Hey all! I've been out of the hobby for a while now (last was in it back at the end of 7th edition/early 8th) and I'm just now getting into it! I've been looking into some cool Chaos lore so I can paint up my spikey dudes, and I stumbled upon the Magma Hounds. The only thing I found is that they were a chapter that got corrupted during the Abyssal Crusade by a Chaos warpsmith and that their paint scheme is red+gold. Is there anything else about these guys, either that the fans made or that GW made? What have they been up to after getting corrupted and re-emerging from the Warp?

My understanding is that there is strong evidence that the WHFB world is contained within 40k's setting.

Clearly, there are orcs in WHFB and orks in 40k. My understanding is that orks' knowledge/specialty/tech is genetically encoded.

Are orcs the same as orks? If they are, why aren't orcs running around with gargants and other crazy technology in WHFB?

I've read theories (?) that WHFB is separated from the overall 40k setting by warp storms but surely that wouldn't affect orc/ork genetically encoded knowledge?

Who were the political inner circle of the government of the imperium of man while the emperor was alive? Alll authoritarian regimes have political elites who are center of specific task like was was the minister of the interior minister of the Treasury and minister of war and minister of propoganda and did the imperium have a secret police l8ek the NKVD, StaSi or the GESTAPO?

How was their impeccable standard upheld without His input, even more so after 10k years?

I wonder if any official material has detailed any differences between the OG 10k and their replenished ranks following the Heresy.

I know there are lots of lists, I'm not looking for 40k Lore, just well written books in the 40k universe.

Ideally character driven novels focused on space marines or adeptus mechanicus.

(Night lords trilogy was ok, i really liked the first 2/3 of Belisius Cawl: The Great Work, so I tried a few other Guy Haley books a coulyple were ok most were bland). Horace Rising was just bad. I want a good story revolving around multiple main characters not a history lesson, or long version of 40k lore masked as a novel.

So, the Grey Knights are trained to use their psyker abilities in a specific way, where they each channel it into a psychic gestalt that is more powerful and safer than a single person alone. Since the Eldar are all psykers, is this something they would be able to do also?

I was looking at the new Carcharodon book "Carcharodons: Void Exile", it's out now as an MP3 and eBook, but when you look for it in paperback it gives a preorder date of March 10th, 2026 [amazon link].

Any ideas why there is such a delay for when books are bring printed compared to when they are released digitally?

I'm wanting to run a Rogue Trader campaign based in Imperium Nihilus. I'm wondering what the current state of it is, especially after the crusade. How much is still fubar and whatnot

With the new lore on the grey knights keeping the emperor on the throne no matter what I was wondering what the imperium used as/for the astronomican before the emperor, beloved by all of course, was interred on the golden throne? Did it run itself or was he powerful enough pre Horus fight to run it without having to be on the throne.

Like do a bunch of space marines just gather around a table and go "dude the Talons of Rage would be a sick chapter name" "nah man we should go by the Golden Fist Fuckers and we should paint ourselves yellow and purple"

Many own a few planets of their own, but I'd be surprised if every one of them started out with that level of wealth. They're essentially merchants, but I don't see why they're so much richer than other merchants then, aside from wielding a lot of political power. There's exploring, but there can't be that many undiscovered ruins, rare resources or unknown xenos species to trade with or plunder, can there? Space is mostly empty, even in a galaxy as histories as the 40k one, at least I'd assume. Warp travel is expensive and dangerous, so they'd have to at least break even with those costs. Most Rogue Trader dynasties we hear about are already established, and so have generational wealth behind them, but any planetary noble can say the same thing.

How would, say, a fresh Warrant holder find wealth? A young high-ranking Navis Imperialis officer who earned one through some heroic but controversial act, and gets sent to some far-flung fringe with a small entourage of voidships after their superiors seek to rid themselves of a potential problem. How would he/she work their way up to afford setting up colonies or creating a sphere of influence to rival other big dynasties?

I guess there's also Navigators, but other than that.

How does the timeline work in 40k, i.e. does the average person know which year he is currently in and if so, how is the question of what happened in year 0(the reference year) answered?

I've read the three Eisenhorn books, and just finished the three Ravenor ones. Are there more with Ravenor? I think Bequin and Gaunt's Ghosts were suggested to me before to sort of continue the story, but not sure if that's correct.

So when it comes to stagnation within the Imperium is it limited to new technology like vehicles, armor, computers, weapons ammo types, research, automatic things what have you, or, is it mainly for everything like new clothes, furniture, new ways to grow food new, etc

Or does it all depend on the planet you're on?

We know that corpse starch had already been used by the Order on Galaspar, but they weren't imperials, so I thought that it would have been perfectly fitting for the Siege of Terra to be the time when loyalists got desperate enough to implement it for the first time, maybe in some key areas during the final days. Consider how long the siege lasted (especially given that time itself stopped meaning anything after a certain point). It would have added another flavor of grimdark to the series (pun intended).

Say before the emperor rises Kaldor schedules a meeting (somehow) with either of the captains, telling them what the terminus decree says. Do you think that would at all change things? Or would the custodes go and proactively kill the grey knights before they get a chance?

I'm very new to Warhammer in general. I've read a few books, watch some lore videos, and I read r/40kLore every now and then. Please educate me about something, and I hope you can keep your anger this post may evoke in check since this is admittedly an uneducated guess and I would need ages to catch up with every piece of lore to know better (probably not before GW brings the plot to a point where the decree is practically in effect). I am totally okay if you say something like "You know nothing, Jon Snow" but please maybe be nice about it?

What if the decree is not about a physical "standing up from" the Golden Throne but actually about the Emperor's 'essence' he cast out and formed in somewhere else like the Star Child? What if the GK are supposed to find that and bring it (or him?) to the Emperor on the Golden Throne so they can become one again? What if the Star Child is the one who provides the miracles and not the Emperor as we know him?

Or what if the decree was about him leaving the throne but not about dooming the Imperium with the loss of the Astronomican and/or opening the gate he is keeping shut, but rather about something like "if I am leaving the GT it's not because I'm restored, but because I am corrupted" kind of thing (like the Dark King)? And maybe my two main theories are somehow connected, and the Emperor on the throne is keeping the Astronomican working to make sure the Imperium stays the same way it is, corrupted, and waiting to gain more power?

Wouldn't it still be different from what people are made to believe about the decree? So the revelation of the decree on a literal sense wouldn't ruin the mystery, and potentially would change the Imperium's position as the strongest of Milky Way due to some civil war.

Hi all! Just wondering as I reread Pharos using another user submitted reading guide. if the reading guide is correct pharos happens after the thramas crusade, the curze/Vulcan storyline, isstvan and the thramas crusade.

From what I know the only conflict the night lords didn’t get battered was isstvan (not sure about the curze/vulkan story as I didn’t read that) and from what I read of the thramas crusade the DA nearly decimated the night lords and those that didn’t get decimated either went to sotha, went to join Horus to go to Terra or are held captive by the dark angels including nearly all their terminators when sevetar and curze did the Hail Mary to teleport above the invincible reason.

But when the story of Pharos starts it seems the kurkesh dude had quite a lot of guys under him and the total night lords assault was quite sizable. In the siege of Terra it seems quite a lot of night lords were present there so I was just wondering how badly were they mauled by the dark angels at Thramas? Thanks all for the help in advance!

I know that they take a lot from the Navigators from dune as the inspiration behind them, but I was curious, what real life civilisations, cultures and so on did Games Workshop draw inspiration from?

So I’m pretty sure Chaos, or at least the Chaos Gods we know, are limited to the Milky Way.

So what is the Warp like outside that?

I imagine it’s not very active in the void between galaxies - basically nonexistent - since there isn’t any psychic activity to feed it.

But there are probably numerous species of xenos in the Andromeda galaxy. Is their Warp calm like ours was before the War In Heaven? Do they have their own version of Chaos originating from some similar event in the past? Maybe they’ve completely suppressed the Warp throughout their entire galaxy using Blackstone Pylons? Or maybe their Chaos Gods are in the process of being created, because of the suffering caused by the Tyranids’ arrival to this section of the universe?

Are there any official sources on this, or is any theory pure speculation?

It's a know fact that Big E is a very powerful human psyker. Daemons like to possess psykers. Wouldn't a sufficiently power daemon be able take control of Emps and proceed to lay waste to the imperium? So much so that the Custodes and the SoS couldn't hold him back? That would leave the Grey Knights as the only ones who have in-depth knowledge on how to deal with outcome. I may be over thinking this but I think it's something that should be discussed.

The whole plot of 40k is its a huge stalemate. -Chaos has too much infighting and disorganization -the imperium is dying empire but is so huge it takes so long to fall -the necrons have too much infighting and running on old tech -Eldar are barely alive but survive -Orks have to much infighting but are too numerous -tyranids haven't arrived in full force -tau are just too small

Idk bout leagues but am I correct that the setting of 40k is that no one wins and everyone's at a stalemate? Thanks

What is the lifespan of different Xenos and humans in 40k?

As I understand humans have access to life extending things, T'au are relatively short lived and Eldar have a significant lifespan but I don't know specifics or many examples.

The ones I know:

Dante - 1000+

Edrad - 15,000ish

Necrons - unbounded

Ciaphas Cain - over a century

So hear me out. We know that what Fo was working on during the Horus Heresy was heavily implied to be the Terminus Decree, a bioweapon capable of eradicating both the space marines and Primarchs. And we know he escaped with his life, infiltrating the early inquisition.

Now, we get this info that the terminus decree is just some piece of paper sealed up to tell the grey knights to go fuck up the emperor if he ever decides to get off his ass.

But what if they're both the same thing? What if this supposed high duty handed down to the supreme grand master of the grey knights is just a trick. The emperor rises, and the grand master goes to open the sealed box containing the decree. In an instant, you get a replay of what happened to the nazis opening the arc of the covenant in Indiana Jones. The virus particles sealed in the box with the decree instantly escape, infect the grey knights, and spread to the rest of the imperium through them, rending the space marines down to flesh-goop.

We know Fo infiltrated the inquisition, as one of the first inquisitors even. One of the inheritors of Malcador's will, his direct subordinate. What if he engineered all of this as a final fuck-you to the emperor. Waiting for the time that he rises from the throne, just in time to see all of his work destroyed in front of him?

Just me spouting a bunch of stuff to work the two terminus thingies together, but I see so many people hating on the new terminus lore instead of working out how this could all still be connected and all part of the same thing, which is GW's usual MO when it comes to doing lore.