Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-96.237.238.119-20131218020230/@comment-6078851-20131224013522

as much as i would like to see many things occur, emps reborn/recover, primarchs returning etc, i don't think they would stop, or even stall, the degredation of the imperium and by extension the human race. if it were written that they did usher in the 'new golden age of humankind' while crushing any and all opposition then i, personally, would be disappointed - this is 40k, there are no (should be no) happy endings. the grim darkness is what we all love about this franchise and if things turned out a-ok then that would go against the very grain of the concept.

emps can't be cured, he is physically dead, all that remains is the golden throne (which is failing and will fail) maintaining his mind. his mind, while residing largely in the warp, is still intrinsically connected to his brain, and when the throne can no longer keep the brain going then his conciousness also goes.

his mind is the amalgamation of god knows how many shaman, all fusing their spirits into one uber entity in order to stop/stem the chaos gods from absorbing their individual souls, and it's my belief that after emps dies one of two things happens - 1) his conciousness detonates, similar to the birth of slaanesh, and a huge portion of space becomes another rent in the fabric of realspace, and the centre of the human homeworlds are then all gone. or 2) his mind falls apart back into the individual components which created it in the firstplace, whereafter they are all devoured by chaos. it's by this reasoning that i seriously doubt in the starchild theory. oh yeah, and when he goes, out goes the single guiding light and cohesive force holding the imperium together.

it may take centuries for stronghold areas of imperial space to be destroyed, but when the astronomican goes out the imperium is immediately cut off from quick communications and safe warp travel, fractured into tiny pockets of military strength, unable to communicate quickly with even their closest neighbours, and with no idea of what's happening in non-local space. all this dooms any feasability of an empire larger that steller. it may take centuries, or even millenia, for all the remnants of the imperium to be destroyed, but when the astronomican dies at the source then the imperium is immediately, and irrepairably, shattered.

granted the human race will probably exist for a long, long time after the imperium's downfall, but without another emperor there will never be another human empire on the scale of the imperium.