r/AskScienceFiction • u/Flyestgit • 1d ago
[Warhammer 40k] Can a non-human psyker use the Golden Throne? Can they be fed to it as a sacrifice?
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u/Dagordae 1d ago
If it’s got a soul it can be burned for fuel. The Imperium would absolutely never go for it but there’s not really anything intrinsic about the human soul needed for operation.
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u/StaendutBlakk 1d ago
They can sit on the Golden Throne, yes. For about a milisecond before their brain is fried, their soul annhilated and their body reduced to dust. The Throne killed Malcador, the second or third most powerful psyker humanity has ever known. Short of the Emperor or Magnus the Red, you're just staving of the inevitable.
As for feeding it. A soul is still valuable, but a regular mortal is a candle in the Warp, while a psyker is a roaring bonfire. The latter has so much more juice.
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u/tryingtobebettertry4 1d ago edited 1d ago
Possibly.
The original component of the Golden Throne that the Emperor found is implied to be xenos/alien in origin (he built/added onto it though). Most likely Eldar or Old Ones. The Mechanicus once contacted the Dark Eldar about fixing it and they actually kind of recognized the Golden Throne to be a 'soul engine'. And its purpose is to act as an interface/control centre for the Webway, which is an Old One and Eldar thing primarily.
As for the sacrifices I dont see why not. The sacrifices are basically just fuel with the psyker part being most important. I dont see the race mattering so long as it has a soul and reasonable psyker potential. Sacrificing a Xenos soul could have some weird interactions with the Emperor's soul/Star Child/whatever entity is connected to the Golden Throne now. And the Imperium would never allow it.
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u/IMrMacheteI Starfleet transporter specialist 21h ago
The Throne is not Eldar in origin. We see a detailed diagram of the entire Throne mechanism from the outermost regions to the artifact itself in The Dark City, and that scene specifically points out that only a portion of the technology there is Eldar. We now know that the Eldar tech incorporated into it is a sort of adapter to allow it to accept a mortal occupant. The Throne artifact itself is still of uncertain origins. Here is the scene in The Dark City where we see an overview of the inner regions of the Throne and the Eldar tech found therein:
The viewpoint finally ground to a halt. The hololiths displayed a static image of the Throne’s innards. Very little of what Crowl was seeing made any kind of sense to him. Some of the clusters might have been junctions for huge energy cables, other sections looked like heat exchangers, but it was a dense mess, a hyper-concentrated accretion of different tech-bundles and modules, all interconnected through a cat’s cradle of wires and psy-bridges and conductors. None of it looked like Imperial technology. Not in the slightest. It was a melange, a tech-maelstrom, a crunched-together collision of a thousand different chassis styles, object phenotypes and machine- schemata.
‘This region,’ the dwarf said, ‘has a name. It is called the Areopeia Junction. The significance of the term has been lost. Its core function, however, is broadly understood. The bulk of the devices in this region enable the Throne – by which I now mean the seat itself, the prime interface – to tolerate the imposition of an occupant of mortal dimensions and physical limitations. If these mechanisms were to fail, that function would cease, and the occupant – any occupant of such a nature – would be unable to retain contact with the interface.’
‘What do you mean, mortal?’ asked Zijes, the tone of suspicious outrage giving away the real meat of the query.
‘Please do not impose your religious convictions on this discussion, inquisitor,’ the dwarf said calmly. ‘Much of what I will say now will offend you. I ask that you refrain from comment until I have completed the survey.’ As the Fabricator General spoke, a small part of the hololith was illuminated. Crowl had no idea of the scale – the lit section might have been a few metres across, or maybe a hundred, or maybe a kilometre. ‘This is a component of the Junction. You may recognise the style of the insertion. It is non-metallic in construction, immensely strong, resistant to most forms of moulding and recasting. It is psychically charged, and forms an integral part of the region’s material function.’ The viewpoint moved a little closer, zeroing in on the illumination component. ‘Observe the markings on the casing, here.’
The markings were runes. Not Gothic runes, not even archaic Terran.
‘Impossible,’ said Spinoza.
‘On the contrary,’ said the dwarf. ‘The deeper one delves, the more such inscriptions one finds. Some are of unknown provenance. Some are beyond our ability to parse. The Throne itself, the physical object that forms the core of the entire machine, is certainly not of human origin. Hence the need, we hypothesise, for a subsystem to mediate between it and the occupant.’
The Throne is also never identified to be a "soul engine." I have only ever seen that repeated as hearsay by people who either haven't read or misremember the books. In fact, it is specifically stated that the purpose for which the Emperor tried to use it is not its original purpose:
‘The Throne was created by the Emperor. He is our guide and our judge – He must show us the path.’
The creature sighed, briefly exposing its blackened needle-teeth. ‘Shall I cushion the blow for you? Or simply tell you here and now that the Emperor did not create the Throne, but adapted it from a thousand different stolen artefacts of older races? Or that its function is misunderstood by your people, and that if you ever discovered the truth, it would, at the very least, rip your deluded empire in half? That worst of all, the Emperor you place so much store by is entirely irrelevant to the machine’s ongoing function?’
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u/hurix 18h ago
Is this where it ends like a cliffhanger? Is there more?
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u/IMrMacheteI Starfleet transporter specialist 10h ago
The short answer to that is read the book.
The spoiler answer is the deal falls through when the ulterior motives of the Dark Eldar are revealed and most everyone involved ends up dead.
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u/lumpboysupreme 3h ago
the Emperor you place so much store by is entirely irrelevant to the machine’s ongoing function?’
This part is wrong and is basically the climax of the story: the character realizes that the Deldar are after an attempt to clone the emperor onto their own copy of the device because none of them could ever be strong enough psykers to control it.
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u/TheRobn8 1d ago edited 21h ago
The 3rd most powerful psyker died after being on it for a few hours, so I don't think so lol
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u/superdupergasat 17h ago
I think its also important to note the Siege of Terra was brimming with huge warp anormalies. Time and space were not behaving in their usual way. What felt as a few hours for the combatants may have been decades for Malcador on the Throne.
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u/Legomaniac91 1d ago
Yes, but it will burn them out over time. Malcador subbed in when The Emperor went to fight Horus and he was reduced to ash by the time Big E came back.
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u/SouthernAd2853 1d ago
Almost certainly yes but only the strongest Aeldari could sit on it even briefly.
I see no reason to think there'd be limits on sacrifices but the Custodes would not like the idea of hauling skilled Xenos psykers into the Inner Palace regularly and possibly the soul of the sacrifices have some impact on the Emperor so feeding him too many Xenos could be bad.
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u/wittyjokename92 1d ago
Iirc an Eldar managed to sneak into the imperial palace through the webway. The entire time they were there they were being drained by the throne though it's unclear if it was because their soul is so much more powerful than a humans or because there was an tear into the warp that was actually drawing their soul towards slaneesh.
The throne is also partially based on Druhkari designs which are possibly connected to a similar device in the Ghoul Stars of unknown origin. Still the throne itself is immensely powerful and dangerous so likely only a handful of beings in the entire galaxy could use it while all psykers can be fed to it. Though tossing an Ork or Tau wouldn't do much for fuel. The throne also channels belief into it. So if you don't believe the Emperor is a god your soul is likely of lesser value than someone who thinks they're being consumed by a divine being.
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u/IMrMacheteI Starfleet transporter specialist 21h ago
The Dark Eldar Haemonculus in question did not sneak in via the Webway. He was invited and smuggled onto the planet by a conspiracy of Imperial groups including the Custodes in order to assess the state of a failing Throne component and negotiate a replacement. Once on Terra, his soul was not drained by the throne, in fact quite the opposite. He essentially got drunk feeding on all the suffering surrounding him and went a little overboard:
What do you understand of the dark eldar?’
‘Very little.’
‘Keep it that way. They are beyond abhorrent.’ Jarrod shook his head. ‘Even I do not know enough. No one in the ordo knows everything, for they are almost impossible to capture. I have never met one in the flesh. Few people have, so your friend was fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, to have done so. But let me tell you what is known.’ He reached up to his rosette, and began to toy with it absently. ‘They are called pain-bringers for a reason. They live for it. It is not an affectation for them, it is life itself. We do not know precisely why, but there are accounts of them being imprisoned and kept away from any possible prey, and after a time spent thus, even when given solid food and water and kept in comfort, they wither. They begin to rave, then to decay. Given long enough, they will expire. I have seen the footage of this, and it is unpleasant. They are terrified, at the end, clawing the metal bars, pleading. And so it has been postulated that the infliction of agony is in some way essential to their survival. If they are given subjects to… desecrate, then they can survive under such conditions indefinitely.’
‘How was that supposition tested?’
‘Do not ask.’ Jarrod let his rosette fall, and reached for his goblet. ‘Let us return to your friend. Suppose someone were foolish enough to bring a haemonculus to a hive world. It would be the very opposite of the confinement I have described. The creature would be surrounded by billions of souls, all of them vulnerable, all of them alluring. You must understand that these creatures experience sensation far more acutely than we do. Their appetites dominate them, if allowed to. For this precise sect of the species, appetite is all that remains. It was placed in an environment of overwhelming, intoxicating abundance. I suspect that your judgement was right, Erasmus. I suspect it went mad. If it had some purpose in the beginning, then that must have been quickly forgotten.’
There is also no real connection between the Shariax guarded by the Death Spectres and the Golden Throne beyond the superficial. Since boosting psychic powers and draining one's soul are by no means unique properties of artifacts in 40K and since we know what an actual artifact connected to the Golden Throne looks like in the form of the Dark Glass, there's just not that much of a connection to be drawn there.
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u/wittyjokename92 21h ago
Thank you for the information. I was confusing something with the harlequins and the haemonculus story as I've only been given excerpts for both stories. The shariax I remembered hearing was supposed to be an ancient Eldar or Old One device the Drukathi copied in part for their own technology but I guess that's just something I heard from a loretuber instead of something I read in an outdated codex.
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u/IMrMacheteI Starfleet transporter specialist 20h ago
an ancient Eldar or Old One device the Drukathi copied in part for their own technology
People repeat this exact bit of misinformation about the Golden Throne as well as well as claiming it's a "soul engine" or "pain engine" created by the Drukhari. They often cite the Vaults of Terra books as the source for this when in fact those books explicitly state that the Throne Artifact itself is non-Eldar xenos in origin and demonstrate this with the fact that they were A: getting the Imperials to show them the schematics for the Throne so they could build a copy of it and B: trying to get the Emperor's blood in order to create a braindead clone of him to sit on it and plug a hole in Commoragh. If The Throne was something they had created or had the capacity to use that would not be the case.
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u/wittyjokename92 20h ago
Ah vaults of terra is my next 40k dive after I clear some space on my to be read pile. I was under the impression that the throne used some old Eldar tech that only the Drukathi would have remembered since it predated the birth of slaneesh and was combined with Dark Age human technology to make the throne more powerful. I didn't realize the Drukathi were completely removed from it's creation and tasked with making a piece to replace something with a cheap copy
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u/IMrMacheteI Starfleet transporter specialist 20h ago
Not exactly, it's an amalgamation of quote "a thousand different stolen artifacts of older races" and certain parts in the miles of mechanisms are Eldar in origin. The last book tells us specifically which part and what it does, and that it's not the actual 'throne' artifact at the center. I definitely recommend them, they're an excellent perspective of Terra and thoroughly put the lie to the claim people sometimes make that 40k is no longer dark enough.
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u/ecethrowaway01 21h ago
We don't observe either of these cases, but bear in mind
1) The third-strongest human psyker got annhilated trying to use the throne. Magnus isn't human and could use it, but powerscaling against that is hard.
2) We really don't know enough about this, but it'd be seen as heresy in anything but the most dire circumstance (which would have to be written about)
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 16h ago
they cant "use" the golden throne, they would be burned instantly. you need immense psycic power to do anything, let alone stay alive for a second when you sit down.
if they could be fed to it as a sacrifice, yeah sure. it would be so extremly miniscule that it would probably not amout to anything, but yeah they could
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u/Talusen 22h ago
What happens if you fed it a C'tan shard?
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u/ecethrowaway01 21h ago
Throne consumes souls in the warp, c'tan don't have souls.
Short answer - nothing.
In practice: bringing a necrodermis to the throne is a big no-no
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