// PC GAMER — GAMING
Games Workshop showed us The Emperor's current state for the first time in 38 years and it's hard to overstate how monumental that is
If I have that many teeth left after 10,000 years, I'll chalk it up as a win.
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If you've never clocked it before, The Emperor is rather important in Warhammer 40k. Even those who don't really know the setting are adjacently aware of the fact that Warhammer people love to shout "For The Emperor!" at every available opportunity. Not only is he the figurehead of mankind, whose psychic presence is so significant that starships use him as a lighthouse, but he's really the inciting figure for the state of 40k's universe.
He's also enthroned on an ancient and nightmarish life support device called The Golden Throne, which has to consume 1,000s of psykers (psychics) everyday just to keep itself running. John Blanche, the artist responsible for much of Warhammer 40k's iconic visual tone, and who sadly passed away recently, originally produced "The Emperor Sits Upon His Golden Throne" back in 1987.
John Blanche himself recently said that the famous illustration is actually not of The Emperor, though:
"It was never meant to be the real Emperor. All these people queue up for generations, all these pilgrims, and they finally get to meet The Emperor at the top of the golden stairs, and he's not real. The real Emperor is a corpse in a big glass jar, kept in machines in the background."
Whether you think Blanche's art shows The Emperor or not, he's not often depicted in Warhammer 40k despite his importance. In fact, one of the few recent times I remember seeing him was on the cover of the first volume of The End and the Death, the final novel in the Horus Heresy series, though this artwork shows him sitting on The Golden Throne at quite a distance, and is obviously not an image of The Emperor's current state circa the 41st millenium. The Emperor has been shown a fair few times in 30k and The Horus Heresy, such as on the cover of one of the books I recommend at the end, but that's certainly not the case for his present state in 40k.
Well, in the most recent trailer for 40k's new edition (launching June 20), Games Workshop finally showed off The Emperor inside The Golden Throne, and yeah, he ain't looking too hot—although I suppose he's not too shabby for someone who's been on occult dialysis for 10,000 years. This is definitely the darkest trailer I've ever seen for 40k—it doesn't even try to deny the fact that The Emperor is a corpse god, calling him "The Carrion Lord of the Imperium", a title usually reserved for those slandering him in the setting.
But this is also the first time since John Blanche's artwork in 1987 (and other artworks such as the original Rogue Trader illustrations) that we've seen The Emperor's actual, current state in modern Warhammer 40k. The trailer does feature a few different versions of him as he seemingly writhes between potential states, but either way, he doesn't look in peak form. I'm surprised we got to see him at all, though, because the ambiguousness of The Emperor's condition on The Golden Throne is a key concept in 40k.
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