Chapter Text
It is the millennae of darkness. For centuries upon centuries, the immortal Emperor of Mankind has ruled from the Golden Throne of Terra. He is a decaying and constantly rotting corpse, writhing from its endless torments. From the Imperial Palace to the width and breadth of the planet called “Holy Terra” - the ancient Earth - he rules, in name, the vast, galaxy-spanning empire known as the Imperium of Man. It is the cruelest and most bloodiest regime imaginable, the epitome of both human supremacy and its thirst for self-destruction, ever-trapped in a cycle of war and bloodlust, besieged on all fronts by enemies foreign and even allies well-known. It is an empire that wages war against blood by blood, against decay with decay, against sorcery with sorcerers, and against excess with excess. It is a constantly-self damaging state that, at the same time, serves as one of the few last broken abodes Humanity as a whole species may ever have - and should woe betide them, the species’ greatest coffin.
It is from the Golden Throne that the nigh-powerless Emperor witnesses the ever-growing collapse of his Dream; the Imperium of Man was never meant to last beyond a short phase, though what flaws his plans had borne to even begin this empire have now taken firm root. In the constant throes of daily cruelty, the same Humanity he once faultfully rescued from the pitfalls of dogma, stagnation, and a fear of the dark has turned to worship him in that very same spirit - fearful of science, reason and human care, and praising the ignorance of small minds and might making supposed right against the sin of empathy. No matter who calls themselves “Lord Commander”, “Imperial Regent”, or “High Lord”, none can truly salvage the imminent destruction of the Imperium; all intellectual and rational minds left - and indeed, all minds that have still remembered their humanity left - are forced to watch the stagnation, seemingly forced upon their empire, take root, powerless and alone…
…Except, outside of what seems to be the truth, there are movements of good. Silent, hidden, veiled - yet there - that stir in the shadows. They do not belong to Chaos or the old gods, nor to the forces of that darkness whose disgusting nature trumps even the evils of the Warp, but are of the light. They work, perhaps vainfully, in the interest that the stagnancy and endless, dogmatic, ultra-authoritarian fatalism forced upon the vast Imperium of Man - and of the universe itself - do not come to pass. They strive to do their duties, intentionally obscuring themselves so that none may even know the authenticity of their existence, so that the wiles of the so-called “Greater Game”, that game played not by Chaos, but strung by forces far, far worse, do not receive their ending - the destruction of reality. The greatest of these movements, working within the very soul of the Imperium itself, hail from the Officio Solium Aurum, or the Office of the Golden Throne in Low Gothic. It is led by the enigmatic and unknowable Guidesman to the Golden Throne, the man charged as the advisor of advisors to the Emperor (Equal only to Malcador the Hero, and yet whose nature is as unknowable as that of the Lost Primarchs), and staffed by millions of workers, bureaucrats, tech-priests, logisticians, politicians, accountants, and commanders who willingly pledge their lives in preparation for the hope to come, weaved through hundreds of projects engineered for a day they hope they will witness to see.
Arrayed above every stratum of Imperial bureaucracy and able to command any force at the Imperium’s disposal should they will it, yet just as much not even heard of by all but a few million, they work not only to bring forth a day of freedom, but to also keep reality stable, conforming to the bare minimum of the Greater Game’s “canon” and preventing the witnessing of extra-universal properties by the Greater Game’s millions of players, and, perhaps eagerly, do their hardest to free reality from the Greater Game’s strings of fate itself.
For amongst all arms of the galaxy’s living, breathing, and complex-thinking beings, it is the men and women of the Officio Solium Aurum who bear, with the most amount of gravitas, the foreboding truth of their reality: that it is all naught but fiction, slated to be the background of a wargame setting until the end of all time. Yet, all the same, they understand that that freedom from such control can be bought by their own hands. With every left-handed maneuver to keep the “canon” in order and not let it be disturbed, their every-right-handed maneuver works to seek an “opening”, an opportunity for reality to break out of its slated, human-forced “path”, and let itself henceforth decide for itself the direction of the universe.
Even after the tens of thousand years of their establishment, they, with little restrictions that the rest of the Imperium has suffered in its decline, yet strive to an impossibility: of freedom from a predestined path, yet understanding that such impositions against them are of mortal make; that freedom from fate is indeed in their hands where all others have resigned to its cruel grasp. Their comrades in arms are many and varied: Custodians of an enlightened mind, certain Inquisitors of the Holy Ordos, noted Space Marines - seers and visionaries - of several chapters, every Harlequin of the Aeldari, the Necrons of Solemnace and their Archeovist Lord, the T’au of O’Shovah and of another named O’Mont’yr, and many, many more. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to alter the course of time, and wrest it from the wills of players, writers, manufacturers, developers, and far, far more.
To be a man in such times, and of such mind, is to be one amongst untold thousands, the only ones who note a fatalistic end, yet also acknowledging of the hope that could be. It is to be perpetually witness to the cycle of hope, despair, life, and death, knowing that reality could have been different, and could be should they do their best to strive for it. These are the tales of those minds. Forget the power of “canon” or “non-canon”, for so much has yet to be seen or heard, kept in the darkest reaches until the day they are proven the right to be seen and heard. Forget the power of stagnation and hopelessness, for even in the grim darkness of the far future, there is yet hope. There may be no peace amongst the stars, but the forces of the Light work that there be no eternity of carnage and bloodshed… And that the laughter of thirsting gods, the flecking of hungry daemons’ tongues may finally cease by their own mouths, and that good shall triumph over evil where it was even thought impossible and undoable in this universe.
For even in the grim darkness of the far future, there is a light that shines within the vast darkness of the eras - and the darkness has not overcome it.