Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-14745711-20130906234048/@comment-6078851-20141121163722

i may be wrong but wasn't earth's potential webway entry sealed by emps, as in permamently sealed after magnus accidently broke emps' psychic daemonic barrier? plus wasn't it 'almost' but not actually finished?

as far as i know emps was the only person who understood anything about the mechanics of creating a way into the webway and after he dies there will be no other member of the human race who could possibly complete what emps didn't quite finish.

it then raises the question of how much influence or contact amongst the human race emps will be capable of - he may be able to communicate directly with anyone he chooses in which case he could simply oversee the completion of the webway project, or, he may have so much of his attention forcefully gained by the chaos gods in their perpetual struggle that he may have very little time/effort to give to humanity, or, he may transcend to such a degree that his conciousness would simply be too removed from humanity to be able to have any contact with.

there is also the question of how long is the interim between his death and his warp rebirth. as mentioned it could be hundreds of years, which is sort of the timeline i subscribe to as it leaves plenty of time for the imperium to utterly disolve :P, or he could burst into being within the warp the second his physical body dies, which also leads to the possibility of the creation of another eye of terror - now that would be a pretty serious change to 40k's story: emps is reborn within the warp but his birth destroys the sol system and more than a few neighbours, the heart of the imperium and mechanicus gone in a second.

personally i think gw will opt for the rapid return, i'd guess no more than a single year so plenty of time for things to go very badly for the imperium but still time for some hope. if they are genuinely advancing the story i doubt they'll be advancing it the hundreds of years required for emps' slow return, plus if he returns quickly i could say with a fair degree of certainty that gw aren't going to destroy earth and mars at the same time, so no second eye of terror: i would be very happy to be proved wrong on that account though - any gw writers reading this, hinthint :)

at the very least though, whether we like what comes or not, the story may actually be moving forward in the very near future, which is a long overdue good thing. after having seen the story stagnate for over 20 years i'll be happy for any advancement, but preferrably an advancement that drastically changes the status quo.