Imperium Of Man (Warhammer 40,000)

The Imperium of Man (Latin: Imperium Hominis) is a fictional galactic empire of over a million planets that contains the vast majority of humans in the forty-first millennium, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe created by Games Workshop.

In the fiction, the Imperium is depicted as a loose empire, nominally consisting of all human-inhabited worlds in explored space and united through imposed religious conviction, extreme xenophobia, militarism, fascism, despotic hierarchical rule, and threats of brutal disciplinary force. The founder of the Imperium, an enigmatic and mysterious persona known only as the 'Emperor of Mankind' is in theory the supreme ruler of this galaxy-spanning empire, although in practice the highest tier of command is the supreme council known as the High Lords, based on Terra (Earth in the 41st millennium A.D.), who have ruled for ten millennia under the Emperor's name, as the Emperor lays dormant on the Golden Throne in a nearly unresponsive state of hyper-focused attention to maintaining, among other things, the Astronomicon, a psychic navigational beacon dependent upon his powers alone.