Webway - Imperial Webway Project: In the late 30th Millennium, during the Unification Wars on Terra, buried deep under a huge and inhospitable desert on the Terran continent of Asia, the Emperor of Mankind discovered a portal that led to the Webway's vast network of tunnels that had been constructed eons ago by a xenos species more ancient than the Terran sun. This was in the time before the building of the Imperial Palace, although the exact date is also unknown.The Emperor discovered there the core of the psychic amplification device that the Golden Throne would later be constructed around to serve as a portal into the Webway based on Terra.Prior to the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, and over a period of several standard centuries, the Emperor directed tens of thousands of Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests to modify the Golden Throne so that it could be put into use as the nexus of His secret Imperial Webway Project, the Emperor's highly classified "Great Work".This greatest of the Emperor's many works was intended to open up the Aeldari Webway to Mankind by establishing a portal into its network from Terra. This would provide a means of instantaneous interstellar travel between the worlds of the newborn Imperium of Man, making navigation through the dangers of the Warp unnecessary and remove the necessity for reliance upon astrotelepathy as the only form of interstellar communication, literally connecting all the branches of Mankind instantaneously.This would create a truly unified Human race as never before in history, similar to the advantages once possessed by the lost Aeldari civilisation before its Fall. The Emperor believed that this level of unity would be necessary if Humanity was truly to thrive and prosper in such a dangerous universe.The Golden Throne's Webway gate, the Imperial conduit and the alien-built Webway-tunnels were all both physical and psychic in nature. Wrapped around the physical component was a psychic sheath or shield. The very substance of the alien tunnels appeared to generate this shielding naturally. But for the Human-built gateway and conduit, the Emperor Himself had to continuously generate the protective psychic sheath. This psy-shield sealed the Webway from the Warp and its Daemonic denizens in some inexplicably arcane fashion.The Emperor's efforts were thwarted as a direct result of the Thousand Sons Primarch Magnus the Red's sorcerous warning, which penetrated the multiple psychic shields the Emperor had erected around the Imperial Palace in order to warn Him of the Warmaster Horus' perfidy in the days just before the Horus Heresy began in the early 31st Millennium. Magnus' psychic sending disrupted the Emperor's psychic shield around the Terran Webway portal, causing great rifts to appear within. It was through these rifts that the creatures of the Warp were able to gain egress into the Terran Webway tunnels.Through the valiant sacrifice of many members of the Legio Custodes and the Sisters of Silence, the Imperials were able to stem the tide of the Daemonic incursions during what became known as the War Within the Webway, preventing them from breaching the Warp and assaulting the sacred soil of Terra itself.Yet the Terran Webway gate only remained sealed for as long as the Emperor was able to power its psychic shield directly from His throne atop the golden portal. Only the strongest of other Human psykers had enough power to temporarily replace the Emperor's efforts, and only the Emperor had the might to keep the gate closed permanently. For Him that effort became harder as the Daemonic forces gathered about Him. As long as the Daemon horde threatened to breach the portal, the Golden Throne proved be the Emperor's prison.During the Siege of Terra, the epic final battle of that lamentable galaxy-spanning civil war known as the Horus Heresy, the Emperor was temporarily relieved from this burden by the valiant sacrifice of Malcador the Sigillite, the oldest and most trusted advisor of the Emperor, and a potent psyker in his own right. But this would merely prove a temporary respite, as the burden of holding the gate closed quickly drained the valiant Malcador of his life force. This provided the Emperor with the opportunity to face His once favoured son Horus aboard his battle barge, the Vengeful Spirit, in Terran orbit.In the end, Horus was utterly destroyed by the Emperor, body, mind and soul. But the Emperor was mortally wounded Himself in the effort and was brought back to Terra where His ravaged body was placed within permanent stasis upon the Golden Throne. The great device was rapidly modified by the adepts of the newborn Adeptus Mechanicus at the direction of Rogal Dorn, the primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion, in order to prevent the Master of Mankind's death.Acting as a complex life support machine, the Golden Throne has held the dessicated and slowly decaying body of the Emperor in stasis for over ten standard millennia, preserving His mind and will, which originates and guides the psychic beacon that is the Astronomican within the Warp. He is also said to constantly struggle to keep the forces of the Dark Gods of Chaos at bay so that Humanity can flourish even to the extent that it has in the galaxy.It is not known whether the Emperor's ability to protect individual Human beings from the powers of Chaos is related to the destroyed Terran portal of the Webway or to the unknown alien device that lies at the heart of the Golden Throne itself.