The Emperor of Mankind

At the heart of the Imperium, deep beneath the Imperial Palace on Terra, sits the being for whom the Adeptus Custodes were made. The Emperor of Mankind is humanity's oldest and mightiest son, a psyker of unfathomable power who guided the species from the shadows across countless centuries before revealing Himself to unite a fractured Terra beneath a single banner. From that reconquest He launched the Great Crusade, a campaign of light and reunification meant to reclaim the scattered worlds of humanity and usher in an age of reason. To lead His armies He created the primarchs and the Space Marine Legions, and at His own side He kept the Custodians, the golden guardians who alone stood close enough to know Him as more than a distant ideal.

That golden age was broken by treachery. When His favored son turned against Him and half the galaxy burned in civil war, the Emperor met the arch-traitor in a final, terrible confrontation that left His mortal body shattered beyond any hope of healing. To preserve what remained of Him, His body was placed upon the Golden Throne, an ancient device of arcane technology that sustains His ruined form and channels His will. There He has remained ever since, neither wholly living nor permitted to die, a silent sentinel whose mind is said to guard humanity even now.

From the Throne, the Emperor performs deeds unseen by the masses who venerate Him. His psychic light shines across the immaterium as the Astronomican, the beacon by which the Imperium's ships navigate the treacherous warp; without it, the domains of Mankind would splinter into isolation and darkness. It is a working that consumes lives ceaselessly, sustained by sacrifice, and it is only one of the burdens He is believed to bear against the horrors that hunger for humanity's soul.

In the ten thousand years since His interment, the Emperor has become the central object of the Imperium's faith. What He may once have intended as a secular dominion has become a vast theocracy in which He is worshipped as a god, His image adorning every shrine, His name invoked in every prayer, His authority the foundation of every law. To the trillions who toil beneath His banner, He is not a fallen ruler but a divine protector, and it is this devotion, as much as any army, that holds the Imperium together. The Custodians alone stand in His presence, wardens of the Master of Mankind through the long, silent millennia of His vigil.