#warp mechanicum

[thamechanist]

Well, it's once again been left tragically late, with less than a week to go until megacon London...but the new heretek staff head is done!

Just need to get it all programmed now - with any luck I should be able to make the eyes light up red, the translucent core glow(and increase/decrease in intensity), occasionally speak & the points on the chaos star will shift between the various god colours

[farsight-the-char]

CHONK LAD LETS GO

Focus let have us some new art for SM2, and among them included this Beast.

Thousand Sons bringing the thrall Hellbrutes to smack some Loyalists about.

[farsight-the-char]

Why not both?

friendly reminder that the age of technology is coming to an end and a new age of blood magic and dark rituals will take its place

[wh40kgallery]

Pariah Nexus Crusade

by Mikhail Savier

[fourraccoonsinacoat]

Heinrix van Calox Lore & Headcannons

Don't mind me, I'm just over here chewing on some random thoughts about our favorite agent of the Inquisition. Playing around with some of it for a fic and writing it out because it helps me organize my thoughts.

Knight World Culture & Heinrix's Internalized Hatred of Psykers

Having grown up on a Knight World, Heinrix would possess an internalized hatred for psykers (generally called "witches" on Knight Worlds) that we see him continually struggle with.

In Warhammer lore, many Knight Worlds survived the Age of Strife due to the fact that these worlds tended to shun psykers and not take advantage of the benefits of advanced machinery. So, when the warp imploded and AI told humanity to get fucked, many Knight Worlds were spared from the horrors of the Age of Strife and went on existing as they always had, led by a doctrine of tradition.

The noble families that lord over Knight Worlds hold to a rigorous belief in honor, fealty, social status, obligation, discipline and self-mastery. This creed is only reinforced by the Throne Mechanicum when, at 18, a prospective Knight pilot bonds with their Imperial Knight suit. The Throne Mechanicum is the cybernetic control hub of an Imperial Knight, and it connects to the pilot via neural interface implants in the pilot's brain. Through this neural connection, the Throne Mechanicum implants positive associations with the concepts of honor, fealty, etc., when the pilot bonds with their Knight. And it continues to do so over the course of the Knight's life. This is why these beliefs are so ingrained in Knight World nobles - because it is constantly reinforced by their bonds with their Imperial Knight suits.

On Knight Worlds, being a psyker is to be something impure, rotten and dangerous. They are the antithesis of everything the nobles hold dear and their shunning of psykers was what kept many of those worlds safe during the Age of Strife. Psykers are seen as unpredictable, violent and corrupted by the warp, and thus have no place in Knight World society. If not outright killed, they are always exiled and sent away on the Imperial Black Ships, just as Heinrix's family did with him.

Though Heinrix never went through the Ritual of Becoming - the rite to bond with an Imperial Knight suit - he was certainly being prepared to and would have grown up with the belief that psykers are corrupted and dangerous. Thus, when his psyker abilities manifested during his adolescent years, everything he believed about psykers was turned inward and became truths about himself.

Time and experiences have altered and evolved his beliefs, and we see him show empathy and understanding for other psykers like Idira and the RT, if they are a psyker. However, at his core remains the belief that psykers are inherently lesser.

We see this time and again, especially on his romance route, with how he talks about himself and psykers, in general. During his romance scene in Commorragh, if the RT questions why he remains loyal to the Imperium, Heinrix will say that the Imperium "deemed me stable enough to keep me as a sanctioned psyker" - refering to the Imperium's sanctioning process for psykers the Imperium wants to enlist. In Heinrix's mind, it's only through the grace of the Imperium that a corrupted individual like him is allowed to live. Which brings me to...

Heinrix believes it's his duty to die for the Imperium.

Heinrix literally believes he owes his life to the Imperium of Man. He grew up believing psykers were evil and corrupt individuals, likely deserving of death. And then his own powers manifested and suddenly he was one of those evil and corrupt individuals.

Something to understand about the Imperium is that sanctioned psykers are rare in Warhammer lore. While there are not any concrete numbers, conjecture from Warhammer books, etc., puts the ratio of those identified as psykers by the Inquisition as one in one billion. Then, in order to sustain the Astronomican, roughly 1,000 psykers perrish daily after being locked inside coffin-like devices bound to the Golden Throne. Inside, their essence is extracted and used to power the Astronomican. Psykers are constantly being shipped to Terra in order to fuel the Golden Throne, and the Imperium is, of course, holding onto backlogs of psykers in case ships don't come in or Terra gets cut off. This is what the majority of psykers in the Imperium are used for, and not many psykers are deemed worthwhile enough to go through sanctioning, which is also limited by the number of sanctioning implants available. Remember, no one is making these devices anymore.

The existence of a psyker in the 40k universe is not a happy one. If you manage to not get sacrificed to the Golden Throne, or used as a test subject or whatever else the Imperium is doing with psykers these days, the most common way to serve as a sanctioned psyker is to become an Astropath. Which sounds like it sucks. Very few are chosen for other service.

Considering all of this, it's hardly surprising that Heinrix feels he owes his loyalty to the Imperium. The Imperium allowed him to live. And then the Inquisition came along and saw something in him worth making him an acolyte for.

After being disowned by his family and having his implants ripped from his body, Heinrix likely thought all that awaited him after the Black Ship was death as a sacrifice to the Golden Throne. And yet he was pardoned and given another chance at life, as long as he uses that life to serve the Imperium.

If the RT passes a Persuasion check to get Heinrix to talk about what happened when he used the cogitator on Kiava Gamma, he even concludes his explanation by saying his "path leads to one place, and one place only."

This man fully expects to, and is ready to, die for the Imperium. The Imperium is the only thing giving him purpose. The Imperium accepted him after his family disowned him. The Imperium is all he has, and he will use the life they allowed him to keep and serve them faithfully until that life is used up. In his mind, he deserves nothing more and ought to be happy to be given the opportunity to exist and serve.

Heinrix is extremely self-concious about his appearance.

We get a hint about this in Act 5 when talking to Tanakia, a member of Calcazar's retinue. She mocks him by talking about the attention he paid to his hair and eyes, a sore point for Heinrix considering that, by the time he joined the Inquisition, he's lost an eye and had a chunk carved out of his head in order to remove various implants.

During his romance scene in Commorragh, he refers to himself as a "maimed freak" and talks about how he used his biomancy to repair his damaged cranium and eye in order to "look more like a human again."

If you're romancing Heinrix, he even leaves after you release him in the Anatomical Opera. When you find him in the Pit, he talks about how he didn't want the others, or the RT, to see him in the condition he was in.

Considering his childhood as a noble on a Knight World, care for appearance would be something strongly instilled within him. Knight Worlds are feudal worlds with highly aristocratic societies, so the concept of presenting a buttoned-up and well-kempt appearance would be important for children of noble families.

Heinrix talks about spending years working to reconstruct his eye, which I think also hints at him having a fastitidious and perfectionist personality. I have a personal headcannon that he dislikes the fact he wasn't able to perfectly match his original eye color, and it's a sore spot for him.

Okay, this is a lot longer than I originally intended for it to be. I've got more, but need to stop turning this man over and over in my head and get some actual work done.

[farsight-the-char]

The Leagues of Votann actually raid wayward and/or weakened Hive Fleets for bio-mass, and I think Chaos forces do similar stuff, plus you have Dark Eldar looking for things to torture too.

Failed tyranids invasions when they deposit more biomass than has ever been on the planet to a strip mined, barely habitable hive world.

[the-wayward-arc]

Mysteries of the 11th part 1

The lost 100; a company of Remnant Knights and Ruby vanished at the height of the heresy when they discovered an ancient Xenos weapon with terrible destructive power. Ruby and her company blind jumped into the warp as Traitor forces had come for the weapon as well, they were never seen again.

The Rose Vaults; five different vaults scattered all over the Remnant sector that are said to contain marvelous feats of technology, created by Ruby. Weapons, armor, and vehicles based upon recovered STC fragments but a rumor states that the true treasure within each one is said to contain whole complete STCs recovered in the sector. However, no one knows for sure as Ruby destroyed all knowledge of their locations due to what was within each vault, the only known set of coordinates and means to unlock them are held by the current High Artificer, Cyrus. The mechanicum has strived to find these lost Vaults with no such luck, as the Chapter and it's successors hinder them at any given time. Even rogue traders have not been allowed to search for these fabled vaults. Any that do manage to get their way into sector have mysteriously vanished.

Klithis Prime Incident: Jaune along with a company of Marines, discovered a world where an ancient xenos civilization had lived. The world was dead, no signs of life whatsoever on its surface but yet planetary scans were showing life signs under the planet in a specific location on the world. A temple of sorts with an entrance leading deep underground, Jaune and 100 Marines entered to investigate. Days later, Jaune emerged, carrying a few wounded Marines while others fired back into the entrance as they ran out, covered in black "blood" of sorts. Jaune ordered a planetary strike on the entrance. Only 12 Marines came out with him and he has never spoken of what They found. Only that he ordered the location said world expunged from all records and three battleships to orbit the planet. The ships commanded by the surviving Astartes that venture below, order to watch the world. Even during the heresy, these ships never left their posts and fire at the planet a total of 9 times since their time orders were given. To this day, no one knows what happened below and why these ships never leave or what they are firing at.

[thamechanist]

So I ported over the core(i.e. microcontroller & programming) from my last heretek staff to the new one...and it appears to have worked?

Got the all important demonic voice, and most of the lights for the chaos star. Hopefully it won't be too much of a challenge to get the last two lights & the eye lights working

Then it just needs sealing up with it's battery & switch in time for Megacon London on Saturday

[farsight-the-char]

Apparently a newer White Dwarf issue did another series of pages dedicated to hyping up the Darkmech and Vashtorr.

Apparently there has been a rise in Tech Heresy and sightings of Warp Mechanicum forces, some directly under Vashtorr's authoirty. The completion of Wyrmwood is attributed to this.

Iron Warriors and Black Legion particularly among the Chaos Marines, for obvious reasons.

Other quotes and stuff from across the Galaxy...

and interestingly, warp tainted Ironkyn, and a Battlesuit turning against it's cadre because of sabatoge.

[farsight-the-char]

It mentions Soulgrinders which might mean those meme machines might get moved to CSM?

So now we are getting codex leaks before it even is time for a preorder? If this escalation continues in a year we get leaks before the book even goes goes to print. I just wish GW would swap to free digital rules aready, would make them look a lot less stupid.

Overall that detachment looks fairly tame for everything that is not a Maulerfiend. Because that's what it is: you play 3 Maulerfiends, and probably 2 Forgefiends supported by a boosted Warpsmith holding down the main firing lane, and maybe some Venomcrawlers. It might be a lot more spicy if Obliterators get changed from infantry to Demon Vehicle, there that +1 to wound definetly does some work, but as it stands now it is a fairly lame detachment as it realistically buffs only half of your army.

Moving and especially charging through walls with Maulerfiends is essentially all that matters. You will not spend command points on anything else.

[professor-doc-emeritus]

possible readings of the admech:

1 - admech rituals don't work and aren't necessary. imperium tech largely works based on a combination of dumb luck, ork-esque psychic gestalt fields generated by humanity's collective belief in it, and the efforts of the handful of heretic priests who worked all this out and now do all the imperium's actual IT/maintenance work in secret. The majority of the imperium, and the adeptus mechanics itself, still believe in the rituals wholeheartedly.

2 - admech rituals do work and are (mostly) necessary, but only because they are obfuscations of actual technical work, e.g. the application of sacred oils and incense is just an elaborately ritualized method of getting rusty old machines lubricated regularly, binaric prayers work because they actually contain bundles of voice commands to activate onboard error handling programs in most Dark Age of Technology artifacts, and "machine spirits" are just ancient and ornery onboard AIs that take pity on the occasional tech priest asking for help. This status quo is an unintentional side effect of millenia of collective trial and error; virtually all members of the admech genuinely believe in the cult mechanicus & are unaware there's any material benefit to their rituals.

3 - same as the above, except the admech are (or at least used to be) in on the ruse. The rituals do work, for the above stated reasons, but are deliberately designed to be as mysterious, impenetrable, and terrifying as possible. The people who made them didn't believe in the omnissiah, and sufficiently well-informed members of the admech don't either, often foregoing their rituals entirely when in private or in a pinch. The median admech member understands the basic principles of technology FAR better than they let on, and the cult mechanicus in general exists as part of a massive conspiracy meant to keep humanity at large ignorant, and the control of technology exclusively in admech hands, which they use to their own nefarious ends. This fact used to be common knowledge within the faction itself, however the heresy era split, the subsequent millenia of conflict, and their own overzealous propaganda have all eroded their collective memory. The truth is now only known to its highest ranking and longest-lived members, and is doled out on a need-to-know basis to a select few. This is why most tech priests that feature in the books and video games unironically believe in the omnissiah: they haven't yet been told the truth.

4 - admech rituals do work and are necessary, and the spiritual aspect of it is at least partially true, but this is only because the omnissiah is actually a manifestation of Mag’ladroth the Void Dragon, C'tan god of technology and Aeldari god of oblivion, a shard of which was defeated and imprisoned beneath the surface of mars by the emperor. This shard, either intentionally or unintentionally, influenced and warped the collective psyche of the mechanicum of mars until they became the admech we know today. Their apparent control over technology is the result of some combination of their proximity to the shard giving them aspects of its power, intentional siphoning of the shards power by the mechanicum, the shard itself lending them power as part of a long-term plan to corrupt & use the imperium as a means of revenge against the necrons that shattered it, and the Emperor's defeat of the shard granting him its domain over technology. It's this domain the Emperor won that allowed humanity to expand out and conquer the stars without their tech getting corrupted by the warp, and why technology made by other species and the machines-making-machines-that-make-machines (i.e. the men of iron) fall to the warp faster and more often than human technology

5 - the admech are just batting a thousand and are right about pretty much everything.

[gallifreyianrosearkytiorsusan]

Oceans of Change

Past =-= Next

Author's note:

Summary: Jophiel is on Ancient Terra... what will he get up to?

Warnings:... Unhealthy coping mechanisms. A bit of Panic Attack. Let me know if I need to add anything.

Tagged: @barn-anon, @bleedingichorhearts, @c-u-c-koo-4-40k, @egrets-not-regrets, @kit-williams

Tagged: @sleepyfan-blog, @whorety-k

How Jophiel came to Ancient Terra, to his complete and utter shame was that he'd fallen to the Black Rage during a fight against Xeno-scum. The Tyranids had been hunting on one of the far flung Imperial Worlds, he had his company of blood angels had been sent to fight and beat back the Xeno threat. Handling the Red Thirst was something he'd grown up with denying and only supping on the blood of others as little as possible without going into a Frenzy.

He'd been taught, and it had been firmly taught by the Mechanicum how to deny his disgusting and unholy cravings as best as possible. How to use his Siren-like songs and looks to lure in enemies to lure them to their doom. To have them murmur their Truths into his ears, or to be slain. How to only drink just enough blood that the ever-present hunger doesn't have him sink his unsightly fangs into a Loyal citizen or Cousins's neck or wrists.

He's heard… plenty of things from the older brothers on how they can, and do satiate the thirst, and his cheeks sting bright red at some of the things he's heard them say they do. How pleasurable it can be for the person in question, as well as them. He shakes his head and continues to glide in the water. He blinks the spots out of his vision stopping as he sways a little. This new world that he's landed on, somehow, after falling to the Black Rage and slaying as many enemies as he can, before dying, or more likely, being culled by his older brothers was confusing. Using the Warp was so much harder. It took far more of his energy to hide his wings.

Fuck, that is the only thing he can do, and it's been really, really hard. Sometimes the illusion hiding his wings is failing, much to his complete terror and panic at that. The first time it had happened he'd panicked, and he'd nearly torn his wings from his back, only cold practicality of doing that wouldn't help him. Another issue that he's having his that his wretched, cursed, mutation is dropping feathers at an alarming rate.

So while he knows there are other Space Marines around, he's been avoiding them as much as possible. He'd fallen to the black rage, and somehow, survived and had come to… what he'd learned, from learning some of the local (and very strange) language of the local base line humans is Terra- Ancient Terra. How he'd landed here he doesn't know. And that is a whole basket of eggs that he'll have to handle latter. He'd overheard from some of the humans that he listens to that there is going to be a shoal of Space Marines passing by. He absolutely doesn't want to be noticed by them.

Regardless of alignment. Hearing that there are Loyalist, Renegade and Chaos Marines on this Ancient, Holy Terra had his mind blank and he'd snapped out of it a few moments later and half of his feathers had been pulled out and he'd barely managed to keep his clawed hands from pulling out more feathers. He needs to get a handle on himself. He's better than this.

He takes in a couple of deep breaths as he rubs his face as he stuffs the feathers into the pouch. It's getting far too full. He needs to find a place where he can make a fire to burn the feathers. He glares at the feathers in his hand, they, to an outsiders view, are pretty, long, white and almost glowing in the water and sunlight. Why? Why did the Mechanicus allow him to live instead of cull him when his wings first started to develop? He's never had the courage to ask them, and now he will be entirely unable to.

He needs to continue moving, as he shoves the fistful of feathers into his pouch and has his wings closed shut on his back as he swims in the water, unaware that he'd wrenched the feathers out too harshly and a trickle of blood is flowing, like a trail, a beacon in the water. He notices it after a few hours and curses his own foolishness as he finds a small uninhabited island to swim through the air on and try to find something to make a fire to burn the damned feathers. He will try and weave the illusion on his wings and hide them. Just… He needs to… rest. He's been swimming for so long. And the failed weave of the illusion had taken a heavy toll on his energy levels. Jophiel hasn't slept in… in a long time, but as a Primaris Marine he doesn't need to sleep often.

He's gone longer without rest, food for far longer. He.. can… endure. He will. He must endure. He opens his eyes in alarm, the sun which had been high and hot in the sky was dipping down below the Horizon. Jophiel had wasted so much time sleeping! Oh Throne. He needs to get supplies together to make a fire and burn the excess feathers. He knows that the humans find the feathers pretty and he can try and trade things for them. But it has to be the smallest of the feathers, anything too large and… his brothers and cousins might notice and then… he really doesn't want to know what might happen if they did find the suspiciously large feathers.

Nothing good. Not for the human who had them, and not if they tried to seek out who had those feathers to begin with. After burning the feathers he rubs his face and continues to swim in the water, he's so thirsty. He's so hungry, the gnawing in his belly and the dryness of his throat has him coughing a little as he shakes his head. No- he has to continue on. He grabs some of the rations in one of his other pockets and eats some of the nutri-paste. Just enough to have the gnawing in his stomach lessen back to acceptable levels. He can't eat too much, otherwise he won't have more for future meals.

He notices a large boat, human made, it looked more like a pleasure cruiser, rather than something military. Curious he watches the boat from under the water. He sees the base line humans wander about the ship. It looks… they look like they are having fun as he swims closer, careful and curious. He sees a bunch of children running around one of the decks laughing and playing, before one of them slips and his hearts plunge in his chest as they fall over the side of the ship. He blinks and the child is in his arms.

He's gently cradling the child in his arms and is swimming in the air, the humans are staring at him. Oh no. That's not. The human child is staring at him with wide eyes and gently reaches out to touch his face, before their eyes drift to something behind him and his hearts sink to his stomach as the child reaches out and touches his wings. Fuck! The illusion broke again. More humans have gathered at the side of the boat where he is at and are staring at him.

This is bad, this is really bad as he gently sets the child down on the deck of the ship, a couple of older humans rushing over-they look like they are related to the little human as they look between him, his wings and their child. He puts a finger to his helmet, near where his lips would be in a shushing motion as he dives back into the water, unaware of one of his larger, primary feathers falling out of his wings and softly floating in the air, the child reaching out and grabbing the feather with wide, awed eyes.

[askthecaptaingeneral]

"Will they even believe it to be me?" He asked

The Mechanicum was so deeply devout that surely his ten thousand year absence would have warped and twisted the image of him in their minds. Kusig Alad was a man mythicized, and the image of him that stared judgingly from the frescoes and stained glass windows was so far removed from the man he was so as to be a different person entirely. They might think him a witch or daemon bearing their Holy Emperor's form, for no god of theirs would act as he did.

@divinacaptivus

“All you must do is play the part of their god. The void dragon remains unknown, and with the backing of the Custodes, they must believe you.” He said simply.

“None of them have been alive since the beginning, they have no reason to believe you acted any different unless you wish to break the deal.”

[farsight-the-char]

I bet Mechanicum will get a larger release both in 40k and 30k, probably some overlap, with their Robots. Likely as part of a Warzone in 40k, likely by next year.

Dark Mechanicum ??? Depends on what GW does with Vashtorr in the near future.

Custodes????? Their codex is coming up soon. We will see.

With the Solar Auxiliary getting plastics, this makes me wonder about the two and a bit other mostly resin factions, Mechanicus/Dark Mechanicus and Tallons of the Emperor.

Will they get plastic?

[bolters-and-rivets]

391st Grand-Batallion (4th Legion); lore supliment

The 391st Grand-Battalion of the Iron Warriors, when not cruising the warp looking to settle their grudge with the Imperium, is based out of the Lishtragen system; a Binary-star system comprised of a red dwarf co-orbiting a sun-like star.

the Lishtragen system, rendered as seen from the Galactic plain, and in a simple view for clarity The system features 7 orbiting planets.

L-I is a barren, rocky world, much like Murcury or Ganymede, to close to the twin stars to be of much use beyond mining for resources.

L-II is an terestrial planet, about 1.25x the size of Terra and the staging ground for the 391st's manpower

L-III is an ocean world, used as a main berth for the 391's void fleet to avoid clogging up the orbit of L-II

L-IV to L-VI are gas giants, used by the Dark Mechanicum as forge worlds

L-VII is a brown dawrf; a proto-star that was flung from a nebula before it had a chance to reach critical mass and captured into the Lishtragen systems orbit, where it now resides on the outer edge. the presence of the brown dwarf has a substantial influence on the stability of the system, forcing the other planets into various elliptical or eccentric orbits, in fact, so sever is this outside pull on the system that planets Lishtragen-IV and Lishtragen VI both cross the orbit of Lishtragen V and back again.

How the system has sustained such eccentric orbits without planets colliding or getting flung off into space is unknown, but the uper echelons of the Grand Batallion theorise that the gods of chaos may have some role to play in orchestrating such organised chaos

Lishtragen-II is where we will focus our attention.

1st drafts of Lishtragen-II displaying climate and factions. Faction labels and locations are subject to change as I develop the lore further.

L-II is the staging ground for the 391st Grand Battalion, the planet's eccentric orbit and the presence of two stars gives it a climate that varies between oven dry and sauna-humid, the pull of the other planets locking the orbit into a rotational period that alligns with the seasons, so that the "summer" side of the planet is a scorching desert, whilst the "winter" side of the planet is invariably hot & humid rainforests and jungles.

the 391st as an entity holds most of the terretory on the summer side of the planet, using the scorched desert terrain and the maintain range known locally as "The Spine" to their advantage to make it as difficult as possible for outside assault their base of operations, known simply as "The Iron Keep".

As for the rest of the planet? The 391st Grand Battalion leaves much of the more hospitible terretory unocupied for a veriety of cults and renegade warbands to stake out their own little terretories and empires in miniature, this ultimately works in the 391st's favour as the varius faactions waring for terretory gives the Iron Warriors a pool of manpower to draw from who are specialised in many forms of warfare.

One notable region besides the Iron Dominion is the Free Terretory of Estadia, a designated neutral zone where all may do trade, seek sanctuary, and hire mercinaries free from the grudges outside its borders. It also sees use as a place for the factions to settle disputes that can't be so easily solved by feat of arms, for which a member of the 391st may preside over disputes and pass judgement. The defacto capital of the planet, at least so-far as the general population are concerned, is Hive City Primus, located in Estadia, a seedy hive rife with crime, slavery, and corruption. What "law enforcement" exists consists of little more than armed thugs drawn from the Grand Battalion's auxilliaries tasked with keeping the violence on the busiest streets to a tolerable minimum

Prepresentative placeholder image, until I have the funds to commision an artist to make artwork for me

[etherhart]

Hey, you seem to know about warhammer 40k right? I have a simple question about it. What are the basic factions? I want to get into the lore, but I don't even know of anything other than the imperium of man. Could you please help me? (This is an invitation to infodump btw)

Oh my god someone ASKING me to infodump??? This website is amazing ok so

The Imperium of Man is the biggest one, and the one most people know. A whole lot of humans who worship an emperor who may or may not be alive as a god, most live in huge hive cities on planets loosely held together by nightmarish bureaucracy and fascist cruelty. Space marines, Sisters of Battle, The Inquisition, all them. They’re led by a council of lords from earth, and as a rule genocidally hostile to anything that isn’t an emperor worshipping human. Tied to the Imperium is the Adeptus Mechanicum, an allied faction obsessed with ancient technology based out of mars. They worship a machine god and try to replace their own body parts with implants as much as possible, in addition to maintaining colossal war robots called titans.

The Chaos Gods or Ruinous Powers are 4 warp beings so powerful they have become able to spread their influence into real space, and have become immensely influential by doing so. Their societies are generally made up of corrupted humans and demons (manifestations of tiny fragments of a particular god) and exist primarily to spread the power of the warp. The four are Khorne, god of war/violence (and the blood god of skull throne fame), Nurgle, god of life in the bacterial sense, Slaanesh, god of excess, and Tzeentch, god of ambition. They were the Imperiums main threat for a long time and caused the state of decay it is now in.

The Eldar or Aeldari are space elves. They live a long time, control warp magic better, and some of them can see the future. They were once the dominant power in the galaxy, but their society was corrupted by excess in post-scarcity and they gave birth to slaanesh, killing most and destroying their home worlds. The three surviving groups were those who avoided the disaster - the Craftworld Eldar who had flown away on huge ships, preserving their way of life through discipline, the Dark Eldar or Dhrukari who escaped into pocket dimensions and preserved their way of life through torture orgies, and the Exodites, who had already fled to custom planets populated with beautiful nature and dinosaurs.

There are the Tyranids, an impossibly vast galactic invader hive mind that just wants to consume everything it finds. Mostly just Zerg type space bugs, but they do have “gene stealers” that infiltrate human planets and create cults designed to destabilize before an invasion.

The Necron were once the most powerful beings in the galaxy, slept for 60 million years on tomb worlds, and are just now waking up to recreate their empire. They are soulless killing machine robots for the most part bc of some ancient mythological trickery, but the few nobles with personalities are typically pretty funny.

The T’au are a relatively minor faction that get a lot of attention because they are so unique - they are technologically advancing, which is rare, and tolerant of other species in their society, which is UNHEARD OF. They aren’t very big, but they get a lot of fanfare because (they’re cool) they figh alongside humans and other alien species as the only diplomats in the galaxy.

The Leagues of Votann are space dwarves - they’re also very new, and have not been well established. They are led by ancient AI that knew everything but is now going senile, and have a grudge book they hold forever.

There are also thousands of rogues, one of planets, strange ancient enemies, etc. these are just the big ones.

Feel free to ask if you have specific questions :)

I love talking about this shit