It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance.

He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology.

He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth.

Warhammer 40k exterminatus quote