In a tower lives an old man, 3 centuries old. Beneath him live 3 billion souls in states that range from ecstatic luxury to abject slavery. They're his. Across the polluted wastes of the planet other great Hives of humanity can be found. Hundreds of billions more live and toil and die there. They're his. Beyond, his planet, two hundred more compose the Hesteron Sector. Some are paradise, some are hell. Every year billions of soldiers that compose countless Imperial Guards regiments die fighting xeno abominations, heretical insurgencies, or other horrors made manifest. Every year Ships the size of continents battle among the stars, pitched in battles that will have every consequence, but will be heard by none beyond the cold void. Every year the Inquisition watches, sometime executing entire worlds on suspicion alone that foulness might've touched them. Every year Rogue Traders compete for trade routes and commercial contracts that place entire star systems at their mercy, in a mercantile arrangement that ensure the tiniest fraction will have more wealth than the rest combined.
All this the old man watches. All this he tries and control. But he knows he has no control. He knows he is not special. For in the Imperium of Man, only the Emperor truly rules.
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