Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-25618639-20141119150740/@comment-6078851-20141217165631

when saying that returning primarchs would most likely spark off a second galactic civil war, i wasn't meaning that things would return to a semblance of normal if the inquisition/ecclesiarchy win, or that things would return to how they were in emps' ambulatory days if the primarchs/astartes win.

if there's truth in gw advancing the story with an 'end times' theme then such a civil war would just be the start of the imperium's problems (or their 2nd problem if emps kicks the bucket before the primarchs return): regardless of who wins the civil war i believe, in conjunction with emps' death, the imperium will be shattered beyond repair, and will fall. with the collapse of the imperium the primarchs then have to try and salvage what's left and attempt to defend it against the alien hordes clamouring to fill the spaces left by the imperium's collapse.

an 'end times' theme doesn't mean the end of everything, but it should mean the end of something and the end of the imperium is catastrophic enough to qualify. then a bunch of primarch-led mini-empires attempt to hold together the remnants of the imperium or try creating a new empire more in keeping with emps' vision. although without the astronomican even a primarch-led empire wouldn't be capable of reaching the scale of the imperium, and as such would be in considerably more danger of extinction.

this is what i want to see happen but we can never discount gw's ability to create bs situations that defy the logic of the franchise - it could very well be that the 'end times' would be emps becoming a warp entity, instantly wipes out the chaos gods, and sets about wiping out every species which is hostile to humans, and then 40k's full of peace, harmony, rainbows and butterflys. that would suck, and while unlikely not impossible :P