Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-14745711-20130906234048/@comment-6078851-20140906161540

the watchers in the dark are part of the cabal? that's news to me, and very interesting...

the human race did have a previous galactic empire but they in no way dominated the galaxy - back in those days the eldar were pre-fall and they, or the orks, were the dominant species of the galaxy. the reign of the emperor is the greatest galactic conquest the human race has known and even then they didn't dominate the galaxy. they were certainly trying to dominate, but so was everyone else. at best the human race has only achieved a 'superpower' status in the reign of emps. but when it comes to dominance i think that title has to go to the orks because, as far as i know, they inhabit more of the galaxy than anyone else and they're a very dominating people :P

emps could be a perpetual given that vulkan is, and vulkan was made from emps' genes. if emps is to be reborn in some way then being a perpetual is the one that makes sense, far more sense than the starchild theory. but my arguement against that is that surely emps, being the emperor of mankind and an unprecedented corporeal being, would know if he was a perpetual. he created the primarchs and knows that vulkan is a perpetual, so how come this potent being hasn't realised that he himself is the source of vulkan's perpetualness?

while i think the perpetual idea is the most realistic chance for emps' revival it's also possible that he isn't one, and that's why he hasn't let himself die. while he did crate the primarchs, they were created in a way that couldn't be repeated, which means even emps didn't know everything about the process, and the primarchs, being created by a process that emps didn't fully understand, could have easily gained attributes that emps didn't have, like sanguinius having wings, the 20th primarch's soul being shared by 2 bodies, or like vulkan being a perpetual.

so i'm sticking with the idea that emps dies when the throne fails, and he doesn't come back in any guise, and so the end times will occur without a human galactic empire - the small empires of humans, huddled like rats in the vast darkness of space separated from their neighbours by insurmountable distances, fearful of everything because everything will be more powerful than they - and will hopefully be an unimaginable battle between tyranids and every native species of the milky way, including chaos: by that time the natives will have to have realised that they can't survive against the tyranids while fighting each other and so will unite. chaos will be feeling the suffocation of the shadow in the warp by now as the hive miind will be fully (or very nearly fully) awake and will also realise that their own extinction is looming if the tyranids eat everyone, and so lend their daemons to the alliance as they are the only thing i believe tyranids can't consume (necrodermis is living metal and metals are needed for living organisms, so i think 'nids can consume necrons). cue *galactically epic fight scene with a melancholic classical score*. sweet :)