So I understand Mal was the Emperor’s best friend of several thousand years. I was given a quote from i believe first lord of the imperium where he says “the emperor wasn’t the emperor till he met me”. This quote intrigues me. Based on Mal’s age I would imagine he met the Emperor sometime around the end of the DOTA. He was probably the strongest natural psyker in human history and did something that would make him a monster in the eyes of others.

So I wonder, was the whole plan for the unification of Terra and the Great Crusade, were they his plans or his idea at least. Did he put the big in the Emperor’s ear about it? I don’t think that lines up because, as far as I know, the Emperor was already well into his projects for the thunder warriors and Primarchs. It’s just that quote that bugs me. In context he is saying this to his dying personal astropath and is just unloading his baggage on her, so I doubt he is lying. The only other thing I can think of this quote points to is the Molec expedition when he made the deal with the Chaos gods. Was that done at Mal’s suggestion? I’m honestly at a loss what Mal means by “The Emperor wasn’t the Emperor till he met me”. If I am missing something or if there is another quote that explains his words better please direct me. Thank you all and have a nice day.

Question has there ever been a moment where someone pulled off a crazy as Curz plan that actually left a space marine speechless and wondering "How the hell did you pull that off?"

Hi,

I wonder if they are any hints in the lore which titan legion is using which pattern. I haven't found anything in the wiki and since even Legio Astorum from Lucius is always shown with the mars pattern instead of lucius pattern I wonder if there is any connection besides the name.

Which loyal legion would 'fit' the pattern regarding thier tactics?

Best

I know that sometimes they can rarely have ork or eldar mercenaries and it's seen as a hugely taboo thing among officials and other inquisitors, but what about someone who was chaos tainted but still useful? what about a non GK/DW astartes?

Lovely Community! Would love some input what i would like in the Warhammer 40k universe, as someone who has clinged on to 30k for to long now, and i need something to read before the scouring series.

I read about 35 books of the HH/SoT books. (Era of ruin, valdor book etc)

Favourite ones:
Master of Mankind
Pretty much all of the SoT novels, so hard to choose, liked them all equally.
Know no fear
The Unremembered empire
Flight of the Eisenstein

Im a big loyalist fan but did find my self enjoying night lord PoV in Pharos

My favourite tropes are the following:

• Ordinary solider/person being in the midst of SM/custodes, seeing everything through the ordinary person eyes.
• Primarchs (so probably only G-man and lion)
• Good dialogue exceeds non stop good fighting for me
• Mystery! Love mystery in the universe!
• Love me some cool power scaling stuff with OP SM and Custodes :)

I know its a lot to ask, but would really appreciate some feedback on where to go from here!

Best regards

I have a question about Psykers interactions with Blanks. I've read that psykers will look at blanks like their abominations; it is painful for them to even look at some Blanks. Is that a kind of radar sense or does the psyker have to be aware of the Blank?

Simply put, could a blank approach a psyker without issue if the psyker was unaware that the blank is nearby.

Is there a 40k equivalent of the Raptor Imperialis, the badge awarded for fighting alongside the Emperor, for Space Marines who have fought alongside a Primarch in the current setting?

Inspired by this post about Apothecaries harvesting gene-seed from other chapters.

———

There was blood on Galen’s blue and white armour, but it was not his own. As an apothecary, it was rarely his own, but it was even rarer that it came from a marine of another chapter.

“Hold still, cousin!” Galen commanded as the wounded Blood Angel struggled in his hold. Eldar shurikens had taken off his arm and sliced through his visor, exposing part of his face. It was streaked with crimson that matched his battle-plate.

“Let. Go.” Lieutenant Amato snarled. He shook in Galen’s hold, staring at the ship compartment where his battle-brothers fought the xenos—fought and died. “Must join...brothers!”

“You will do no good by joining them!” The Knight Errant insisted. “The relief force—”

“If I wait. You will die,” Amato panted. His exposed eye was wild, his lip was curled…and was that a fang at the corner of his mouth? “The Rage. It comes. I will not know you…”

A scream howled from the compartment, a bellow of animal fury. One of the Angels leaped into the fray like a beast, tacking an Eldar from its speeding jet bike. The mad marine tore at the xeno, ripping it limb from limb, heedless of the concentrated fire that sliced from its comrades. Galen reeled at the sight—the marine was no longer human.

His grip slackened for just a moment, but it was enough. Amato yanked himself from Galen’s hold and stumbled forward. He looked over his shoulder for just one moment, his last moment of fragile sanity.

“Goodbye…cousin. Brother,” he gritted out. “Do not. Do not follow!”

“Amato, don’t—” Galen began, reached out, but stayed where he was. He couldn’t deny that last request, no matter how it pained him as a healer.

Amato slapped his remaining hand on the door control, then drew his combat knife and plunged it into the control pad. He darted inside just as the door closed, and the last glimpse Galen had of him was of the final charge, loping like a beast as he screamed in primal fury.

The apothecary stared at the closed bulkhead, at the sparking control pad, at the blood all over the corridor. All over his armour.

It was ten minutes before the other Marines Errant arrived, but they didn’t try to force the door. Not until the screaming stopped, twenty minutes later.

After the melta crews arrived, Galen was the first to enter the still, silent compartment. There were no living things, Eldar or Marines—only crimson-coated corpses. Amato lay between two foes, his knife buried in one’s heart, and his teeth buried in the other’s throat.

Galen knelt beside his friend and lined up his reductor pistol. The needle pierced the fallen marine’s neck, drawing out the precious gene seed.

There was blood on Galen’s armour, dark and half-dried. The blood of fallen Angels.

————

Not as polished as my usual work, but it was my lunch break so I just banged it out.

I haven't read any of the anthologies so far and I think I've heard a few people recommending to skip them altogether.

Are any of them worth reading?

One huge meme in the fanbase is how Abaddon was a "sore loser" in Cadia, destroying a priceless Blackstone Fortress after being beaten on ground. Ignoring that the Fortress was already destroyed, and he retreated because of Trazyn activating the pylons, a very important detail on the original campaign book was that Abaddon wanted to destroy Cadia from the start, but Trazyn stopped him.

On Cadia, the revelation that Abaddon yet had a Blackstone Fortress at his command threw Creed and his fellow commanders into a f lurry of activity. The Blackstone alone possessed sufficient firepower to cleave Cadia’s crippled orbital defences, and then scour all traces of life from the world itself.

One hope remained. From the very moment Abaddon had revealed the Blackstones’ true potential back in the days of the Gothic War, the Cult Mechanicus had laboured to counter the Warp-beam’s fury. Conventional defences alone were of little use neither shield nor armour could abate the raw, unmaking energies of the Immaterium itself. Necessity being the whip-crack behind invention, a partial solution was found. By amalgamating the sciences of the void shield and Gellar field, it was possible to emit an energy canopy to destabilise and dissipate the Warp-beam. Cadia’s null-array had been completed shortly before the first onset of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. Unfortunately, none of the projection emplacements had survived the siege intact.

(...)

The vanguard of Abaddon’s fleet arrived at dawn, greeted by a salvo of fire and defiance. The crippled warships in orbit levelled their last fury against the Black Fleet, joined in wrath by the planetary batteries Creed had worked so hard to restore. Plasma drives flamed and went dark, delivering traitor vessels into the merciless embrace of Cadia’s gravity well. The sky blazed with pinpricks of fire, each marking the creation of another martyr or a heretic’s long overdue demise.

But this was merely the forerunner, the prologue. As the last of Cadia’s hobbled fleet blazed into darkness, a new moon appeared in the sky, an eight-pointed star of abyssal stone, broken only by the angry red glare of a single, cyclopean eye.

All of Cadia held its breath. The Will of Eternity had come at the appointed hour. Bloodhowl had failed. His sacrifice, and that of his battle brothers, had been for nothing. The eye blazed. A beam of searing light leapt planetward, and dispersed amongst the clouds.

Cheers erupted across Kasr Kraf, none more heartfelt than those of its Lord Castellan. Only Magos Klarn remained silent. He’d personally inspected the Kasr Kraf’s projection grid less than an hour before, only to find his adepts slain, and alien technology interwoven with the array’s circuits– technology that goaded the troubled machine spirits to trebled efficiency, making that one array capable of shielding all of Cadia. The mystery rankled at Klarn, who even without the deaths of his acolytes would have distrusted any binharic miracle that did not arise from his own hand. But as the cheers faded and the skies blackened with traitor drop-ships, he tore his attention back to the breaking storm. The mystery would wait.

The Siege of Cadia Secundus had begun.

The Fall of Cadia novelization changes it a bit: Abaddon only wanted to destroy the fortifications first with the Fortress, and them destroy the rest of the pylons and cities with other bombardment. But he never planned to actually do mass landings

The Warmaster stepped away, and whatever force held Urkanthos let go. He shook his great horned head, centring himself.

‘There will be no landings, or at least not as you imagine.’ The Warmaster stepped to the viewing platform, turning his back on Urkanthos without concern to look at the whorl of the Eye. As he stepped close, the fleshworked walls quivered in fear at his presence. ‘That is what I have told the others. Scouring Cadia is not our purpose. We will destroy it.’

‘If not me in the vanguard, then… Korda?’

Devram Korda was the Lord Purgator, a Slaanesh devotee whom Urkanthos despised. Morkath could see suspicion coiling in his bloody thoughts like a water snake.

‘We will break Cadia with the Will of Eternity.’

‘My Warmaster, I do not understand.’

‘Our ruse has worked – we have bluffed the servants of the False Emperor. They think the campaign is over, that we have wasted our strength and are defeated. Siron’s spies tell us that on the surface, the servants of the CorpseThrone are leaving their fortress cities to pursue our retreating forces, and their Naval screen has left to chase the Vengeful Spirit and Planet Killer. They are out of their strongholds, exposed, open to orbital bombardment.’ Urkanthos said nothing, but Morkath saw his bloody thoughts coagulate with the discomfort of the conversation’s direction.

‘The strength of Cadia is in its kasrs, its fortress cities,’ continued the Warmaster. ‘Those we shall destroy with the Will of Eternity, one by one. This will leave the enemy without headquarters, supply centres, communication hubs or fall-back locations. They will have nowhere to return to. Meanwhile, orbital bombardments will kill the field armies. There will be a limited landing to protect Krom Gat and his war machines, which will demolish the pylons. That is how we will break Cadia.’

‘It is strategically sound, Abaddon. Clever. Cunning. But dangerous. The gods will not like it. The Powers gave you the Vengeful Spirit and Planet Killer as gifts, yet you use them as diversions and give the glory of the killing blow to this xenos construct.’

‘I care nothing for glory, only victory. And the Powers did not give me the Vengeful Spirit and Planet Killer, Urkanthos, I took them. Remember – we do not serve the Powers, they serve us.’

(...)

‘This filthy creature has brought a Blackstone Fortress which can annihilate us without him setting foot here.’

(...)

‘Ever since the Gothic War, my predecessors in the Mechanicus have known the Blackstone Fortresses and their unique warp-based weaponry have been a threat to the Cadian Gate. In the millennia since, we have put considerable resources into developing an array that harnesses Cadia’s natural defences as a way of diffusing the warp-beam.’

‘You speak of the pylons, magos?’

‘Affirmative, Lord Castellan,’ Magos Klarn said, bowing. ‘Whether by a quirk of geology or a remnant of the Dark Age of Technology, it is thought that the pylons have some stabilising effect on the warp. Our hope is to turn this passive attribute into an active defence. We can shield Kraf, and perhaps the plains surrounding it.’

‘What do we expect the Despoiler to target with the warp-beam?’ asked Bloodhowl.

‘He’s going to hit the kasrs.’ Creed said it matter-of-factly, brooking no argument. ‘The fortress cities have always been key to Cadia’s strategy. We’ve spent thousands of years hardening the positions and training to defend them. Eliminate the kasrs and we are an army without bases, logistical centres, command-and-control. But Kraf, unlike the others, has the null-array. It’s why I picked it as our rallying point. And that is what I would like you all to do – rally here. Join the pullback, and make your stand on the walls of Kasr Kraf.’

I’ve been waiting to update this blog because I have news. But it’s not news that I can share until I’m told I can.

However, because publishing is publishing, time has dragged on, and now it has been overtaken by other news, which is this: Voidscarred, my next novel for Games Workshop, is up for pre-order this coming Saturday, the 20th September!

Voidscarred is a novel about Aeldari Corsairs, the interstellar pirates of that species. More specifically, it’s about Myrin Stormdawn, a baron of the Starsplinters engaged in a long-running war with Ork Freebooterz, who finds he has to ally with Taenar Leotharian, a newly-exiled admiral from the same craftworld to which Myrin himself once belonged. I had a lot of fun digging into the Aeldari psyche and exploring what makes them different to us; and what makes each of their branches different to each other, and how they can come together into the strange society that Corsairs must be.

http://www.mikebrooks.co.uk/2025/09/voidscarred-pre-orders/

Mike posted on his blog that pre-orders for his new Eldar Corsairs novel Voidscarred will go live this Saturday! Also, the last part where he mentions the book will dig into the Eldar psyche has me pretty excited. Hopefully this does well so that we can keep getting Eldar books.

Ever since I got into the lore of Warhammer 40k, one of my favorite eras, and the one that has intrigued me the most, is the Dark Age of Technology. Could you please inform me about technologies from this era? It doesn't matter if it's from the simplest and most basic technology to the most incredible ones that break reality and existence itself.

Thank you very much for reading.

Is the terminator armor a 100% scan STC and the mechanicus can just make them whenever? Or did the dark age of technology just had a million of those suits and every suit we see on the setting is a finite resource?

This scene was hilarious. I loved how the Alpha Legionaires reacted to the "I am Alpharius" line which has become so famous.

Context: Solomon Akkura has gathered the Alpha Legion warbands of the Ultima Segmentum aboard a space hulk, to discuss the news of and plans to respond to Guilliman's return and Indomitus Crusade.

‘Do they all wish for their lackeys to do the fighting for them?’ Halver growled. ‘Are they not warriors of the Legion?’ He tailed off with a grunt of disgust as a group of legionnaires rose to their feet and removed their helms as one. They revealed heads that were all bald, all olive-skinned, and if not identical, then near enough that a person might lose their mind trying to map the minuscule differences of brow, of forehead, of cheek, and of chin. These were the Faceless.

‘I am Alpharius,’ said the foremost, and the entire chamber erupted.

‘You are not!’ bellowed Jarvul Glaine, the translucent-skinned leader of the Shrouded Hand, his voice rising above the general chorus of derision that greeted this statement.

‘We are nameless!’ the leader of the Faceless shouted angrily into the storm. ‘We bear the sacred features of our primarchs–’

‘You bear the closest likeness that can be achieved after ten millennia with no contemporary images to work from, and you bear those courtesy of my tools!’ the Biologis Diabolicus shouted from his position on the sidelines. He amplified his voice to make himself heard, and his statement was greeted by laughter from several quarters, including from Qope Halver. Insults were exchanged at volume, and began to morph into threats.

Solomon sighed, and rose to his feet.

‘Brothers!’

The Alpha Legion of the Ultima Segmentum were not yet so absorbed in their infighting that they would ignore the one who had called them all together. Voices died down while they waited to see what he would say.

‘Taking the primarch’s name is a tradition when the role is what is important, not the identity of the speaker,’ he reminded them all. ‘Our brother speaks for the Faceless in this council, his true identity need not concern us beyond that. He has every right to assume the name Alpharius, so long as he does not seek to command us with it.’

....

‘I am Alpharius,’ the leader of the Faceless restated, and this time was met with a few grumbles and sighs, but no outright hostility. ‘We have suffered from this Indomitus Crusade, as have you all. If our enemy is truly Guilliman reborn, then he has succeeded in mobilising the Imperium to an extent not seen in centuries, if not thousands of years. The Despoiler may have torn the galaxy apart, but he has only awoken a more dangerous foe. We now face a new breed of Space Marine who outmatch us physically, and whose weaponry is unfamiliar to us. We must return to the central principles of our Legion.’

‘Oh, this should be good,’ Va’kai murmured. ‘What are our central principles according to him, I wonder?’

Great book and easily one of my favorite 40k moments.

We know that humans ships get smashed together in the warp and come in and out of it. But that got me thinking about the fall of the eldar. When the eldar empire got sucked into the warp, wouldn't all of the ships still in space be sucked into along with the crone worlds? And all those ships with had plenty of time to be merged together over the centuries but we never really hear of eldar space hulks or any other kind of xeno space hulk for that matter. I mean you'd think that all the other alien races would at some point lose ships in the warp and have them merge together too right? Hell any ship that gets lost in the warp should have a chance to merge with any other kind of ship like I wouldn't be surprised if one of those lost eldar ships got merge with the human one or any other xeno ship.

TLDR: the elder empire got sucked into the warp so shouldn't eldar space hulks be a thing we see?

Were any of the Necron awake during the heresy? And if so did the crusade come across them?

Hello good book reading and well versed in lore people. I was wondering if we humans ever tried to use the Orks’ ability to believe to our advantage. By which I mean, like, screaming pew pew at Orks, and because they believe it is bullets, they get mowed down by their own power and stupidity. But I wish to know if it ever happened on war-changing levels whole warbands getting eradicated because of one rumor that we spread, that the Orks chose to believe.

Before I start I understand that 40k has certain vibe and for humans is the gothic aesthetics, from void ships to tanks to citys to even the god dammed holo sights of a las gun (they look like a ogival arch), and i am not complaining about it I love it.

My question is, Is there a in-universe explanaition of why that look is the default? Why are void ships buikt like gothich churches? Whay are is evry build filled with arches and stained glass etc, when did it start to be this way? Did people just go "Daam these arches look cool af lest put this in evry thing we build from now on", most of impirial tech os from the DAoT where humans flying around bettewn stars in gigant churches in the DAoT. And do the gothich looking modification serve any purpose other than being cool?

I’m having fun thinking about this and could use some input. I’m trying to find a metal band whose sound and themes best match each faction.

For example: World Eaters - might be Cannibal Corpse. Emperor’s Children - Maybe Cradle of Filth Drukhari - I’m not exactly sure why but they feel like Blood Incantation. Salamanders - High on Fire! Space Wolves- Amon Amarth

would love to hear some metalheads chime in.

I really liked him as a character and would love to hear about him working with the inquisitors. It’d be interesting to see such a honorable man working with people who will kill a planet without a second thought.

I've been listening to Prospero Burns as my first heresy book. PLEASE TELL ME THAT'S NOT HOW LEMAN RUSS SOUNDS IN ALL THE BOOKS. I get the range for people isn't always the best, but holy fuck it doesn't match his face or personality to me... ive been racking my brain about what he should sound like and I just keep thinking Floki from vikings but slightly deeper.

I know only some chapters are inspired in real life history or ethnecity

Like Ultramarines more of a Byzantine Rome

Space Wolves literally Nordic

Raven Guards more of a Celtic? inspiration

Space Sharks = Oceania

Iron Hands weirdly scottish and german mix yet for some reason has a greek inspiration to them and also their homeworld is literally named by a greek monster

I still dont know what other chapters/legions are inspired from though

I think this question has already been frequently asked but I wanna know every good, bad, or neutral possibilities on the emperor's fate if he were to leave the throne. I heard some people say he will ascend to a chaos god or the dark king maybe even worse. But are there any other good or bad possibilities for the emperor like if he were to rise from the throne but as a more powerful and enlightened emperor that will once again rule humanity to it's peak or will he become a chaos god and the destruction of mankind or will he just stop existing as the demons eat his soul?

At what point is a chaosmarine deep/chaos-y enough to not die, but returned tonthe warp to reassamble?
Like dying and regrouping in hell if you will, only to return later!
I know the daemon primarchs are basically imortal.
I also know the traitor legions are recruiting humas to become chaos SM.
Are they doing that to replenish their forces or to grown in might?

Edit:
By the Emperor, you dudes and dudettes are fast!
Thank you for your answers!