Emperor of Mankind - God-Emperor: In an ironic twist of fate for a man who fought throughout His life to move Mankind away from superstition and religious faith, the Emperor of Mankind was already being worshiped as a living deity before the start of the Horus Heresy.The primarch Lorgar of the Word Bearers Legion had penned a book, the Lectitio Divinitatus, which laid out a compelling case for why the Emperor of Mankind was not a mere man but a god made flesh. It held that no mortal being could have accomplished all that the Emperor had in uniting the techno-barbarian tribes and nations of Terra and then reuniting much of the Human-settled galaxy under His rule.Nor could a simple Human being possess His extraordinary command of psychic abilities, his advanced scientific knowledge which displayed an understanding of the universe on a primal level or His immense compassion and good will towards all Mankind.The argument proved persuasive, and before the Great Crusade had even ended, a number of different cults dedicated to Emperor-worship had already sprung up, using the Lectitio Divinitatus as their sacred book and often adopting the name of the tome for the name of their faith.The worship of the Emperor as a god was strictly forbidden under the doctrine of the Imperial Truth and was a serious crime, the same crime that ultimately led to the humiliation of Lorgar and his Word Bearers upon the world of Khur and their turn towards the worship of the Chaos Gods instead to meet their need for faith.While Lorgar ultimately repudiated the Lectitio Divinitatus and replaced it with the Chaos-corrupted Book of Lorgar, millions of other men and women during the dark days of the Horus Heresy increasingly turned to the worship of the Emperor as a source of inspiration and strength to survive the many horrors of that time. The demonstrated power that devout worship of the Emperor gave to His followers to protect themselves and others from the daemonic entities of the Warp only furthered the spread of this new religion.Among the peoples of the Imperium, only the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes, who dimly remember the truth of the man from whom they are descended, do not worship the Emperor as a god. They prefer instead to venerate Him as the pinnacle of what a Human being is capable of achieving and an example to be followed. This refusal to worship the Emperor as prescribed by the Imperial Creed is also one of the reasons that the Astartes often come into conflict with the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition.At the end of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor's shattered form was interred within the cybernetic mechanisms of the Golden Throne so that His mind could still have a physical anchor in the material universe while it extended throughout the Warp, eventually encompassing nearly the entire territory of the Imperium of Man.As the centuries passed, the worship of the Emperor only spread further, and by the 32nd Millennium the once small cults of Emperor-worshippers had been amalgamated into the Imperial Cult, its teeming trillions of Human believers served by the massive interstellar curia known as the Ecclesiarchy or more formally as the Adeptus Ministorum after it was accepted by the High Lords of Terra as the state religion of the Imperium.The Emperor of Mankind was now truly more than a secular ruler -- He was the God-Emperor, the one, true god of all Humanity. His will was interpreted and executed by the High Lords of Terra of the Senatorum Imperialis, His laws were enforced by the Adeptus Arbites, His body and His Imperial Palace were guarded by the Adeptus Custodes, His Adeptus Astartes defended the Imperium and the Inquisition that He had directed Malcador the Sigillite to create at the start of the Horus Heresy had grown into a power unto itself, protecting the Imperium from the Emperor's enemies both without and within.Despite His protests to the contrary, the effect of trillions of Human beings expressing a deep faith in His divinity has massively empowered the Emperor's mind and soul within the psychically-reactive Immaterium, where reality is shaped by the collective beliefs and unconscious desires of the galaxy's most populous intelligent species.The Imperial Creed teaches that far from being a defeat, the internment of the Emperor within the Golden Throne allowed His divine spirit to ascend so that He could guide and protect all Humanity more directly, no longer confined by the limitations of the flesh. It is for this reason that the skull has become so prevalent in Imperial iconography and architecture, as a symbol of the Emperor's sacrifice of His own life for the sake of his people.Whatever He may have been before the Horus Heresy, the Emperor now truly is a god within the Warp, equal in power to any one of the four major Chaos Gods, and very likely as powerful as all four of them combined, as He has become perhaps the strongest spiritual force for order in the Milky Way Galaxy.Though His body is a shattered wreck, more corpse than man, as long as the Golden Throne can maintain even the barest hint of His life functions, He will be able to maintain His presence within the Warp, guiding and directing the psychic beacon known as the Astronomican that is so vital to the Imperium's commerce, defence and communications even as His mind must claim the life energies of 1,000 Human psykers a day to empower the beacon.As noted above, it is the Emperor's powerful mind, projected and amplified in the Immaterium by the arcane mechanisms of the Golden Throne, that guides and maintains the psychic beacon of the Astronomican. At the same time, despite His current decayed condition, the Emperor can still cryptically communicate His wishes to select psykers through the arcane medium of the Emperor's Tarot.He can also communicate through direct dreams and visions to select non-psychic Human beings whose faith in Him is strong enough to forge the necessary link. The Emperor can also provide a number of psychic protections against the powers of Chaos and its Daemons through the connection of faith and He may be able to influence the physical universe in a number of other unexpected ways.For instance, it is widely believed in the Imperium that the Warp Storm known as the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath that appeared in the Ultima Segmentum during the Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium was directly created by the will of the Emperor, the incarnate effect of His anger over the usurpation of the Imperium's government by the tyrant High Lord Goge Vandire.It is also believed that the Emperor's might within the Warp directly holds the power of Chaos at bay, and were the Emperor to be absent from the Immaterium, Chaos would break through the physical boundaries of the universe, transforming the entire galaxy into a realm of insanity and horror very much like the Eye of Terror.It is also known to a very few among the highest ranks of the Inquisition that within His throne room in the Imperial Palace, the Sanctum Imperialis, the Emperor possesses the power to directly manipulate reality, including the ability to relativistically slow or even stop the arrow of time outright.Yet the God-Emperor is a tormented soul. Unable to interact more directly with His worshipers, He is horrified by what His Imperium has become over the last 10,000 years in the wake of the terrible wounds inflicted by the Horus Heresy and the ongoing threats to Humanity from Chaos, xenos, mutants and the Traitors within.The Age of the Imperium has not delivered the Golden Age of Mankind that the Emperor had hoped would result from all His efforts. Instead, the Imperium has delivered stability, but at the cost of technological stagnation and intellectual regression, political repression, constant exploitation of the many by the few, rabid xenophobia and often savage religious intolerance.All the evils of Humanity that the Emperor had hoped to bring to an end have only proliferated during the 10,000 Terran years that the Imperium has ruled the Human race in His name. Yet the Emperor endures in His endless pain, knowing that His death would cripple the Imperium and deny Humanity both the limited guidance He can still offer and the protection He provides against Chaos.The Emperor fears that without Him, Humanity will not survive. For this reason, despite all its imperfections, He allows the Imperium to endure in its degraded state.On rare occasions, the Emperor works through His chosen servants to make the lot of Humanity a little better. He fans the embers of hope among Mankind as the Time of Ending draws nigh and the Golden Throne's mechanisms wind down like a broken watch...