The breadth of the Imperium spans across a million worlds, from the arctic wasteland
that is Valhalla to the towering hives of Armageddon.
Each day hundreds are lost to invasion, plague, or the warp, while hundreds more are rediscovered,
colonized, and liberated.
Yet there is one planet that stands out above all.
A millennia of strife has dissolved its oceans; its soil is barren and its air is toxic.
So revered is this place however, that of the untold billions of pilgrims who flock
to it each year, the few that arrive will likely never leave.
In ancient times it was known as Earth, in the 41st Millennium, it is Holy Terra.
The capital and throneworld of the Imperium, Terra is effectively a planetwide temple dedicated
to the worship of the Emperor of Mankind.
The Emperor resides here still, entombed and sustained within the Golden Throne.
His presence alone has made Terra a sacred world of power and majesty that for many in
the Imperium remains only a place of legend and myth.
Those blessed to call the planet home are the highest servants of the Emperor, the holiest
clergy of the Ecclesiarchy, the aristocratic families of the Navis Nobilite, and the most
powerful military officers, scribes, and bureaucrats.
Countless more toil as serfs and thralls, who serve across Terra’s countless manufactoria,
producing the infrastructure that preserves the planet’s endless labyrinth of bureaucracy.
They suffer in terrible squalor, their greatest hope that their offspring might one day join
the Preisthood of Earth, or be accepted as a clerk or adept of the lowest order.
Terra’s entire surface is covered in continent sized edifices of state, including the Imperial
Palace, the Ecclesiarchal Palace, the Temple of the Assassinorum, the Quarter of the Navigators,
and the hundreds if not thousands of departmental headquarters of the Adeptus Terra, the Imperial
Government.
Even the Imperial Inquisition is said to maintain its greatest stronghold on Terra, far beneath
the southern polar ice cap.
Foreboding statues of Angels, Primarchs, and all the heroes of the Imperium have made Holy
Terra the defining example of Imperial Architecture.
Its soaring buildings and breathtaking avenues have been imitated across the galaxy, but
never surpassed.
A square metre of land on Terra is worth more than a palace on any other Hive World.
In orbit enormous cities and stations are anchored, ancient even when the Imperium was
new.
These are surrounded by countless defense platforms, laser batteries, and the Phalanx,
the mobile fortress-monastery of the Imperial Fists Adeptus Astartes chapter.
Terra is the most heavily fortified world in the galaxy, and among its defenders are
elite units drawn from every branch of the Imperial military, from Battlefleet Solar
of the Imperial Navy to Inquisitorial Storm Troopers.
An attack on Terra itself has been regarded as unfathomable, yet more than once it has
come to pass.
At the peak of the Horus Heresy, the Traitor legions fought across Terra and laid siege
to the Imperial Palace itself.
For a time, sections of the planet were occupied and corrupted and billions of Imperial civilians
were butchered and sacrificed to the dark gods.
When the Emperor prevailed, his loyal servants set about restoring the planet and millenia
later, few relics of that dark age remain.
Thousands of years of planning has ensured that such an attack could never come again,
but as the Time of Ending dawns across the galaxy and reality itself is split asunder,
not even Terra has been spared.
For the first time since Horus was cut down demons have struck, however briefly, at the
very heart of the Imperium.
While swiftly destroyed, their very presence on the Throneworld suggests that Terra is
not invincible.
For humanity, the survival of Terra is paramount.
Within the Chambers of the Astronomicon, a massive apparatus located deep beneath the
Himalazian Mountains, the Emperor projects a great beacon of light into the warp.
Without this guidance, faster than light travel would be impossible and the Imperium would
not long survive.
The countless worlds of the Imperium have endured countless years against the terrors
of the galaxy.
But if mankind is able to strike down the encroaching darkness and bring about a new
age of peace and progress, there can be no doubt that the first sign of salvation will
be found on Holy Terra alone.
Should the Emperor and his servants fail, then Terra will simply be the last to fall,
a solitary fortress alone in the galaxy before it too is consumed by a tide of heretical
rebellion, genocide, and the damnation of Chaos.
In Atlas, the Templin Institute investigates the most storied places from across alternate
worlds.
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