The Emperor, The Dark King, and Star Child | Warhammer 40k Lore

Old lore getting revamped after decades? FINALLY

The Emperor has so much time to kill on the Golden Throne, he's just making his own OCs and adding them to the lore.

Malice is the Dark King. That hateful fragment of the Emperor that he also ejected from himself, just as he ejected the Star Child. The Starchild is the light, Malice is the dark. Faux theory, but I like it.

I like how the dark king transformation makes complete sense how it works but was also hard to predict happening in the story.

I love how The Dark King is described, an immense black sphere surrounded by seven luminous white spear-bearing figures. Very much the vibe of a "Chaos God of order".

The idea of the dark king becoming a 5th chaos god could play neatly with vashtor trying to become a 5th chaos god. This idea of multiple beings either attempting to become or being forced into the spot of the 5th god would be interesting. Maybe even bring back some malal/malice in there too since old stuff is coming back into canon.

The inquisitor books did not introduce the concept of Starchild. It was the Realm of Chaos: The Lost and The Damned from 1989. It also introduce Horus killing Sangiunus, the Emperor being taken to safety by Dorn. As well as Daemon Primarchs such as Mortarion, Magnus, Angron, Fulgrim, Lorgar and Perturabo. Yeah, that book is super important to what 40k would become and its sadly forgotten.

I think the whole Horus Heresy was just a massive gambit by the Chaos Gods. Not to kill the Emperor, but to tempt him into embracing Chaos and becoming the Dark King.

If someone told me the first sentence came straight from lorgar I wouldn't be surprised

After refusing to become The Dark King, The Emperor told Ol He'd made a new plan. Here's my theory: The Emperor knows He's going to be mortally wounded in the battle with Horus. After all, he's basically just given up the power to win. What he wants, is for Ol to become Malcador's effective replacement, to steer The Imperium and act as His voice while the dying Emps is bound to The Throne. The tragedy of course, is that we know Ol will die, The Imperium will lose its immortal leadership and ties to the past, and be plunged into ten-thousand years of darkness.

My theory after EATD II is this: Starchild is out there, but the husk of the emperor is therefore, as you said, a cold, unfeeling machine - and it was his humanity that lead him to follow Ollanius and reject the powers of the Dark King in the first place. So the rest of the emperors soul still on terra would be much more open to accepting this power, should he get the chance. And he might get that chance if his physical body dies and this part of his soul would be ejected into the warp. The custodes realize this, which is why they are so worried about the failing of the golden throne that they were open to deal with Commoragh to fix it and keep the body of the emperor alive. As long as the starchild is not reunited or sufficiently empowered, the Golden Throne is not just a machine for the Emperor - it is a prison for the Dark King. And I have to say - Humanity having to keep their own God locked up to prevent him from destroying it would be a very Grimdark/40k thing indeed!

Hold up. That description of the dark king as a smooth black orb sounds an awful lot like the Tyrant Star. I’d be down for that to be a thing. Like it’s slowly regaining power.

So in summary: The Chaos gods tried to pull a Godhand from Berserk Ollanius Pius is still the GOAT Star Child is a thing (I’m just waiting for it to go the route of TTS) The Dark King might one day come again

Guilliman's musings about the Emperor in Dark Imperium are pretty interesting. By Guilliman's perspective the Emperor has become utterly inhuman and a being beyond understanding.

I think its cool going back and reusing old lore but adapted to fit the current direction of the universe

I just hope that the Dark King, Emperor becoming god fully and the Star Child isn't/won't be just a way for GW to create the "Age of Emperor" in case of 40k going down in sales, but would be an actual plot point to make the plot more interesting of 40k without the full collapse of everything.

Perhaps Vashtor or Bel'akor will use Abbadon to become the Dark King. Magnus or Lorgar could also have been spending the last 10k years trying to figure out how to become the Dark King too.

You know this makes me think an eldar fall novel/s would be cool, like it turns out there was a war near the end (between a 3rd wave of 'we went to far' eldar vs the pleasurecults) but the anti-slaanesh fsction fails.

It's always a good day when Chrono uploads

Loved the end and the death Dan Abnett did the impossible and wrote the sangy and horus battle well