The contrast between the Iron Warriors Legion who seem to dispise chaos corruption to the point where they amputate limbs to delay it, and their Primarch, who seems to be coming back as a full-on Daemon Primarch is just a bit confusing to me. I am still somewhat recent in my lore journey but that is one thing that generates some significant confusion. Why not use that geneseed to rebuild your numbers,? Why turn to Daemonhood if you just lost a war because half of your allies were crazed maniacs that could not follow a battleplan for the life of them? Why embrace what was your brother's downfall? I would love to hear from people more well versed in the lore surrounding the Iron Warriors.

In the new primaris intercessor box preview we are told that primaris gear is growing scarce and the imperium needs to pull out old gear and kitbash.

While from a nostalgia mine point of view I get that GW is burning out and scrambling for ideas but let's unpack that:

1. Primaris tech was supposed to be 10,000 years of stockpile and assembly lines just activated and running for 100 years

2. Aside from Armageddon, a imperial army manufacturing hub, we don't know of any major forgeworld losses

3. Aside from Purterabo initial invasion we don't know how damaged imperial supply chains are

So based on the above, are we being led by gw to believe that 10,000 years of war gear was consumed in 100 years ? Where did that attrition and gear loss happen?

If Crawls supply lines are being overwhelmed, where is this happening in the lore that the imperium is facing such catastrophic supply chain loss they cant even maintain their top tier units?

Anyone have insight or a view on this?

Hey readers!

Apparently about a week ago we had a bit of a stealth release! Over at the Warhammer Alliance they updated their free short fiction section, and alongside some already-released short stories from Noah Van Nguyen and Edoardo Albert, they released a new one... from yours truly! In all the excitement of the Auxilia novel announcement, you can get a little taste of some Imperial Guard action with Swift Resolution, right now! For free!

Swift Resolution is a stand-alone, self-contained, little yarn where I had the chance to once again showcase the Astra Militarum against Orks (Armageddon got me wanting to fight Greenskins, sue me!), with a little tie-in to a different recent-ish campaign event. This time they asked for a different, iconic, regiment (no Steel Legion like in Answered Prayers), so I gave 'em some green on green action, with Cadians.

I hope you dig it... and... it's free! So go get it, and spread the word!

https://warhammer-alliance.com/black-library-short-stories/

https://warhammer-alliance.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2026/08/Swift-Resolution-Print.pdf

I'm a fairly recent Tau fan and I came across this post in the community today: https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1w40ywi/how_are_aeldari_warriors_this_outmatched_by_space/

What's interesting to me is that this is basically an Eldar main character having trouble with what appears to be a few squads of Space Marines.

Now compare this to how the Tau perform against the Astartes in the books/Codexes:

• In "Blades of Damocles", Farsight's forces kill a hundred Space Marines in the first few hours of their attempted invasion of a Tau Sept World. He then leads an attack on the Space Marine headquarters and destroys it, eliminating at least a hundred more (including the Ultramarines Captain in charge).
• In the same book, Bravestorm destroys an entire squad of Ultramarines and a Venerable Dreadnought mostly by himself.
• In "Crisis of Faith", Bravestorm wipes out another squad of Space Marines and so does Ob'lotai. Note that both Bravestorm and Ob'lotai are minor characters.
• In "Blood Oath", Shadowsun accounts for the elimination of at least dozens of White Scars including a Stormseer.
• The "Kauyon" codex continues the story after this novel and details how Shadowsun decisively defeated the White Scars and Raven Guard, killing the Chapter Master of the Raven Guard in the process.

I can go on about this but you get the point. What do you think explains this massive gap in performance? The most obvious answer is a meta one. I assume the Tau sell more models than the Eldar so GW is willing to give them more victories against the Space Marines.

However, could there be lore reasons for this as well? And if so, what do you think this may be?

A while back I read Lord of the Night, a story about a lone Night Lord, Zso Sahaal, who wakes up after a pretty terrific nap alone on an Imperial planet having lost a prized relic of Kurze's. An Inquisitor shows up, but delegates detaining him to his newly hired psyker.

Am I mis-remembering the story or does Sahaal accept, use, then reject the gifts of Chaos? I used the search function and every post about "can one reject Chaos" and the like seem to state it's basically impossible once you are in their thrall. Makes sense. But doesn't Sahaal do just that?

Throughout the story Sahaal is tempted to indulge in mindless slaughter for its own sake, but he sees this as the temptation of the ruinous powers, and steels himself by thinking of the Night Haunter's admonitions to always have a purpose for his violence. This changes after a confrontation with the psyker who is able to track and even attack him with her powers. Seeing this as a threat to his plans to recover the relic and escape, he gives in and accepts help from the voices in his mind, and the next time the psyker tries to mess with him using her powers, she finds his mind protected by powerful forces and she is unable to stop him.

But still later in the book, after much rumination on Kurze's words, he rejects the protection of Chaos, they leave him, and he is once again vulnerable (or at least visible) to the psyker. How on earth Terra did he do what no one else has? Was it some special power of the Corona Nox that he recovered? Or was Chaos deserting him part of Chaos' plan because shortly thereafter he gets a whooping by the fully Chaos-powered NL Krieg Acerbus? Was it the ol' "first hit is always free" and the Powers planned to return to collect on him in a time of need? Or did I completely miss something in the story?

so i understand that certain areas of the universe are ment to be like "less info the better/ less info is the appeal to them" but where can you find out more on the like "cosmic horror" side of stuff? it seems like this is te section of "nobody, not humans, not tyranids, not anything wants to deal with this" type thing so im like..."but why?" what yall recommend if anything? or is it more just lie vague stuff and left that way?

Context:

The story is from "The Maelstrom: Lair of the Tyrant". Yriel learns that Red Corsairs have taken Asuryani captives and Aeldari relics/gear and are holding them inside one of their strongholds. Yriel resolves to free the captives and reclaim Aeldari relics/gear. He baits Huron and his fleet to chase part of the Corsair fleet away from the stronghold. Huron takes most of the marine forces with him.

Yriel exploits the opportunity to blitz the stronghold. The Corsairs make short work of the mortal defenders. However, when the small force of Red Corsair marines left behind staged a counterattack, the Aeldari Corsairs' offensive was broken and forced to retreat.

Here is the text:

"Only when handfuls of Red Corsair warriors entered the fight did the Anhrathe assault falter. The transhuman renegades stemmed the advance with punishing fusillades of boltgun fire and scythed down lightly armoured Aeldari with roaring chain weapons. Yriel alone matched them in battle. The Spear of Twilight was a blur in his hands, finding gaps in power armour, piercing hearts, and striking heads from shoulders. However, even as the High Admiral held his own, his bodyguards were struck down. His raid had recovered a portion of the plundered Alaitoc and liberated dozens of prisoners. More certainly remained, but the High Admiral knew he could stay no longer. Time had long passed to withdraw"

What happens next is a fighting retreat. A vengeful Huron returned and fell on the retreating Aeldari vessels. An Aeldari Corsair flagship was boarded by dozens of heretic marines. They slaughtered its crew until they faced stiff resistance on the bridge. Huron himself teleported there and brutalized the Aeldari.

All in all, the Aeldari losses were substantial, making Yriel hope his side quest was worth it. Whereas Huron mostly had his pride wounded. He took pleasure in getting a measure of vengeance on the Xenos, but he wasn't sated yet.

The text wants you to see it as a draw. Imo, the Aeldari came out short in this exchange.

Anyway, I am scratching my head over the Corsairs being this roughed up by "handfuls" of marines. Some of the Corsairs are ex-aspect warriors, Drukhari arena fighters, etc. They are armed with advanced technologies and weapons that should slice through Marines like butter.

I have read stories where Fire Warriors and humans gave Marines more of a fight than this.

Am I crazy, or do you have similar thoughts, guys?

The books are filled with examples or anecdotes about the Chaos Gods randomly dicking someone because they thought it'd be funny (T'au praying for rain to end a drough > Nurgle send them putrid rain that makes everything rank and plagued, Khorne making a full planet start killing each other, etc...)

Considering the emperor is now a medium chaos god, has he ever used his powers in that way too? Just one day making hellfire rain on a t'au planet, making a sun blinding to render a planet of xenos blind, or whatever?

I've been reading 40k novels since I was a child.

I've re-read my favourites a few times like comfort shows.

I'm now nearly 40, off work sick and need a good series to read as I'm about to finish Gaunt's Ghosts ( again :( )

Would you be so kind as to chuck me your recommendations.

I've read

The horus heresy

Ravenor

Eisenhorn

Gaunt

Caphias

Last chancers

Grey Knights

Salamanders

Ultramarines ( uriel ventris)

Gotrek and Felix

And a few random things I can't remember.

I need something to sink my teeth into.

Is it a Holy Trinity type deal where the 4 Ruinous Powers are one greater entity with distinct aspects, or is it just 4 brothers working together?

So if someone is praying to Chaos Undivided are they praying to some greater whole/composite Entity of Chaos or simply the 4 Ruinous Powers simultaneously?

And Daemons are extensions of the Chaos gods correct? So for Undivided Daemons like Vashtorr and Be'lakor are they extensions of Chaos as a whole or just equal parts of the 4?

My picks for contenders in this space are:

Angron - forever a slave, betrayed repeatedly by "family" forced to continue broken and hopeless until he got turned (fully) into a mindless rage monster.

Alpharius/Omeagon - cared about the outcome for humanity (over their commitment to the imperium) but due to their compulsive behaviour to do things in the most clever or secretive way possible their legion has been lost (in terms of actual direction) for 10k years and he lost half his soul when Dorn killed A. Seen as traitors by both sides.

Magnus - this one feels tricky. Because the whole way he is written pushes the case that he is a super unreliable narrator (to the point that an almost baseline human noticed inconsistency in the tale Magnus was telling about his origins).

But like... everything he has done seemed (from his point of view) entirely necessary.

And if the Emperor had shared a "little" bit more about the webway project (like... just enough to explain the psychic shields that he was erecting around Terra and that comms would be slow as a result... and to not fuck with that) then Magnus would have potentially managed to "do nothing" correctly.

And it feels to me like Magnus has the most mind/reality warping shit being done to him by the Ruinous Powers. Like... he doesn't seem to remember all the details about the deal he made to save his sons.

He misremebers multiple events that we see from other peoples POV.

Russ - tricked by Horus into a campaign of destruction against Magnus. Failed to kill Horus. Missed the seige of Terra. The more information that Russ gets after events the heavier the burden of his failures become.

No wonder he went to sleep for millennia.

The Lion - super loyal mega genius suffers repeated failures because he's so autistic that he has no way of reading how his men are actually feeling. Misjudged which of his brothers are trustworthy (first trusting Perty when he shouldn't, then being super suspicious of G-man whe the dude was trying to hold what was left together).

Like Konrad, his home planet rebelled against him personally.

Pretty major failures for the primarch that seemed to have the biggest internal case that he should have been Warmaster rather than Horus.

I am aware of the Twisted Helix and their pocket empire mentioned in the Inferno short Respite’s End, Which painted it as a fairly pleasant (“smooth roads” and almost idyllic and scientific Imperial world (minus the human lab rat testing bits), and the Sons of Jormungandr with their sea of space stations and outposts, the Cult of the Spiral Dawn under Peter Fehevari (which wasn’t in full control of the planet) but are there any other examples?

Day of Ascension has some good bits on the internal workings of a lower level cult with the “Aunts and Uncles”, but it appears a fully in-control Genestealer cult that’s been just waiting for the Tyranids to arrive hasn’t yet been explored outside of Twisted Helix (for good reason on GW’s part I assume)

Finally, what are some interesting chaos cults that have a similar level of communal living like a Genestealer Cult, but haven’t degenerated to insane violence?

Question is less about power levels and more about their methods and the adverse effects whenever they use their power.

In Old Tizca, warriors from the Eighth and Twelfth Great Companies were soon engaged in a fresh game of ambush and counter ambush with the elite psychic-infiltrators of the Order of Blindness-a few hundred Thousand Sons keeping almost 10,000 Space Wolves occupied. Along the edge of the Palatinate Palace grounds, more of the Space Wolves were engaged in the assault upon the FreeKorps soldiers there, bringing war to the loyal soldiers of the Imperium for the sin of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

From what I can interpret from this specific excerpt it seems to me that 10,000 space wolves is getting coralled into a encirclement by a FEW 100 TS which is pretty insane to me due to the fact that its 10,000 Space wolves getting rekt by a force 100 times smaller than them. Afterall the thousand sons are super wizards who can casually devastate the enemies of the imperium with their psychic powers.

Im also willing to bet that if Valdor and the talons intervening then the space wolves would have get massacred early on.

This excerpt makes me believe that despite the thousand sons small numbers of only 80,000 they are still a very powerful legion during the great crusade as they are a legion who uses librarians on a daily basis.

I'm mostly asking as im slowly making my way through the books games and some comics and have noticed that so far from what im tracking is hes talked to Guilleman, Titus and Ephrael Stern and has fully healed a soroitas who was damn near dead. So i was wondering if its meant to be a rare thing and is slowly becoming more common for him to be creating champions or if its pretty common and was just a way to make certain characters feel more special?

Was reading Cain vainglorious and they were terraforming a world that had a bunch on minerals or something.

My question boils down to can the imperium terraform any world if they wanted or is it only certain types?

After reading The Thousand Sons and Prospero burns I don’t get how anyone felt bad for the Thousand Sons. Magnus is the most unbearable proud primarch I’ve read about so far. He lowkey thinks he’s the number one Primarch and on the same level as the Emperor. Montarion was lowkey right about him even though he was only out to get one over Magnus. Fulgrims pride is a joke compared to the pride of the Thousand Sons and Magnus.

He seems like he has major Main Character syndrome and thinks only he can solve the problems of the Empire. It’s baffling really and they were bound to fall to chaos long before the wolfs of fenris arrived.

Also I don’t get at all how the big E didn’t catch Magnus vision and plan on Nikea. He even entered Magnus mind and didn’t get to see what Magnus saw? I find that hard to believe tbh.

Anyway I also found it funny that the curtain of modesty and kindness fell as soon as Magnus needed to fulfill his vision of being the Main Character. He sacrificed 100 souls and killed future seers for next to nothing instead of doing things the hard but right way. And in his Indifference doomed his people and legion. I thought I would feel bad for them but in the end all I felt was disbelief to the unending pride of Magnus.

I don’t really like Russ either but to me it seemed like there were no right sides like in so many conflicts in Warhammer.

Am I missing an Angle ? What do you guys think?

Glory to the Emperor!

I've only recently started my deep dive into 40k Lore. Currently I am binge-reading wiki pages and marking down stories I want to read. I've read the "important" books of the Horus Heresey and followed that up by some recommendations from friends (Vulkan, Konrad Cruze, Rogal Dorn, the Ecclisiarchy, Sanguinius, Black Templars, Deathwatch.. If you have more recommendations hit me up please)

I've studied biochemistry and I am currently working in that field. So let me say that I like the way bioengineering and genome editing are done in this universe. However, I kinda can't wrap my head around how certain things are called mutations (of the genome) like the Phariah gene, becoming a psyker or a perpetual, also the psychic connection between a Primarch and their legion. If I just have to accept the fact that your genotype can connect you to the immaterial, I'll accept that, it's fantasy. But is there an in-universe answer how or why an individual's genome "interacts" with the warp?

Also is gene editing prior to the birth of a human heresey? I get why the imperium probably does not want to produce more psykers (tiking time bombs and all), but wouldn't it benefit from more blanks and just better soldiers?

Honor and courage, brothers!

I can imagine that their desire for money and power comes at the expense of not just the lives of average Imperial citizen, but also administrative and military efficiency.

I don't actually remember this being addressed in Path of the Warrior or the other eldar books I have read. Does the exarch who runs the shrine go to their local friendly bonesinger for help? Do they turn to other quarters, like those disciples of Vaul who make non-wraithbone constructs that we see in Valedor? Do they do something else?

Would be very grateful for help

Hey everyone.

So i been curious about Warhammer40K for a while. mostly interested on its lore and what not, i do run ttrpgs and my groups recently asked me to run Imperium Maledictum, as well as a south american community is asking me to stream the game.

That being said, i feel like my knowledge is kinda limited. Besides those books im currently holding

Nexus

Eisenhorn (both the omnibus and a short stories collection)

Caine

Fall of Cadia

The Black Fortress

Any other novel you'd recommend? im trying to find The Great Works on my local library (no luck so far) and im curious to find any novels focused on the Sororitas or on Yarrick

[Book Excerpt][Master of Mankind] The Emperor examines the brain of Angron and explains to Arkhan Land why the Butcher's Nails cannot be removed:

"..His own emotions cause him pain?’

‘No, Arkhan. Everything. Everything causes it pain. Thinking. Feeling. Breathing. The only respite it has is in the rewired neurological pleasure it receives from the chemicals of anger and aggression.’

‘Can you remove it?’

‘Of course,’ the Emperor answered, still looking at the screens.

Arkhan did his best to hide his surprise. ‘Then, Divine One, why would you leave it there?’

‘This is why.’

The images on several screens immediately resolved to a clearer imprint of a brutishly dense skull miserable with crude cybernetics and the bone-scarring of powerful surgical laser cuts.

‘Do you see?’ the Emperor asked.

Arkhan saw. The tendrils were sunk deep, rooted in the meat of the brain, threaded to the nervous

system, and down in roughly serpentine coils around the spinal column. Every movement must have been agony for the primarch, feeding back into the base emotions of anger and spite.

Worse, the brain’s limbic lobe and insular cortex were more than just savaged by the pain engine’s insertion; they had been surgically attacked and removed even before implantation. The device hammered into his skull hadn’t ruined those sections of the brain – it had replaced them. Ugly black cybernetics showed on the internal scans, in place of entire sections of the primarch’s brain tissue.

‘They are the only thing keeping him alive,’ Arkhan said.."

I was reading about Terra yesterday and it mentions former countries spelled differently like Merica for America, Britania for Great Britain, Jermani for Germany but then there was a 4th one named Bania which I'm guessing is supposed to be Albania but it was kind of surprising they chose to mention a some country in the Balkans instead of a more prominent one like Russia, China, Australia or even the whole continent of Africa. Is there a reason they picked Albania or is it some random thing the writers decided to put?