IIRC. Several of the alien races refer to him as a “corpse emperor”, and obviously human sources in-world are unreliable. Either way, since he hasn’t actually been seen for 10,000 years, the effect is the same as OP describes.
Dammit, the idea is so good
Like I said to the other person, don’t hesitate to use it just because someone else has done it first. As the quote goes: “Good writers borrow, great writers steal”.
As I understand it - Basically it’s assumed he is kept barely alive to keep the astronomicon (the beacon for warp travel) working. Some people think he is a perpetual (someone who can revive after death) but if he leaves the throne the warp in Terra won’t be kept in check anymore and will be lost. Most likely they’d lose the ability to travel the warp as well.