Introduction
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war – and in that endless night, the Emperor of Mankind stands as humanity’s eternal guiding light. For ten thousand years He has sat immobile upon the Golden Throne of Holy Terra, the undying guardian of the Imperium.
To untold trillions of the faithful, the Emperor is more than a man: He is the God-Emperor, the Master of Mankind and divine Father of humanity. The mere utterance of His name is both a prayer and a battle-cry on a million worlds.
From the height of His earthly reign to the sacrifice that binds Him to the Throne, the Emperor’s life is the grandest saga in human history. Imperial scholars and remembrancers record His deeds in reverent tomes, and the Ecclesiarchy preaches His legend as holy scripture.
He is the Light of the Astronomican that guides ships through the Warp, the Shield against the horrors of Chaos, and the sacred Lord of a million worlds. This chronicle, penned in awe by a humble Imperial scribe, recounts the mythic journey of the Emperor of Mankind – from His mysterious birth in ancient days, through the triumphs and tragedies of Unification and galactic conquest, to His eternal vigil upon the Golden Throne.
The Birth of the Emperor
Before the dawn of recorded history, when humanity was young and scattered, a singular hope was born to safeguard our species. Legends tell of a conclave of ancient shamans – wise and powerful psykers of prehistoric Terra – who foresaw a coming age of horrors.
In an age before memory, these shamans united in a great ritual, sacrificing themselves and merging their souls in the Warp so that they might be reborn as one mighty being. From their selfless sacrifice came the New Man: the child who would become the Emperor of Mankind.
The Emperor’s birth, it is said, occurred in a primitive land of Old Earth around the 8th Millennium BC. Though born to mortal parents, the young Emperor was anything but ordinary. From earliest youth He displayed miraculous abilities – psychic powers and wisdom far beyond any human.
For long ages He walked the Earth in anonymity, guiding and protecting early humanity from the shadows. Across countless generations, the Emperor quietly steered mankind’s progress and intervened in moments of utmost peril, all while waiting for the right time to openly lead His people.
That moment came at the end of the Age of Strife – Old Night – when Terra lay in anarchy and despair. At last, after millennia of preparation, the Emperor stepped forward from myth to begin the great work for which He had been born.
The Unification Wars
The Age of Strife had reduced Terra – humanity’s homeworld, once the cradle of civilization – to a hellish battleground. Warp storms had cut off human colonies among the stars, and Old Earth had fallen into techno-barbarism and anarchy. Petty warlords, psyker tyrants, and rad‐mutant warlords fought endless wars with scavenged science and crude brutality. It was a time of misery and blood – a world sinking into oblivion, awaiting a savior.
Into this cauldron of strife came the Emperor, unveiling Himself at last as mankind’s warlord and hope. Gathering the wisest and strongest allies (such as Malcador the Sigillite), He forged an army unlike any seen before.
The Emperor’s forces included the dread Thunder Warriors – giants of war created through arcane gene-craft, stronger and fiercer than any normal man. Clad in thunderous power armour and wielding devastating weapons, these warriors marched alongside regiments of disciplined human troops and the golden warriors of the Legio Custodes.
Thus began the Unification Wars – a brutal campaign to conquer all the warring factions of Terra and reunite humanity’s home. The Emperor personally led His armies into battle, a towering figure wreathed in golden light. One by one, the warlords of Terra fell or bent the knee, until no tyrant remained to oppose Him.
Where persuasion failed, the Emperor’s wrath annihilated His foes with fire and thunder; where His vision inspired, nations surrendered willingly. After years of unrelenting war, Terra was finally unified in blood and hope. The Emperor stood triumphant as the undisputed ruler of Earth – the first time in history that humanity’s birthplace was united under one ruler.
Having secured His homeworld, He took the title by which we know Him now: Emperor of Mankind. In those days He preached the Imperial Truth, a secular creed of reason and unity that banished the old superstitions and petty religions.
With Terra at peace at last, the Emperor gazed to the heavens. He sealed a great accord with Mars, uniting the Mechanicum with His newborn Imperium. With Terra and Mars thus joined, humanity’s reconquest of the stars could truly begin.
The Great Crusade
With Terra and Mars united, the Emperor embarked on the Great Crusade – a magnificent campaign to reunite humanity’s scattered colonies and bring light to a galaxy lost in darkness. It was the dawn of a new golden age. Great starships, built with Martian technology and guided by the psychic glow of the Emperor’s Astronomican, set forth from Sol in their thousands.
At the head of this vast host were the Emperor and His legions of genetically engineered super-soldiers: the Legiones Astartes, or Space Marines. They were organized into twenty mighty Legions, each destined to be led by a Primarch – the demigod generals the Emperor had crafted from His own genetic template.
Before the Crusade could fully begin, tragedy struck: the Dark Gods of Chaos sabotaged the Emperor’s great project. The twenty infant Primarchs were whisked away by a Warp vortex and scattered to far-flung worlds. Undaunted, the Emperor used their genetic legacy to create the Space Marine Legions that would spearhead the Crusade in their stead.
As the campaign advanced, the Emperor rediscovered His lost sons one by one, each Primarch having grown to greatness on a distant world. Every time one of these prodigal sons was reunited with his Father and given command of his Legion, the Imperium’s strength swelled.
The Great Crusade rolled across the galaxy like a cleansing fire. World after world was liberated from the ashes of Old Night. The Emperor and His Primarchs cast down tyrants and false gods wherever they found them. Ancient human cultures were reunited – some peacefully, others by force.
Everywhere, the Emperor imposed the Imperial Truth: a creed of reason and unity that denied all gods. Alien tyrants and xenos empires were eradicated without mercy, for the Emperor tolerated no threat to humanity’s dominion.
The victories were innumerable. The greatest of these triumphs came at Ullanor, where a vast Ork empire was annihilated. In the wake of that victory, the Emperor named Horus Lupercal – His most trusted son – as Warmaster to lead the ongoing Crusade in His stead.
With the Crusade at its height, the Emperor returned to Terra to toil on a secret project that He believed would secure humanity’s future forever. In His absence, He entrusted command of the legions to Warmaster Horus, confident that his favored son would carry on the grand work of uniting mankind. None suspected that this decision had already planted the seeds of the greatest betrayal in human history.
The Horus Heresy
The glorious age of the Great Crusade was shattered by the most infamous betrayal in human history: the Horus Heresy. Horus – the Warmaster and once the most beloved of the Emperor’s sons – fell to darkness. Consumed by pride and spurred on by the corrupt whispers of Chaos, he turned against his Father. In secret, Horus corrupted many of his Primarch brothers and their Legions into rebellion. Brother fought brother as fully half of the Space Marine Legions raised arms against the Imperium.
The Heresy began with Horus’s treachery at Isstvan, where he decimated the Emperor’s loyal Legions in a surprise massacre. When the scale of Horus’s betrayal became clear, horror gripped the Imperium – the Emperor’s most cherished son had succumbed to Chaos, and fully half of His remaining Primarchs now followed Horus into damnation. A wave of carnage engulfed the galaxy as the Traitor Legions burned world after world in their path. The dream of human unity collapsed into a nightmare of civil war and Chaos.
On Terra, the Emperor set aside His secret work and steeled Himself for war against His wayward son. The loyal Primarchs – noble Sanguinius, stoic Rogal Dorn, wise Roboute Guilliman, and others – rallied the Imperium’s remaining forces. For years, civil war raged across the stars, until Horus at last launched a direct assault on Holy Terra itself. Thus began the cataclysmic Siege of Terra – the final, apocalyptic battle of the Heresy.
The Traitor hordes encircled the Imperial Palace. The skies above Terra burned, continents shook, and the soil ran red with the blood of millions. The Imperial defenders fought desperately. At the Eternity Gate, Sanguinius stood as a golden angel, holding back the tide of the enemy, while Rogal Dorn’s Imperial Fists manned the walls with unyielding resolve.
All the while, the Emperor remained in the inner Palace upon the Golden Throne, psychically fortifying the defenses and shielding Terra from the Warp’s worst horrors. He knew that only a direct confrontation between Father and son could decide humanity’s fate.
At the height of the siege, Horus did the unthinkable: he lowered the shields of his battle barge, daring the Emperor to face him. Seizing the chance, the Emperor and a few loyal companions (including Sanguinius and Dorn) teleported onto Horus’s flagship, the Vengeful Spirit.
The strike team was scattered by foul Warp energies. Sanguinius reached Horus first. The Warmaster, now swollen with daemonic power, struck down the valiant Blood Angel Primarch after a fierce struggle. Moments later, the Emperor arrived to find Sanguinius dead at Horus’s feet. Father and son finally faced one another in mortal combat.
The duel between the Emperor and Horus was awe-inspiring and terrible. Horus, empowered by all four Chaos Gods, rained planet-shattering blows upon His father. The Emperor – the most powerful human psyker alive – met each strike, but He still hesitated out of love for His son.
Horus seized upon that moment of mercy and dealt the Emperor a crippling wound. As the Emperor fell, a lone Imperial Guardsman (legend names him Ollanius Pius) threw himself in front of Horus. The Warmaster obliterated the valiant soldier – but the sacrifice gave the Emperor a precious moment.
Realizing Horus was truly lost, the Emperor mustered all His remaining strength and unleashed a final, incandescent blast of psychic power. He utterly destroyed Horus, annihilating the Warmaster’s body and soul and banishing the dark gods that had corrupted him.
The Emperor had won, but at a terrible cost. Mortally wounded, He was carried back to the Imperial Palace by Rogal Dorn. With His final breath, the Emperor gave His last commands to ensure the Imperium would endure. The only way to sustain His life was to enthrone Him upon the Golden Throne – the arcane device that now became His life-support.
Malcador the Sigillite, the Emperor’s loyal Regent, had already given his own life to keep the Throne active during those final moments. Thus, the Emperor was interred into the Golden Throne, His broken body sustained by its machinery. In that instant, the Master of Mankind passed from mortal lord to undying martyr. The Horus Heresy was over: humanity had been saved from the abyss, even as the Emperor’s earthly life was all but extinguished.
The Golden Throne
The Emperor’s shattered body was now preserved on the arcane machinery of the Golden Throne – an ancient techno-psychic device that serves as His eternal seat of power and pain. Though His flesh is all but dead, the Emperor’s indomitable soul refuses to surrender.
He has transcended the limits of mortality. For ten millennia He has persisted on the Golden Throne, an immortal consciousness watching over mankind with ceaseless vigilance. His physical form is a withered shell clad in golden armor, yet His spirit stands guard within the Warp, forever holding the Dark Gods at bay.
In the aftermath of the Heresy, the Emperor’s legend transformed. To the people of the Imperium, He was no longer just a great leader – He became a god. In life, the Emperor had denied divinity; in death, He was worshipped as divine.
Across the recovering Imperium, a grassroots Cult of the Emperor sprang up, venerating Him as humanity’s savior. Within a few generations, this faith spread and was formalized into the Imperial Cult. The Emperor – once the proponent of the secular Imperial Truth – was now apotheosized by His people as the God-Emperor of Mankind.
Superstition and dogma replaced cold reason, and the Imperial Creed united humanity in devotion to Him. It is an ironic fate: the one who had scorned superstition is now revered by trillions – a divine martyr sustained in eternal sacrifice.
Though the Emperor cannot move or speak, He still protects Humanity from the Golden Throne. His mind blazes as the Astronomican – a great psychic beacon that pierces the Warp and guides the Empire’s ships across the stars. Each day, thousands of gifted psykers give their lives to fuel this beacon and to bolster the Emperor’s waning life-force.
Through His will, soul-bound Astropaths transmit messages between distant worlds, and innumerable other subtle influences emanate from Him. By His constant vigil, the Emperor guides fleets, shields mortal minds from Chaos, and binds the Imperium together.
In the shadowed halls of the Imperial Palace, the silent Adeptus Custodes and the Tech-priests of Mars tend the Golden Throne and the Emperor’s decaying body. Even in eternal silence and agony, the Emperor of Mankind will not abandon Humanity to the darkness.
His Enduring Will
Ten millennia later, the galaxy remains a brutal, war-torn place – yet the Emperor’s will endures as the backbone of human survival. The vast Imperium He built still stands, a million worlds united (often only by fear and faith) in His name.
On every planet, devotion to the Emperor inspires untold billions to persevere through horror and despair. The Imperial Creed assures all that the Emperor watches from His Golden Throne, judging the wicked and protecting the faithful.
His image adorns countless shrines and war-banners, reminding everyone that He is with us. The battle-cry “For the Emperor!” and the prayer “The Emperor Protects” are spoken on every battlefront – a mantra of hope against fear that steels the hearts of soldiers and citizens alike.
Many among the faithful believe the Emperor still works miracles from the Throne. Inquisitors seek His guidance through the Emperor’s Tarot, and there are countless tales of divine intervention on the battlefield – a golden light shielding a righteous warrior, a fallen champion rising again imbued with the Emperor’s spirit.
The Living Saints of the Imperium are held as proof that the Emperor’s will continues to manifest in times of greatest need. Even in His silence, the Emperor’s spirit reaches out to guide and inspire His people.
The Imperium faces ceaseless attacks from ravenous aliens and the infernal legions of Chaos. Yet against this tide of doom stands the legacy of the Emperor. His Adeptus Astartes – the Space Marines – still fight as His angels of death, each a living weapon forged from the Emperor’s genetic legacy.
The uncounted ranks of the Imperial Guard, though mere mortals, charge into battle fortified by their faith that the Emperor watches over them. The great crusade He began has never truly ended; it burns on as an eternal war for the Emperor’s realm, fought by His followers with unwavering devotion and fury in His name.
Despite ten thousand years of unending war and hardship, the Emperor of Mankind remains the foundation of humanity’s hope. His grand dream of a united and thriving human race has been tested but never destroyed. Every victory against impossible odds, every heresy purged or alien incursion defeated, is credited to the Emperor’s guiding hand.
The terrible price He pays – an eternity of agony on the Throne – is the sacrifice that sustains mankind. As long as the Emperor endures, humanity knows it has not been abandoned. In the face of each new nightmare that the galaxy brings, the faithful fight on with His name on their lips and His light in their hearts.
The Emperor of Mankind’s life and legend form the very bedrock of the Imperium. From the ancient myths of His birth as humanity’s guardian, to the battlefields where He forged our unity, to the Golden Throne where He now endures, His story is inseparable from that of humanity itself.
He is the architect of our destiny, the warrior-king who freed mankind from tyranny, and the divine guardian who sacrificed all so that we might survive. In the grim darkness of the far future, the Emperor’s light remains the one beacon of hope.
His broken body may sit upon the Golden Throne, but His spirit and will reach across the stars. As the Imperium marches onward into an uncertain future, one truth remains eternal: as long as humanity keeps faith with Him, the Emperor of Mankind endures – and His dream shall never die.
Ave Imperator! Gloria in Aeternum!
