Editing Astronomican (section)

==History==
[[File:Emperors Thirst.png|thumb|left|300px|Psykers on their way to become psychic snacks for Big E.]]

The Astronomican is a device created by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] in preparation for the founding of the [[Imperium of Man]]. Following the Golden Age of Technology, humanity was cut off from its colony worlds due to violent [[Warp]] storms and the loss of its own [[Scythes_of_the_Emperor|beacon grid]], rendering it unable to safely traverse the Warp. While the Warp storms died out around M29, it was all but impossible for [[Navigator]]s to safely guide space ships through it. To solve this, the Emperor created the Astronomican, a device which acts as a psychic "lighthouse", allowing warp-travel in a 50,000 light year radius of [[Terra]] (you can still go outside that, but it will be difficult to navigate and you better hope the Gellar Field doesn't fizzle out).The galactic core is 26,000 light years away from earth, while the whole galaxy is 105,700 light years, so the Astronomican can, roughly, cover half the galaxy. The Emperor eventually planned to phase out Warp travel completely with the construction of an Imperial [[Webway]], but [[Magnus|one guy]] accidentally ruined it, which led to an immeasurable amount of rage due to [[Not as planned]], both from Big E. himself and the fan-base alike.

Following his entombment to the Golden Throne, the running of the Astronomican fell to the Adeptus Astronomica. It's overseen by the Master of the Astronomican, who has a permanent seat on the council with the [[High Lords of Terra]]. Given the sheer amount of psychic power contained within the device, the Emperor's mind is used to direct the power of the Astronomican. To keep it running, one thousand [[psyker]]s are rounded up '''every day''' and sacrificed to power the Astronomican. Unlike the ones sacrificed to maintain the Golden Throne, these psykers are trained to keep it running and consider it a holy duty to sacrifice their lives... At least if you take things at face value like the Adeptus presents it. And while it is true their sacrifice is a vital necessity for the Imperium, a more cynical view is that the device is a trash compactor for unwanted psykers: those that are weak of mind, powerful but outright insane or just happened to piss someone off. By keeping it active, humanity has a guaranteed way of navigating the [[Warp]] but also an ostensibly laudable way of "depositing" dangerous psykers and keeping the Imperium "functioning".

[[File:Psyker Sacrifices.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Inside the Chamber of the Astronomican.]]

Also, the "thousand a day" is something of a misnomer: there's actually way more than one thousand psykers inside the Astronomican Chamber of the Hollow Mountain (the former Mount Everest) at a time. The mechanisms of that chamber gradually drain each victim of all memories, thoughts, emotions, and eventually the soul itself through a course of a few weeks, or in case of the most unfortunate ones, months, and all this time for them is filled with extreme, incomprehensible, mind-blowing, "I wish I was abducted by the [[Dark Eldar]]" pain, until all that is left of their souls ceases to exist (so no afterlife for them) and all that is left of their bodies [[Malcador_the_Sigillite|crumbles to dust]]. It is telling that even the Emperor refused to implement this solution when Malcador suggested it the first time and only reluctantly agreed to it when it became clear he could no longer both do everything he needed to do and power the Astronomican alone at the same time. Let that sink in for a minute: when the most ruthless warlord in the history of mankind, the guy with a lot of geno-/xenocides and war on galactic scale on his hands, when he thinks something is too extreme; you know you're in for a real treat on the [[Grimdark]] scale.

The Imperial Creed is a bit uncertain as to the exact theological nature of the Astronomican: the accepted line is that the Emperor maintains it by his sheer divinity, whilst the psykers are either purified of their sin and redeemed in death or are just not talked about. What few historians the Imperium has have learned not to point out that the Astronomican ran before the Emperor sat on the Golden Throne.