Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-24383134-20140105071847/@comment-24383134-20140110033232

Passing over an issue some people seem to have with the Chaos Marines. Yes they are technically over 10,000 years old, but the nature of the warp can pervert the laws of time, even when just using it to travel, much less living in it.

Warp travel can alter the time frame of journeys, to the point that the time spent in the warp is what you estimate it to be, (10 weeks to travel from A to B) but the time in the Real Galaxy can be quite longer, years, decades, centuries and even millenia at times, and even if memory serves, its also possible to arrive at your destination before you left on your warp jump. So its hard to tell what the warp age is and what the 'real' age is. Darnath Lysander in fact was a prisoner of the Iron Warriors but the Materium time was over a millenium.

As to the original question I had, there are so many of the original Astartes around that they do seem to be immortal to the ravages of time. The Fallen (traitor Dark Angels), and the thirteenth company of the Space Wolves have all been around since the Heresy, but again, theres the Warp effect to consider.

This is the first I've heard of the Perpetuals, but if Vulkan is one, and the Primarchs were created from the Emperor's DNA then it is logical to assume that the Emperor is a Perpetual as well. A thought I had is that the Emperor is afraid to let his body die to regenerate because the Webway Portal he created is still being held shut by his mind, so if he dies, the portal opens and lets Daemons out onto Terra.