Suppose the emperor sacrificed terra...

[lokkorex]

So, what would happen if after the webway breach the emperor decided to evacuate terra and leave it to it's fate at the hands of the daemon hordes?

 

What impact would it have on the nascent heresy?

 

Massive invasion of custodes on mars when the dark mechanicum showed their faces?

 

Fortification of luna?

 

What do you think?

[Marshal Rohr]

Part of Imperial legitimacy stems from occupying Terra. Without the claim to humanity's birth world, they have no claim to being the rightful rulers of humanity.

[lokkorex]

But doesn't the emperor feel that without him mankind is lost to chaos?

 

Plus they could always counter invade later with proto-grey knights or something, couldn't they?

[Marshal Rohr]

Loss of the Throneworld would cause some instability as opportunists would use it as a chance to challenge Imperial rule. They could recapture it eventually, and put down the secessionists.

 

Also, I think the webwy breach was more than just a run of the mill warp breach. It takes power for daemons to exist in the real world, but the webway breach actually tore the veil between reality and the warp meaning the daemons could enter reality at will, without the need to sustain themselves. IIIRC, Abaddon's grand plan is to overthrow the Emperor to unleash the warp through this breach, making the whole galaxy into something akin to the EoT.

[Adra'Melek]

Doesn't the imperial legitimacy come from threatening to utterly destroy anyone who doesn't accept it (certainly during the great crusade).

[Xenith]

 IIIRC, Abaddon's grand plan is to overthrow the Emperor to unleash the warp through this breach, making the whole galaxy into something akin to the EoT.

 

I'm 95% confident that that is the exact opposite of what Abby wishes to do!

 

EoT campaign text showed that he didnt simply destroy Cadia (which he could have easily done) due to the presence of the pylons, which actively inhibit the growth of the EoT (hence the Cadian Gate). Destroying the pylons means expansion of the EoT, and enlargement of the influence of the daemon gods.

 

Abbadon wants nothing of the sort. Unlike Horus, who took the power of the gods into himself, Abbadon doesnt want to grant the Pantheon any more power than they already have.

[Marshal Rohr]

Doesn't the imperial legitimacy come from threatening to utterly destroy anyone who doesn't accept it (certainly during the great crusade).

 

Use of force is only the initial basis of legitimizing state power, and monopoly of force is essential to maintain statehood. Imperial legitimacy is earned at the edge of a blade, and reinforced through civilizing influences, technological advancement, and forced economic interdependence. It's a darker version of the Kantian Pacific Union. By forcing human worlds into an interdependent web its removes power from the system level governments and places it in a higher arbitrating body, the Council of Terra. Without Terra, the ancestral homeland of all humans, the Imperium becomes something less because it loses that objective legitimacy separated from state use of force.

 

 

 IIIRC, Abaddon's grand plan is to overthrow the Emperor to unleash the warp through this breach, making the whole galaxy into something akin to the EoT.

 

I'm 95% confident that that is the exact opposite of what Abby wishes to do!

 

EoT campaign text showed that he didnt simply destroy Cadia (which he could have easily done) due to the presence of the pylons, which actively inhibit the growth of the EoT (hence the Cadian Gate). Destroying the pylons means expansion of the EoT, and enlargement of the influence of the daemon gods.

 

Abbadon wants nothing of the sort. Unlike Horus, who took the power of the gods into himself, Abbadon doesnt want to grant the Pantheon any more power than they already have.

 

 

I'm probably wrong then. I don't follow any of the new fluff. I thought Codex Black Legion showed he intended to destroy the Pylons.

[Crizza]

Yeah, I'm also pretty sure that Abbadon wants to destroy the Pylons to expand the eye of Terror towards Terra...

[lokkorex]

Couldn't the emperor just go "I am the Imperium!" then?

 

I mean, don't you need an emperor to have an imperium? But you could have an emperor without an imperium?

 

Also, doesn't it seem likely that, worst-case scenario, emperor says "if i can't have it, no one shall!", cue atomic explosion ripping apart the planet?

[Joe]

Chaos' mortal servants want to bring about pseudo-End Times by expanding the Eye of Terror/causing another major warp breach in the galaxy. As far as we know, they don't know about the Emperor's failed webway project, with the possible exception of Magnus.

 

The Chaos Gods don't want this to happen. It's sort of counter-productive, and by and by the large, beneath them. After all, it's a big universe.

 

iirc, they only screwed around with Abaddon's fluff in the most recent Chaos and Black Legion codices to actually, y'know, make him seem threatening again. Also because they were on an End Times high at the time, and another prophetic doomsday scenario seemed like a fabulous idea. Given GW's penchant for rewriting the fluff every other edition (see; the retconned ending to the original Eye of Terror campaign, Ciaphas Cain, Medusa V, etc) it's entirely possible they'll retain Abaddon's newfound competence but scrap the doomsday prophecy in a future edition.

 

That aside, Terra is more or less the Imperium's claim to legitimacy. In the event that they did lose the throne world I would imagine they'd have dispatched a significant force to recapture it, either that or moved the capital to another suitable location whilst fending off any secessionist sentiments. Ultramar, maybe?

[lokkorex]

Guilliman would propably welcome them with open arms, IF they could traverse the ruinstorm.

 

Maybe Mars? Or they could blow up daemon-infested terra, send the webway breach into the sun, and start rebuilding the pieces of Terra.

[Marshal Rohr]

Good point. Guilliman didn't even know if Terra had been captured and he still at up another Empire.

[lokkorex]

Also, why would they lose the claim of legitimacy just because terra is destroyed?

 

How many worlds bent the knee when the imperials said they possessed the homeworld they left millenia ago, and how many worlds bent the knee because an humongous horde of armed soldiers showed up with genehanced post-human killing machines with the simple message of "join us, or die".

[Memento Of Prospero]

You are trying to apply real world logic to a Grim Dark setting.

 

Terra is the great symbole of power of the Imperium. All of the Empire's infrastructure lies within and cannot simply be "uprooted" it is also where the emperor seems have the strands of fate bound, most of all his secrets are there as well. If it is the crusible of humanity, it must not fall. Symbolism is a great thing.

 

If the Romans would have let Hannibal take Rome, it would have been the end of the Roman empire. No one would have believed it it's legitimacy and it would have crumbled to dust.

[Demus Ragnok]

Isn't there a physical part of the astronomicon on Terra.

 

I know the Emperors will is the source but isn't it focused from a point on Terra so the navigators have a waypoint.

[lokkorex]

Oh right, forgot about the astronomican.

 

Other than that, i thought it would be more grimdark if the heartworld turned into a daemon-infested hellhole.

[Memento Of Prospero]

Oh right, forgot about the astronomican.

 

Other than that, i thought it would be more grimdark if the heartworld turned into a daemon-infested hellhole.

 

The stubborn determination to hold it at all costs is most grimdark. It can turn into a daemon-infested hellhole, once the Emperor and every single one of his sons have died trying to prevent it. THAT IS GRIM DARK!

[StruManChu]

Around the time the Dornian Heresy first saw the light of day, I wrote a whole bunch of stuff about what a 'Terran Heresy' could look like if the Emps and the VII quit Earth before reinforcements could arrive. It was moody and brooding as all hell. Proud Primarchs like Dorn and Russ vehemently disagreeing with Emps, causing further schisms among the loyalists, and the more broken traitors like Angron and Pert, who wanted to carry out the eradication of the Loyalists immediately clashing with Horus and Lorgar who wanted to consolidate their now-legitimate rule.

 

In the end I gave up because I couldn't think of a reason why the Emperor would have such a change of heart. He hadn't quit Terra at any point due to the Webway breach, not when Magnus came, nor when he was told about Horus, nor about Isstvan V. In light of those huge events, there just didn't seem to be a strong enough hook to justify pulling him away.

 

However, if anyone can come up with something, it'll be one of our erstwhile brethren on the B&C...

[TennisBall]

Would the demons that would pour out of the webway care much for the alliances made between the great powers and the traitor primarchs?

Either way I think by the time the dust settled, the vast majority of the earth's population would be dead and there would be a huge hole in the ability to run the Imperium, if that were still the intention of Horus.

Without the Astronomicon, the traitors would have a huge advantage in that they can communicate via the warp. It would allow them to quickly send out orders to loyal planets that the fighting has ended and that Horus was defeated. They could get large parts of the loyalist forces to stand down in the confusion while moving their own troops into positions of advantage.

 

If Earth did become a demon world though, and the traitors then took Mars, would that wake the Dragon and bring necrons into the Solar System?

[Phalanx Warder]

I have always thought of it as the Imperium of Man not the Imperium of Terra. Terra holds a lot of symbolic importance, but was it worth the emperors life? He seemed to think so......

[TennisBall]

I have always thought of it as the Imperium of Man not the Imperium of Terra. Terra holds a lot of symbolic importance, but was it worth the emperors life? He seemed to think so......

Terra is one huge bureaucracy with the major navigation beacon. Reading more about it, the loss of the astronomican would kill the imperium.

The Emperor could escape Terra, but if the astronomican was destroyed or somehow linked to something else, stellar travel beyond local star systems and blind luck would be at an end.

It's probably the astronomican, rather than anything else which makes the ruler of Terra the ruler of the imperium.

 

So if Terra goes, the loyalist forces can no longer plan galaxy wide campaigns, most of the trade stops so vital food and resources go wasted, armies don't go where they're needed.

With a large chunk of the organisation that decides who gets what and what goes where gone too, the ability to coordinate is severely reduced even without the loss of the astronomican.

 

Ultramar, thanks to the artifact on Pharos would likely hold together though - they're like cockroaches, every alternative reality seems to have them exactly as they are.

[Xenith]

I'm probably wrong then. I don't follow any of the new fluff. I thought Codex Black Legion showed he intended to destroy the Pylons.

Heh, that was decade old fluff

I'm probably wrong, I havent actually read C: Black Legion.

[Kol Saresk]

Old and current fluff is that Abaddon wants to destroy the pylons in order to allow the Eye of Terror to expand. The reason it took him thirteen Black Crusades to get around to it was because he needed to build an army powerful enough that he could launch a second Siege. The entire history of the background shows that it has never been a problem for Abaddon to sail past Cadia, but rather that his problem was sustaining a war of attrition because of the various warlords in it. I mean heck, there's an entire Crusade where Abaddon sails from the Eye of Terror to the Maelstrom and back again. He literally sailed across the galaxy and back, so the garbage about him having to take Cadia to leave the EoT is just that. And that's like Second Edition background material and is still current so feel free to take it to the bank.

 

Now, on topic. Terra would never be abandoned for several reasons.

 

1.)it is the throneworld. To borrow from Dune, "he who controls Terra, controls the Imperium."

 

2.)Terra is literally the most well-defended and well-fortified planet in the entire Imperium. Remember the Imperium's practice of conquering and then fortifying planets? That began at Terra. The entirety of the Unification Wars from Terra to Pluto was the Emperor taking an enemy fortification and then replacing it with his own. And then throughout the entirety of the Great Crusade, those fortifications are continually being built up on. And then, you throw Dorn, his massive fleet and his super fortress into the mix.

 

3.)The entirety of the Emperor's Webway Project is on Terra. If I were a betting man, I'd wager the constant fortification of the Sol System wasn't to prevent external attack, but rather internal attack via the Webway from Terra.

 

Basically, the long and short of it is the sheer amount of Terra's symbolism as well as the fact that it's the metaphorical basket the Emperor put all of his eggs in, will prevent Terra from ever being abandonded.

[Marshal Rohr]

Well having a webway gate into the heart of the palace is hardly a sound feat of civil engineering. If the point is to allow humanity to use the webway, you can't very well have foot traffic coming through the Emperor's bedroom to use the gate at all hours of the day. He probably had some idea or method to use the webway to open up other passageways and close his off permanently.

[Kol Saresk]

Actually he was probably planning to do what the Eldar originally did, that is map out the webway and then create outposts along its routes in order to secure it against daemonic incursion.

 

It isn't like a warp portal where you just jump from Point A to Point B, there is a journey involved. It just that the journey is like FTL travel where time becomes relative. More time will pass for those traveling through the Webway than those who are outside of it. Atlas Infernal speculates that this is probably why the Eldar are so long-lived combined with the fact that being in the Webway keeps you from aging and will even reverse the effects of aging to a pretty good degree, as evidenced by Inquisitor Czevak going from being handicapped to being a spry young man. Physically at any rate.

 

Problem was that the Emperor never had a chance to begin moving into the network since Magnus' breach caused the reconnaissance teams to end having to defend Terra from a constant daemonic incursion rather than exploring the Webway and setting up staging points for future expeditions.