With all the names of the gates it sounds like a concentric design:

A palace within a keep, within a fotress, within a castle.  The defenses could probably go up the side of the mountain (think Lord of the Rings: Return of the King) or be as big as a mountain.  The range itself seems like it was transformed into the outer defenses, so some sort of Great Wall of China thing running between the peaks is perhaps in order?  Some extreme engineering!

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It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

GW is known for ripping off ideas. Might as well copy Minas Tirith.

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I was thinking that very thought.  Like Minas Tirith to the power of Arrakeen  

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You are thinking small The primary spaceport would be on the equator, just as they are today for everyone who isn't a cold war hang over. Take that to your palace location as an example of the distances involved. Fill the world with high speed mag levs and you can have the adminstratums office complex for back office functions in France and its habitation blocks in Florida!

Sea levels would have lowered with a lot of water being used for reaction mass initially and massive global warming caused by us and a future with massive population and spacecraft blasting through the atmosphere dumping heat. However I reckon most of the water shipped would have been in the form of asteroids, easier to get at to. The ecology would have taken a hit in the numerous nuclear wars and nuclear winters that have happened in the intervening 30,000 years (who wants to bet the AM worship an OGRE? )

The Imperium 40k has steadly lost a lot of the futurist massive scale of things. Maybe the focus on 40k did it Hell even Judge Dredd often gives a better scale than a lot of the books coming out of the Black Library. I've seen better Hive cities in Hong Kong and Mumbai than I have read described by some authors! Living in Maidstone and Glasgow must kill their sense of scale and what goes on in this world, never mind others!

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Oh and the palace would be primarily orbital defences, probably with some sort of adamantium strengthening of the crust to with stand any return bombardment. Any such bombardment though would quickly darken the sky so any imagery should be of dying vegetation and a dust filled sky, probably have a lot of rain as well initially.

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'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x

I agree on the scale issues.  40K is this MASSIVE universe and the story lines revolve around these events that "could effect entire worlds, perhaps the galaxy!" yet they send in six Space Marines.

The Horus Heresy books are the only ones that seem to capture the feel of what IMO it should be like, and even those seem to focus on one battle at a time.  Tom Clancy style writing is more fitting for something of that grand scope if you ask me.

As for the defenses, I would tend to agree except for the mention of gates.  The mere fact that there are gates means there are walls.  The fact that the gates actually have names tells me there are BIG walls.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Well 'Gates' doesn't necessarily mean gates.

The who thing is liable to mainly be bunkers, I did see something about a kilometer high ceiling after all.

And the Gate's themselves have spaceports, likely the gates are the spaceports since what you need is gates to space, not to buildings.

I suspect that 40k has medieval sensibilities though so the are assuredly ways festooned with towers bearing turbolasers and such.

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It's just occured to me that we'd need lists for the Legio Custodes and the Sisters of Silence too - I put a Custodes list together about a year ago; I'll see if I can dig out the PDF.

Regards,
Reaver

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Are there no depictions of the Emperor's Palace in the HH art book?

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Uhm, no.  In the context of the quote, the gate is clearly a gate.  Big doors that open.  Gates attach to walls.
The Gate had once been a thing of magnificence, two gilded beasts rising up to lock claws in a feral dispute. Dorn's order of works had replaced them with giant grey donjons stippled with casemates and macro-gun ports. A curtain wall of bleak rockcrete encircled the gate, its edge fletched with void field vanes like the spines of some prehistoric reptile'

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

The Gates don't need to be gates at all.
For example Lion's Gate is a spaceport.

For an image of Terra. The new Wh40k rulebook has a picture of Terra in it.
It is a grey globe sheated in grey clouds. No much detail to see.
In the upper left there lies the Imperial Main Palace (ok Himalaya then ).
In the lower left there lies the Halls of the Astronomican (hmm Australia?).
In the upper right there lies the Scholastica Psycana.
In the lower right there lies the Palace of the Ecclesiarchy
Somwhere in the middle lies the Hall of Justice and the Cathedral of Emperors Worship.

Actual english names may differ because i onl yown the germa ncopy.

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Ah, I 'see' it now.  It is a horizontal portal - okay, nevermind then.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

The four Spaceports on the Horus Heresy boardgame board are:
- Primus
- Lion's Gate
- Damocles
- Eternity Wall

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@Evil and Chaos: There is a picture of the Eternity Gate in the Collected Visions book in fact. It looks almost exactly like the GW Gamesday Diorama of the Siege of the Palace in fact, i.e. like this:

So, can we all agree that we are talking about traditional walls and gates now?    

BlackLegion: The Lions Gate is both a Spaceport and a gate. That description of the gate with the guilded beasts, protected by a curtain wall erected by Dorn? That is the Lion Gate. It would appear each of the Gates into the outer palace has a corresponding Spaceport - Lions Gate, Eternity Gate/Eternity Wall Spaceport, Primus Gate/Primus Spaceport, etc etc. The fact that there is an Eternity Wall Spaceport would imply that the Eternity Gate is one of the gates into the Outer Palace. So Damocles Spaceport from the HH Game may either be the Spaceport serving the Annapura Gate, or there is a Damocles Gate that is not mentioned in the Lightning Tower short story.

EDIT: Reaver - During the entire Siege, the Sisters of Silence were involved fighting in the Palace Vaults against Daemons attempting to gain access to the palace via the Webway entrance that was part of the Golden Throne, so you wouldn't need a list for them really. The Custodes are a possibility though... they were involved in the counterattack around the Ultimate Gate that enabled the Loyalists to withdraw into the Inner Palace.

EDIT: Reaver - During the entire Siege, the Sisters of Silence were involved fighting in the Palace Vaults against Daemons attempting to gain access to the palace via the Webway entrance that was part of the Golden Throne, so you wouldn't need a list for them really. The Custodes are a possibility though... they were involved in the counterattack around the Ultimate Gate that enabled the Loyalists to withdraw into the Inner Palace.

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If using E-Bay use this link to support Tac Com!
'Abolish red trousers?! Never! Red trousers are France!' – Eugene Etienne, War Minister, 1913
"Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography."
General Plumer, 191x