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Khorne's change in method was the result of Slaanesh's "ascension" and a helpful nudge by Tzeentch.
For a few issues, Khorne was certainly the God of War, but he was honorable nonetheless. His followers sought bloodshed in honorable battle but would leave women and children unmolested (unless they tried to fight back, of course.) Of course, that changed rather abruptly to "[not caring] from whom the blood flows, so long as it does." Given the bizarre nature of time flow as compared between the Warp and realspace, this belated change of heart could have been the earliest realspace manifestation of Khorne's reaction to Slaanesh, to him the most despised of the rival Chaos Gods (of course, Tzentch may have pointed this out as a wise course of action, Khorne's never been known for subtlety.) Although Khorne loses some personal honor by slaughtering everything that moves in a rather spectacular fashion, he denies Slaaneshi daemons their "enjoyment" and increases the blood flow. And even to a mortal suffering a Chaotic incursion - would your soul rather be just euthanized down quickly if not cleanly, or tortured and squick-orgied out of existence along with your partner and children forever and ever?

Khorne's change in method is parallel to the general state of the world going to crap.
Since Chaos is but a reflection of our hopes and desires, and since he was specifically born from humans, Khorne's Motive Decay and motto of "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" is actually the Imperium's Motive Decay and motto of "HERESY! *BLAM*". His earlier Proud Warrior Race Guy ways were a throwback to the golden age of mankind, but those days are long gone now, and in the Time of Ending both of them have turned Ax-Crazy...

The Necrons and Tyranids aren't as unstoppable as they're hyped up to be.
Yes, Necrons are unkillable death machines... but their numbers are static (even if currently unknown). They also seem to lack the ability to get anywhere NEW in a hurry (Though they can move amongst their own areas swiftly). They don't pose a threat to the Imperium because the Humans and Orks(A race specifically designed to kill Necrons) reproduce faster than the Necrons could ever hope to kill them. The end result would be Necrons being as effective at Killing humanity through their genocide campaign as a respawning Mosquito is at killing a human through blood drain.

And while a lot of ado is mentioned about the Tyranids theoretically having the power of the biomass in the Galaxy, the first and second most numerous collections of Biomass (Orcs and Humans) aren't restricted to just organic matter for their firepower. In the end, the Tyranids will run out of Biomass it can access before the residents of the Galaxy run out of Bullets, Plasma, Tanks, Starships, Powered Armor, Bolters, and lasgun charges. The Tyranids will go SPLAT like bugs on a windshield against the Might of the Imperium or the Orkish WAAAGHHH! At that point, they'll become like Orks in that they're scattered about the galaxy trying to eat enough to rebuild their swarms (Just as the spores of defeated orcs try to regrow)... but they, unlike the orks, don't terraform the land around them to be more hospitable to their kind (If I remember, Orks grow all sorts of Squiggoths and Orkish plants from the same spores they grow from to ensure their survival), and they require Hive ships to eat and multiply and the time to do it in, while all Orks need to repopulate are microscopic spores and a bit of time.

  • This is true as the new material say that YES the Tyranids are a major threat, and that YES the Necrons are a serious threat, and that YES the Orks are also a serious threat, but here's a few things... the tyranids are a galaxy wide plague, but the main Hive swarms are tied up with the Orks. The Necrontyr are extremely dangerous, but they've got nearly nothing to them. Only a few dozen tomb's are active, hundreds are corrupted or destroyed, and, all in all, billions of years have taken their toll upon these killer machines. The Eldar aren't doing much, since they don't have the numbers. The Dark Eldar simply cannot afford to get into a massive war, so they are simply pirates. The Tau, on the other hand, have problems of their own, and are using resources to fight of BOTH alien invasions, and a Warp Storm. The Orks, being Orks, are heading for the biggest fights they can find, so they're just fighting everywhere. At the moment, everyone is pretty much leaving the imperial empire alone, 'cept for the latest Black Crusade, who have seen the state of the galaxy, and think it's a great time to invade. The Imperium, meanwhile, is protecting it's borders, and dealing with the 13th invasion by Failbaddon.

Things are just as GRIMDARK for the Tyranids as the Imperium and Eldar
Seriously... this is a starving race running from some horrid entity (or from starvation to a new food source), and it turns out instead of a hospitable galaxy with the food to support their continued existence, it's entirely infested with nothing but the most incredibly badass, incomprehensibly destructive, and Frighteningly Competent killers in the entire universe, all honed to martial perfection through fighting a Forever War for several millennia. The Tyranids now have to try to evolve and compete against these, consuming as much biomass as it can, and pumping out nothing but warriors or harvesters, that waste biomass and life (They can reclaim it eventually... but it's still a waste of life and energy, and takes time) and exacerbate their hunger issue just trying to survive... Gotta eat to sate its hunger, but if it diverts the biomass to satisfying itself, it will run out of defenses against these Orks, Tau, Humans, Demons, Eldar, and Necrons, but as it continues to spend all accumulated biomass on Warriors and harvesters to keep up with the demand, it's starving itself.

One of the missing primarchs turned to Chaos, the other didn't
In the novel The First Heretic, a Heresy-era Word Bearer Marine witnesses ten primarchs landing on their homeworlds in their stasis pods. Although none are named, they are identifiable in context: Magnus psychically deconstructs his pod around him, Fulgrim crashes on a barren world and is described as "inhumanly handsome," etc. All of them, except the first one mentioned, are traitor primarchs. But the first, mystery primarch is only described is having hair "as black as the armor of the legion he would lead." This could be referring to Corax, however this wouldn't make sense as Corax was a loyalist. Either he was randomly thrown in with the nine traitors, or the black-haired primarch is one of the missing ones.
  • Black armor? Sounds like the Black Legion and Horus. Do we know Horus's hair color?
    • In at least one work of official art for the Horus Heresy, he's bald, unfortunately.
    • Also, before becoming the Black Legion, the Luna Wolves wore gray, not black.

Cyphers trip to revive the Emperor is a Xanatos Gambit to have the Lion and Dark Angels defect to chaos
Think about it. We know the Dark Angels only follow the codex in name, with their brother 'chapters' all being controlled by the Deathwing cult who are obsessed with capturing all the 'fallen angels' without the Imperium as a whole knowing of their 'shame'. To the point they canonically will abandon campaigns they are sworn to in order to chase the mere rumor of a Fallen angel.

How do you think they will react when the most Infamous Fallen angel Cypher saves the Emperor? It would be child's play for the Ruinous powers to twist that anger into their service. Why should Chaos settle for the crumbs of Fallen angels, when they can have the whole cake instead with a extra Primarch on top. (And what does Chaos lose by the Emperor reawakening? The Imperium is far to superstitious and fractured now for his plans on the great crusade with tons of political crap he'd have to wade through of ppl who are to used to being in power. To say nothing of the Necron and Tyranid threat approaching he'd have to focus on. )

  • addendum... it does put a rather more sinister light to the Captured Luther's ranting about how the Lion will 'forgive him'.... by apparently joining him in the thrall of chaos.

The Emperor was preparing the Imperium for the awakening of the Necrons.
We know the Emperor captured and peered into the mind of the void dragon. Before setting into motion several long plans. From Mechanicum we also know from the scene where the new guardian of the Dragon was chosen this also showed some scenes of the future. Presumably the existence of the Necrons and their reawakening was also learned by the Emperor. Hence why a unified Imperium of mankind standing ready to swat the Necrons as they awake being his long term goal in order for humanity to survive.

It also might explain how the Ruinious powers blindsided him. As he'd be taking the glimpse of the future from his brief exposure to the Dragon, whom as a C'tan is blind to the warp. Thus any glimpses of the future would have no mention of the ruinious powers, leaving the Emperor to assume they wouldn't play a role in the future threats to humanity. Because he has no way of knowing the Dragon is blind to the warp.

There is 1 Chaos God above/equal to the others, the God of Fear
Simply, fear is the ultimate emotion. All of the other Chaos Gods draw from emotions that are traceable to fear, yet there seems to be no great being of pure fear in the Warp. Even though fear and the Warp are like hazelnut butter and cocoa together. To top it off, most people under the Imperium are controlled by fear of the xenos. Man itself would fuel this new god. And the other Chaos Gods may logically just be aspects of it:

''"Fear. Fear leads to anger, leads to hate. Fear breeds terror, brings despair. Fear tries
to multiply and fade away, it craves the presence of others, lusts for sensations thatlet it be forgotten for a time. Fear drives change, anything to be other than itself. It issimple, unreasoning, and the constant companion of humanity."''

Not sure how it ties into the God-Emperor is a Chaos God/Malal still exists theories, but it should still hold water.

  • How does this work with Tzeentch who is the god of hope the polar opposite of fear.
    • Not really. We don't fear instead of hope, we hope in the face of fear, just as we can respond to fear with senseless violence (Khorne), mindless indulgence (Slaanesh), or apathetic acceptance (Nurgle).
      • Pity that fear is already a small portion of Nurgle's sphere of influence.

The favoured warriors of Tzeentch are... the Space Wolves
Tzeentch. The Lord of Change. Who's canonical champions are... pretty much just piles of dust sealed inside their armour so that they cannot be warped by Tzeentch's influence. Meanwhile, amongst Tzeentch's greatest foes are the Space Wolves. Werewolves. Changelings. Just. As. Planned.
  • Also, the Space Wolves main characteristic is going in, fucking up everyone's shit, and destroying even the most convoluted and impenetrable of plans by repeatedly punching it in th throat. Because against the indiscriminate forces of change, no machinations are safe. Definitely Just As Planned.

Craftworld Eldar are being set up for an eventual Guard-Type Codex Revival

Okay, this'll take a bit and it's actually a little less optimistic for the Eldar than the title indicates. First of all, the basic point is that Eldar right now can't win a break, even it seems in their own fluff. They're being beat up on all sides. Sure sounds like the Guard right before their codex jump... sort of. The Eldar are still missing two things that the Guard had before they got their codex, and this guess is mostly a prediction of how they might get them.

When I started in Third Edition, Eldar were the gorilla in the room for one reason: fast. They were above and beyond the army for fast mechanized forces, and they ran circles around everyone. It fit their fluff. Thing is, other races got into the gambit, and now the ultra-fast mechanized attack squad is as much or more a Space marine tactic, and the new Dark Eldar codex has taken over the mantle of ultra-quick, heavily armed vehicles. Eldar need something new to fit their fluff. Thing is Fifth Edition also introduced something else that the game hasn't seen in a while, really powerful Psykers. I've heard a number of complaints that Marine and Guard Psykers out-power anything in the older codexes, even in Eldar and Chaos that fluff-wise should perhaps have stronger ones. But notice that Imperium Psykers seem to lean heavily towards the “blow stuff up” end of the powers scale. Eldar Psykers could be the answer to their lack of a distinctive army style, in the form of board manipulation. Eldar Psykers could get more abilities like Eldrad's Divination, say “move target allied unit within 12” up to 2d6” in a chosen direction.” I'm keeping my idea to allies to avoid the complaints that Lash of Submission still produces, but it'd still open up an entire new set of exploits that would go a long way to making the Eldar into Difficultbut Awesome, which is my impression of what they have been intended to be.

The second thing the Eldar lack is positive fan identification in the form of a tie-in story, a la the Ciaphas Cain and Gaunt's Ghosts novels. I don't think Pirates of the Caribbean: Yriel Edition is a good idea, but it still remains that the one major fan-followed Eldar character is Eldrad Ulthran, and he's looking pretty dead. I think this could actually be the start of the story the Eldar need. Have a young prophet rise up, say Q'sandria the student from the codex, saying that Eldrad's presence in the Warp is in order to jumpstart the rise of Ynnead and go on a long campaign to unite the craftworlds in harvesting souls to feed the birth of the new God, and you've got the makings of a novel series that has the kind of creepy, disquieting but powerful premise that fits the Eldar fluff but can still be compelling to readers, watching the race unite under the banner of what amounts to a carefully organized mass suicide while the forces around them try to thwart their fragile, careful plans. Each of the craftworlds can join for their own reasons and bring their own methods and issues, for example Iyanden offering the wealth of it's Infinity Circuit but requiring that the God incubate for some time in the Craftworld to honor the lost, or Saim-Hann wanting to feed the God the souls of “lesser” races and thus clashing with the more doctrinaire Ulthwe Seers. The Picture of the Eldar moves away from The Dying Race to a more interesting and compelling patchwork of survivalists uniting under their new hope, created in the same way as their greatest foe.

Obviously, this'll take a while to do, but it'd be an interesting result of the army's current decline. I can even think of how this could potentially screw with things and make the setting worse, if Ynnead wakes up and decides that it isn't satisfied with the Eldar souls it's been fed, and maybe its corrupted with other souls in it as well. Suddenly the Deceiver isn't the only C'Tan with an Eldar God counterpart wandering around. And besides, the Eldar as a united force with renewed hope for reestablishing galactic dominance is not something the Imperium really wants to consider right now.

The Power of Love could easily turn the tides of the battle by weakening The Chaos Gods

Sounds really stupid at first given how dark the setting is, but taking account that The Immaterium is the collective psyche of all sentinent beings in the galaxy, if a considerable amount of defectors drom decadence formed another faction made from their alliance with each other, if they changed their way of life to a more peaceful, caring and stable one and just resorted to violence when defending themmselves from other factions, the gods and daemons from The Warp would either take a severe blow in their strenghts or start transforming into more benevolent entities, specially Khorne who relies on violence and war to keep powerful, and Nurgle, who is the god of despair and decay. This shift in the balance of power would make things a lot easier for the other factions, now being able to concentrate on the Tyranids, the Necrons and the Orks. Seeing that following the Defectors ais a good idea, more and more people would migrate to Defector's territory to improve their way of life, which further weakens the Chaos.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done given how convulted and confilctive this verse is.

  • Pity theres a chaos god of love, aka Slannesh. A really evil, perverse god of love but still.
  • I think Nurgle, the "friendly" god of diseases, is the god of Power of Love you were talking about. Slaanesh is more like god of lust.

M'kran's identity.
Tzeentch has a prince on level with Doombreed named M'kran. Given that Doombreed is likely Genghis Khan, it's possible that M'kran is actually Pericles.

Have we truly missed this one? Hope. Change. Hope. Change. M'kran is obviously Barack Obama.

The Dark Eldar are about to get royally screwed by Tzeentch
At first sight, true to the crapsackiness of the setting, they're the only kind of Eldar to have prospered since the Fall. And as usual, their new codex shows them as being extremely dangerous and a real threat to the rest of the galaxy. However, once you start to read the special characters bios, you start to notice that things are starting to get messy for them. Kheradruakh, the most powerful mandrake, is actively working at the coming of the powers that turned the mandrakes into what they are - that is, heavily mutated Eldar with magic powers. Urien Rakarth's regeneration is less and less reliable and turns him, once again, into some kind of mutant ; maybe indicating that the Dark Eldar will soon start to think twice before using their regenerative technology. Lady Malis is actually possessed by something that allows her to predict all of her opponent's moves and to plot her next attacks accordingly. And Asdrubael Vect's grip on Commoragh is starting to slip, maybe as some kind of plan against his enemies, but nothing's telling us that he'll manage to regain complete control if that's the case. Mutations, magic, ability of seeing the future and manipulating events, and possibly a master plan going into shreds at the last minute... Yep, looks like the kind of tricks Tzeentch routinely pulls out. They've survived the birth of the Chaos God they've created, only to fall thanks to another one.
  • Except the Mandrakes aren't so much mutants as hybrids of Eldar with some sort of shadow creature from a dimension that isn't the Warp - in fact, there's a lot of hints that there are non-Warp dimensions out there, and that is what the Decapitator is serving. The entity that Malys confronted in the Webway laughed, implying she's more of a pawn of the Laughing God now. And Urien Rakarth is only going crazier and semi-mummified by the ressurection cycle, not actually mutated.

The Angry Marines are descendents of the Imperial Fists.
I know, I know, a Wild Mass Guessing about a homebrew chapter... Anyway...The first clue is their colour scheme, but when we take a look at the Imperial Fists' history, we can find some other things that tend to relate those two chapters. The Imperial fists are known for being among the most ruthless chapters of the Imperium, and as being particularly violent. They're the ones who held the last lines of defense during the siege of Terra, and boy, did they give the traitors a hard time... The chapters created from them tend to display similar levels of toughness : the Crimson Fists, instead of trying to recover from the destruction of their chapterworld, continue to fight with all they've got in one last, extended blaze of glory ; while the Black templars started a millenia-long crusade against everything that threatens the Imperium, picking up fights wherever is necessary and without any restraints, without having necessarily been asked to intervene. Another element is that after the Horus Heresy, the Imperial Fists were vehemently opposed to Guilliman's Codex Astartes, to the point of almost starting another civil war, before they'd reluctantly agree to follow its principles on certain conditions (and the Black Templars even publicly show they don't give a damn about the Codex Astartes). Even though it's treated as comedy and as a way of showing to Games Workshop what 4chan thinks of the Ultramarines, the Angry Marines have frequently flipped the bird to the Ultramarines and the Codex Astartes. So, either they've been created from the most unstable elements of the Imperial Fists, or they've split up because they were disgusted that their brethen would give in to the Ultramarines' demands.

The Blood Ravens' Unknown Primarch is/was one of the missing two Primarchs
Nobody knows about the Blood Ravens' origins, not even the Ravens themselves. So it's a possibility that one of the 2 chapters deleted from Imperial records and their Primarchs is in fact the founding Primarch of the Blood Ravens.
  • I've heard theories painting them as loyalist Thousand Sons, which would explain the hoarding of information. Certain higher ups do know this, but telling the rest of the chapter is just asking for trouble.
    • Hoarding of information, plus their high proportion of Librarians and the fact that they combine the office of Chapter Master and Chief Librarian...

Varro Tigurius is a sensei
Tigurius can interface with the Hive Mind, a feat previously thought possible only for a psyker as powerful as the Emperor.

The sensei theory states that, prior to ascending the Golden Throne, the Emperor has children who inherited His psychic powers.

Since Tigurius is evidently nearly as powerful as the Emperor, it's possible he is descended from Him.

The past identities of the Emperor
Include Charlemagne and Julius Caesar.
  • And Jesus, Buddha, and the greatest pre-Imperial statesman humanity has ever known: Theodore Roosevelt.

Revolution of the Imperium
The Emperor, upon dying on the Golden Throne, will come back to life. He will be invigorated, as his soul was bolstered by ten millennia of worship. This is the least important part.

Having recognized that the Chaos Gods are weakened by being replaced, he will no longer disallow worship of himself. In fact, the Emperor will accept and subtly encourage his image as a deity. He will, however, face great pains with reforming the Imperium to be not so brutal and dystopian.

Primarchs will also return as their father is resurrected. Not just the loyalists, but traitors as well. Here's how it's gonna go down:

Lion el'Jonson and Roboute Guilliman will revive, mostly because they have sensed their father's soul awakening. Vulkan, Russ, Corax, and the Khan all return as well, knowing that they have critical tasks ahead of them: the Imperium must be reforged as it was during the Great Crusade.

Alpharius/Omegon, realizing that the galactic stage has changed so much that their gambit no longer matters, will return to Terra, bringing the Alpha Legion with them.

Here's where it gets interesting. A few actual traitor primarchs (Alpharius doesn't count, for reasons that are obvious if you've read Legion) will attempt to return to the side of good, and each will be given a herculean task to complete. Fulgrim's possessing daemon is destroyed by the psychic shock of the Emperor's return. His body slowly returning to its former perfection, Fulgrim fights his way out of the Eye of Terror, begging forgiveness from the Emperor. He is absolved. A few renegade chapters, now returning to the fold of the Imperium, are handed over to Fulgrim's command until the Emperor's Children can be rebuilt as a legion proper. Fulgrim's task: recruit the Eldar and Tau as allies in a war against the Chaos/Necron/Tyranid threat.

Magnus attempts to parlay with the Emperor, after all he originally supported his father during the Heresy. The Emperor, furious with Magnus's disobedience to the Council of Nikea ten thousand years earlier, sends Magnus on a Crusade into the Warp itself to outsmart and destroy the Chaos gods. Supporting him are the Black Templars and Grey Knights.

Finally, Lorgar. Now aware of his Father's presence in the warp, he is almost blinded. The constant psychic bombardment of the Emperor's light is torture, a reminder of the perfection of good, so opposed to the corrupt Chaos gods. Lorgar manages to bring some of his Astartes with him, begging the Emperor for forgiveness much like his brother Fulgrim. Again, he is forgiven. He is sent to parlay and convert the remaining traitor primarchs: Angron, Mortarion, and Perturabo.

Snotlings are the descendants of the Old Ones

Modern Ork oral histories describe both the Old Ones and the Snotlings as their creators. Why can't both be true? Perhaps, after creating the Orkz, a small number of Old Ones managed to survive all the crazy shit that was going on. Over time, their Ork servants gained more and more power over them, causing the surviving Old Ones to degenerate into Snotlings.

This would mean that the Old Ones were also a sentient fungus, so they evidently based the Orkz on their own physiology.

Gork and Mork both embody cunning brutality and brutal cunning

We know that chaos gods are shaped by the beliefs and actions of their followers. Since the Orkz can't agree on which of their gods is which, who is to say that the gods themselves stay the same? Most likely, Gork and Mork constantly switch between being cunningly brutal and brutally cunning, and thus giving the Orkz something to fight over.

Matt Ward hates his job.

And is trying his hardest to get fired the only way he can, by making codexes that leave the fans howling in incoherent rage.

Kharn is actually quite intelligent outside of combat.

Think about it. The fluff says that he's the voice of reason during Angron's temper tantrums. Yet the rules list him as an ultra-violent death machine. How can he be both? Well when he's not in combat, he simply bottles up his anger and acts in a very calm and collected manner. Then, when he gets out on the battlefield, he lets out all his repressed anger, making him even more destructive than any other World Eater.

  • Actually, that would explain how he still manages to be a pretty fun guy when not collecting skulls for the skull throne.
  • Kharn has appeared in novels before the World Eaters turned traitor. He was a pretty standard honorable warrior type that went insane when the legion turned traitor. His "Betrayer" status most likely comes from him sharing more in common with the loyalists, but not ever realizing that was an option before it was too late.
    • Kharn is called the Betrayer because he slaughtered his own legion along with the majority of the Emperor's Children on Skalathrax because his fellows betrayed the ideals of Khorne's Faith by seeking shelter from the lethal cold instead of getting into the thick of it and killing the enemy.
    • This one is actually pretty much confirmed with the audio drama Chosen of Khorne. He's quite intelligible and calm even on the verge of combat. His first person narrative sections show that he's constantly on the verge of going into a killing frenzy against everything in sight though.

The reason Guardmen's weapons and armor are so crappy

The Administratum knows that once an ordinary man turns to Chaos, he won't come back. So in response, they make sure they're as easy to kill as possible.

  • Nope, its explicitly stated that the reason is because human life is a cheap resource in the Imperium. The Imperial Guard wins battles through attrition. There is no point giving high quality equipment to someone that is basically being used for cannon fodder.

Every time the Inquisition orders an Exterminatus, Chaos just gets more powerful.
From Kyras' speech at the end of Retribution:
"In mere hours, billions will die! Innocent! Guilty! Strong and weak! Honest and deceitful! ALL of them! They will scream, they will burn, and for no purpose but that mighty Khorne may revel in their bloodshed!

Who's to say that this particular Exterminatus is special?

  • I remember reading somewhere that Virus Bombs, a certain type of Exterminatus involving a hyper-contagious flesh dissolving disease, aren't really used anymore because Nurgle gets power from an entire planet being infected.

The origins of the Adeptus Mechanicus is in the Dark Age of Technology
From the Lexicanum The Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current age. It is also considered a dark age because mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as God. (emphasis mine) What is the basic tenent of the Cult Mechanicus? Knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity. It's possible that the Cult Mechanicus grew out of the distant and half-formed memories of the science-religion of the DAOT, keeping the basic ideas alive in a way that would be completely alien to the residents of the Golden Age of Mankind.
  • Isn't this canon already?
  • It's blatantly canon; Mars became the center of technology in Sol round about the time that Earth nuked/virus-bombed itself into a setting that would make the Fallout series look bright and chipper. Of course, being just near the START of the Age of Strife, they had their own hardships to go through, and the faction that ended up surviving was the faction that, over the course of millenia, was literally worshiping science and technology. And the only reason the Emperor let them continue a twisted religion within his secular empire was because he basically needed them, and didn't have the resources to conquer and convert them without losing all their tech in the process.

There are no aliens or Chaos gods.
The Imperium is an Orwellian space empire that simply makes up various threats in order to justify increasingly totalitarian rule. The Emperor is a fictional Big Brother figure - the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy never happened. Occasionally the Imperium blows up a planet or stages a fake alien invasion for PR purposes. The Space Marines are just juiced-up psychopaths sent in to brutally supress uprisings against the government. Perhaps Chaos serves as 40k's equivalent of the Brotherhood - occasionally Inquisitors will pretend to be agents of Chaos to entrap potential dissidents.

  • Or maybe the aliens do exist, but were all genetically engineered by humanity pre-Dark Age of Technology in order to justify having such a strong government, along with the "daemons"?

The Primarchs will return.
With the Imperium reaching what is considered the end of existence as we know it, the Emperor, in his semi-aware state in the Warp, will send out the dead Primarchs (Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn, and Ferrus Manus) back into the regular galaxy. He will also send mental summons to his still living loyalist Primarchs (Leman Russ, Corax, Vulkan, Jaghatai Khan) who have promised to return for the final battle, to gather in a world in the Eye of Terror. There, they will use lost technology to heal Roboute Gulliman and Lion'El Johnson of their wounds. With the Adeptus Terra having spent literal millennia indoctrinating the average Imperial citizen to honor the Primarchs as martyrs, the people will rally to them. Further bolstered by their Legions, Gulliman will resume his position as Lord Commander of the Imperium and serve as the Primarchs representative among the High Lords of Terra, and become the leading voice among the Council. Not pleased with how the High Lords have mismanaged the people of the Imperium, Gulliman will begin "advising" them on how to make the lives of the people of the Imperium better. The Primarchs military intellect will help turn the tides against the Tyrannids, the Necrons, and Chaos Undivided, and give the Imperium some breathing room. This will not be without problems, however. The Administratum will be unaccustomed to having someone more powerful than them, the Ecclesiarchy will be unaccustomed to people who can legitimately claim to know the Emperor's will better than them, and the Inquisition will be unaccustomed to someone who can order them around.

The antagonist factions will all be given a lighter shade of gray
based on onfo from the upcoming Black Crusade RPG that gives a sympathetic view on Chaos itself, futer editions of the game will do the same for the Tyranid, the Necrons and even the Dark Eldar, they'll still be evil obviosly, and it's still going to be a crapsack universe but this will effectivly kill darkness induced audience apathy.
  • The Tyranids, Necrons, And Dark Eldar really have no room for good.
  • The Tyranids are a Hive Mind and the entire species is effectively one being.
    • Arguably, the Tyranids are doing what they do out of hunger; could they really be seen as hated any more than a lion can be hated for eating a gazelle?
    • Yes but lions and gazelle aren't sentient humans and the hive mind are and yet the hive mind still goes after human planets rather than just eating all of the death worlds and planets with no people on them that arguably provide more food.
  • The Necrons are either two insane or so close to brainless that they have no real hope of being good.
  • The Dark Eldar codex used to open with the line "This is a tale of evil incarnate" that stance has not changed over time.
    • They do seem to do what they do in order to survive; perhaps given the proper alternative, they might stop their current course of action?
  • Chaos has always had a lighter side, people like Magnus The Red who join chaos out of desperation or simply misguided fools who believed they could save people with the power of Chaos the problem being that Chaos corrupts entirely turning paragons of righteousnesses into bloodthirsty berserkers and the light.

One of the missing primarchs was a pariah
It makes sense in that every primarch has his own "hat," as it were. Psychological warfare primarch? Check. Humanitarian primarch? Check. Unconventional warfare primarch? Check. There isn't, however a pariah. It also makes sense that this primarch would be ejected from the Imperium's memory. The general hate most people develop towards pariahs might almost be enough, but then the fridge horror sets in: because Astartes tend to take on the qualities of their primarch, aspirants of this particular missing legion lose their souls. Knowing the 40k universe, the process would be particularly unpleasant.
  • What's more horrifying is that since he is a Primarch he probably wouldn't have just been a regular Pariah, but an immensely powerful pariah. Considering that a modified human pariah (Spear) was capable of killing the emperor, imagine what a Primarch level Pariah could do. Hell the emperor probably couldn't even pick him up in person like he did when he found the rest of the Primarchs.

The Chaos Gods were incarnated in the image of their respective race's concept of ultimate evil.
Slaanesh seems to be a corruption of the Eldar, whereas Khorne (said to be created by humans) and his daemons appear to be more diabolic in appearance. As to Nurgle and Tzeentch, who can say?
  • I would say that Khorne would be the ultimate evil for the peaceful (or at least peace-seeking) Tau, Tzeentch the Lord of Change would be the greatest evil for the imperium (who has been worshipping a former hero for 10000 years), nurgle would be the orks, as disease is the least orky way to die, and slaneesh would be eldar, as previously stated.
  • It was expressly written out in one of the previous codexes that Tzeentch, Khorne and Nurgle were all spawned by humans. This is because, unlike the Eldar and other psyker races that were created to be Psykers by the Old Ones, humanity just kind of accidentally stumbled onto it through evolution. There was no plot, no training, and while only a scantly small percentage have any sort of psychic ability, every human has a psychic signature. It was all this untrained, unknowing turbulence that most recently stirred up the Warp, and why the Chaos Gods were far more vague and dark than those that came before (namely, the C'Tan and the Eldar gods). Mankind, as a species, has always accentuated the negative, and most of our progress until very recently has been based off of "How can we avoid the bad?" rather than "How can we enhance the good?" THAT said, the reason Slaanesh was spawned from the Eldar is because, as nearly an entire race, they turned to abject hedonism to the point that the streets of their homeworlds ran with the blood of pointless sacrifices and mindless infighting while the others laughed and did drugs and sang ate and fucked and stabbed each other good-naturedly, and such strong psychic turbulence over such a short (in cosmic terms) time led to not just the birth of a new Chaos God, but a birth that ripped the physical dimension a new asshole, that we now call the Eye of Terror.

Tyranids are Warp-touched insects.
Given their ravenousness, their ability to interfere with the Warp, and their destructive nature, who's to say that they're not merely affected by the Warp? We already know that there are insects in the Warp, and they multiply by feeding on people's innards, so perhaps the Tyranids are tied to them.

The Emperor was a Professor Guinea Pig.
So, the big man has been around for almost as long as human civilisation, taking a variety of different identities, usually as a soldier or an advisor to the powerful. Funny thing is, there aren't any legends of, say, a ten-foot-tall Roman centurion with a shiny head; he was able to pass as a normal human. He could have messed with people's perceptions, but the far simpler answer is that he hadn't always looked like that. Also remember that he was a bioengineering expert, and that the superhuman abilities the Primarchs inherited from him could be refined into a set of specific implants to make Space Marines. It seems to follow that at some point he experimented on his own body to strengthen and perfect it, using psychic biomancy instead of anything as crude as surgery or retroviruses. He was literally the testbed and prototype for the Primarchs and Astartes.

A Stick COULD Fire Bullets If An Ork Thought it Could, Depending on the Ork.
Imagine seeing an ork in a forest in a forest on your homeworld. You stay quiet, so it doesn't notice you. It does, however, notice a stick that it thinks looks kind of like a shoota. The ork experimentally pulls a twig that looks like the trigger, and a bullet comes out and hits it in its foot. Limping, the ork leaves. Congratulations, you have survived encountering an ork psyker, albeit one that failed its shoota safety course.The theory is basically that an ork psyker can make anything do anything a non-ork pysker could do, thereby allowing an underinformed observer to think thaat all orks can make anything do anything. This nicely helps explain why some sources explain that orks can use sticks to fire bullets and others claim that ork technology only works better because of the ork psychic gesalt thingy. Of course, almost everything this troper knows about Warhmmer 40k is what I know from reading this wiki, so I might be saying stuff that makes no sense to anyone who has more knowledge.
  • Eh... the whole "orks could make a stick shoot bullets" is just an fan exageration of the fact orks make things work in certain ways because they think it should. A stick could NEVER shoot bullets by itself, but a badly made gun COULD be made to shoot better then it should.
    • The idea is that if an ork was about a powerful enough psyker, he could unconciously use his psyker abilities to do what his orkish ones can't. Also, having learned most of what I have about 40k from this wiki or that of 40k, I was under the impression that the "stick fires bullets" was partially supported by some source or another.
  • Absolutely impossible, there is no such thing as Shoota Safety Skool (Safety takes all the fun out'a da shootin!).

Chaos and humanity will win.
As the tyranids, orks, and necrons drive humanity to the brink of extinction, the Emperor will finally step off the throne... and immediately forge an alliance with Chaos. Humanity and daemonkind will merge. One by one, Imperial worlds will become daemon worlds. And the universe will fall before the infite power of Humanity Undivided.

Things are about to get better...
So far as I know, the only ways the 40k universe could get worse would require either the destruction of one of the main races (reducing model sales and alienating fans who like he race and/or think it would survive that, also hurting sales) or that of the galaxy/universe (which would also impact sales). Being a company, Games Workshop will not do stuff that will adversely affect sales when there is another option.The Dark Eldar are fading. The orks decide to wage a WAAAGH!! (did I spell that right?) against the tyranids and/or the necrons, ridding the galaxy of one or two of its major threats and tying up another. The Emperor awakes and sets humanity on a brighter course before making a pact with the Eldar and the Tau against Chaos.And then, as fans scratch their heads, the end of the main rulebook hints at a greater danger, one which ceases the orks' WAAAGH!! and recruits the dark eldar. It gets much, much worse as time goes on. This allows new figures (the new faction, maybe eldar/tau/etc Imperial Guard or even space marines) and would be unexpected for a game whose world has gotten steadily worse with each edition, and another when it fails to be good in the end. It makes sense, at least.

The creation of Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror wasn't just the sole responsibility of the Eldar. Humanity during the Dark Age of Technology also had a hand in it
It's implied that humans have been able to create three Chaos Gods, so why would Slaanesh be a sole exception, considering that humanity is also kinda hedonistic (/b/. Enough said). It's also implied that during the Dark Age humanity has come to regard science as God and grow arrogant, just like the eldar. I can actually see it that in this scientism and arrogance humanity started losing moral standards (well there is no scientific proof that Sex Is Evil, right?) and eventually became an extremely hedonistic Bread and Circuses society, ala Brave New World, and sure humans aren't as psychically powerful as the eldar, but they make up for sheer numbers. Also, this would pretty much fit in with the "Humanity = Rome" to the "Warhammer 40k = Dark Age Europe in space", considering how it wasn't just outside Barbarians that brought down Rome, but also the incompetence and hedonism of its higher authorities.

Nurgle deliberately lets Isha whisper cures to mortals
Considering how Isha's always in Nurgle's custody, it's unlikely that he doesn't notice a single whisper. It could be that he does notice but doesn't do anything about it. As to why Nurgle would do this, there are two possible reasons: Either he loves her too much to punish her for it, or he's actually observing how the cures would defeat his diseases and then improve his 'craft' by studying better ways to make a disease more persistent. Or maybe both.

Lorgar was abused as a child by Kor Phaeron
Firstly, Kor always calls him dismissively "boy". Secondly, during the scene in The First Heretic Lorgar has brands in places he shouldn't be able to reach on his own—this does not seem like the behaviour of a loving parent...

Chaos is 4chan.
Isn't it pretty obvious? First, the number of Chaos Gods. Four. 4. Chan. Second, the concept of daemons. Thoughts and beliefs turning alive... like, sentient memes? Third, the Warp is basically the Id of the entire universe, a chaotic realm with no rules and laws while dominated by various memes. Again. Like 4chan, the Id of the Internet. And the fourth and the most important. Chaos Gods themselves. Khorne represents the rage and hate-machinery of the Anonymous, Slaanesh represents the Rule 34 and the idea of The Internet Is for Porn, Tzeentch represents Anonymous' surprising intelligence and Magnificent Bastardry which they can show sometimes (especially in acts of trolling or rebellion, after all they were inspired by V for Vendetta), and Nurgle represents Anonymous' decayed standards and the disease-like nature of memes in general (well Richard Dawkins coined the term meme as the cultural analogue for genes/virus).

China took over the world and became the Imperium.
China took over the world and conquered planets and star systems, only to fall apart to pieces. One day, an obscenely powerful psychic was born, reunified the galactic empire, and became the Emperor. The rest is history.

The Emperor wakes up... and destroys the Imperium of Man along with the rest of the universe.
The Emperor is back from the near-death either as the Star Child or via the sacrifice of a Sensei. Sadly, instead of rebuilding Imperium, the Emperor becomes a Chaos God even more powerful than Nurgle, Tzeentch, Khorne, and Slaanesh combined... Sick and tired of being locked up inside the Golden Throne and watching the galaxy burn, the Emperor proceeds to destroy the very fabric of spacetime, harvesting human souls, wiping out all xenos races, absorbing and cleansing the Warp, while singing unfittingly cheerful songs. And then the Emperor will float in the empty and devastated universe merged with the Warp for the rest of the eternity, alone and mourning.
  • Alternatively, after he destroys the 40k universe, he wishes that the Warp had never existed. Cue the real world happening. Unfortunately, due to some bug in the fabric of spacetime or something, a select few were able to remember the details of the past universe, although in a deformed way.

The orks are the only sane race in the Galaxy.
In the grimdark grimdark of the future they are the only ones who seem to be having fun.

The Emperor is serving as a Wetware CPU supercomputer for the Imperium.
Turns out the Emperor is more than a corpse. He functions as the Astronomican's software (he guides it, remember) and is making calculations and decisions for the High Lords of Terra/whatever decision makers Imperium has.

Nurgle is actually a 1984-style dictator god who pretends to be nice.
Nurgle's nice and friendly demeanor is all a lie. In reality, his worshippers are controlled like puppets by him, wearing the horrible grin of the damned and their mind and soul ground to dust by the endless prodding of a master of Faux Affably Evil. He captures potential prisoners, destroys the last good things left to their lives, and dominates them through Mind Control, torture chambers, and brainwashing. Indeed, Nurgle is in fact the only Chaos God who is actively enjoying evil for the sake of it. (Khorne just wants to shed some blood, Slaanesh only cares for pleasure, and Tzeentch causes change for the sake of it...)

Nurgle is going to win and turn every single soul into broken slaves.
Second Law of Thermodynamics and sheer amount of despair will bring victory to Nurgle. There, Nurgle will eat every soul, break them into slavery, turn them into pale, shaded excrement of their former selves, and attach their decapitated and beheaded torsos (or spiritual equivalent of it) to neurons so that his realm would be powered by their sheer misery and despair. It's such a horrific fate that even Slaanesh's tortures are orgasmically pleasurable in comparison.
  • It is a fate so horrific that it tears a hole into the space, time, and even the Warp itself. Thus the world is divided by zero and ends.

Nurgle is actually a Big Good and/or a Well-Intentioned Extremist who seeks to save humanity.
A friend to all living things, Nurgle wants creatures to live happily ever after in his filthy, unclean paradise. The problem is, everyone loathes his methods of bringing happiness to the world, namely plagues, diseases, and Body Horror.

Related to the above Nurgle-the-good-guy theory, Nurgle's true form is mind-blowingly beautiful and full of light.
So beautiful, Slaanesh is nothing against him. Nurgle appears to be putrid and disgusting only because the mortals are so afraid of dying and decay. His followers, however, can see his true form.

Our future will be like Warhammer 40000
We all know that in the Middle East, there is only war, and if you try to defy it, you are going to be raped by daemons for eternity for helping others. Soon, financial crisis and environmental problems will end the human civilization and take all of us to the afterlife that is WH40k. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
  • Imperium of Man: The vast majority who lives under the boot of an inefficient bureaucracy/dictatorship
  • The Eldar: those lucky, virtuous few individuals smart enough to do some (futile) contribution to the world
  • Dark Eldar: Corrupt Corporate Executives and other wealthy but depraved assholes
  • Chaos and the Daemons: our technology turning against us
    • That's Necrons.

The Missing Primarchs did something extremely embarassing and were grounded until the Horus Heresy, and later became Chapter Masters of an Ultramarines successor chapter
The Traitor Legions are still known to exist if you have high enough clearance, but the any record on the Missing Primarchs and their legions was expunged. Whatever they did, it was worse than falling to Chaos. This Troper has his money on one of them being Rubinek of the Iron Hearts (described as a Primarch when mentioned in a short story) and discovering the existance of Necoho the Doubter and preaching his creed to the Adeptus Custodes due its resemblance with the Imperial Truth, and the other having the power of invisibility and him and his Marines being caught at peeping. In both cases the Primarchs were grounded and their records expunged for imbecility and perversion, with their numbers being absorbed by the Ultramarines (in the case of the peepers only in part, as the Space Wolves would have killed some of them in order to bring their Primarch to the Emperor. After all, in Prospero Burns Leman Russ mentioned that attacking Prospero at the start of the Heresy was not the first time the Space Wolves fought other Space Marines).Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor allowed the Grounded Primarchs out of their rooms to fight in the Siege of Terra. Their valor was such that the Emperor declared them redeemed and annulled their grounding, but before their Legions could be reintegrated the Emperor was entombed on the Golden Throne, and Roboute Gulliman gave them their Marines back in the Second Founding in the form of two (or more) Space Marines Successor Chapters.

The ballad of John Henry, of railroad spike fame becomes, a story of an ancient heretek for the Adeptus Mechanicus.

In the story John Henry beats a steam powered hammering machine, saves his friends jobs, and dies in the end of exhaustion. In the Grimdark 40K universe this retelling involves John Henry unable to put his faith in the Machine God. By his hubris in fighting the glorious holy steam machine is struck down by the Machine God. This is shown In the Machine God's anger cursed mankind into performing manual labor forever for denying the Machine God's gift in the form of the Steam machine.

Or possibly John Henry wins and is blessed/cursed and turned to the first Servitor

The Emperor and The Chaos Gods are not evil counterparts to each other.
The Chaos gods are already Evil Counterparts to each other, due to the natures of chaos— Nurgle/Tzeentch, and Khorne/Slaanesh, though none of them really get along, being, well, Chaos. The Emperor is sometimes thought to be the good counterpart to them collectively, being the Superego to the Chaos' Id, but when you think about it, the Tyrannid Hive Mind is a better candidate as his Id/Evil Counterpart. The EMPRAH is an intelligent, reasonable individual who wants humanity to grow infintely across the galaxy and eventually the universe (not necessarily opposed to Xenos so long as they stay out of humanity's way). The Hive Mind is a mindless, completely unreasonable collective (even to Chaos itself) whose instinct tells it to reproduce and eat all that lives until nothing remains but (due to the fact that the tyranids are basically one psychically-linked organism) It, in both the Materium and the Immaterium. The Emperor shines like a light in the warp (the Astronomicon) while the Hive Mind is a Shadow in the warp.

Angron's followers on his home planet had already been tainted by Khorne.
The past few HH novels are reconstructing the Emperor as not so much of a dick. Following this trend, it will be revealed that when he discovered Angron, his freed-gladiator followers had already been tainted by Chaos. It makes perfect sense, they were furious at their captors for forcing them into the Arena, they had already spilt blood. The Emperor saw this and knew they were beyond redemption, pulling Angron away from them and leaving them to die. Angron, being a stubborn bastard and a Primarch to boot, had not yet been corrupted.
  • Makes sense. The Butcher's Nails may had already been Chaos artifacts.
  • If they had not turned, they were likely to—Khornate cults often start as such warrior brotherhoods. Beyond this, though, if the Emperor could predict Angron at all(contrary to my own WMG below) he may have found himself in an impossible situation at Desh'ea. Angron's gladiator brothers fighting and dying for another's purposes would have likely struck him as little different whether it were in the arena or for his father; he would have ended up resenting the Emperor either way. Meanwhile, leaving them to their own devices after saving them not only would have put a dent in the Great Crusade by leaving the War Hounds without their Primarch, but would have almost certainly found their hunger for battle eventually turning against Imperial worlds, whether in the name of Khorne or not. Likely, taking Angron alone was the best of a set of bad options.

The Lost Primarchs were sent through Time, not Space
Given the nature of the Warp, this is definately possible. My personal Pet theory is that one of the Lost Primarchs was sent into the far flung future of the the Grimdark future and the other was sent into the Past and might in some way be responsible for the Birth of the Emperor.

Warhammer 40,000 takes place in a literal Hell.
Because honestly, what word better describes this universe. It's a hell without end. Of course, this means the God Emperor is Jesus, and the Great Crusade was the Harrowing of Hell. He died for your sins!

Eventually, the Tau are going to rule the Galaxy
As the only people in the entire Milky Way that actually are improving their tech, it stands to reason that given time, their reverse-engineering skills and technological prowess will trump of all the others. In only a short 6 thousand years they have went from "spear wielding people on planet not important enough for the Imperium to bother with" to "killing you with rail guns." The horrors of the Chaos, the determination of Man, the hunger of the Tyranids, the elegance of the Eldar, the Dakka of the Orks can deal with the Tau now, but about in a thousand years, or the next ten thousand?

The only thing I can see the preventing the Tau from doing this is how far they will take the "Greater Good," although considering how badly #@$^ed the rest of the universe is, taking it over may actually be for the best.

Look at what Malcador did, he formed the Officio Assassinorum, he created the Grey Knights, he formed the Inquisition, and he was constantly by the emperor's side, all around the time of the Horus Heresy. My theory is that the Emperor was indeed an intelligent and competent leader, but his relationship with Malcador was different than commonly believed, with the Emperor as a figurehead who spent more time in conquest and scientific projects, while Malcador was the prime minister and actual Head of Government who focused more on organizational day-to-day needs of the Imperium.
  • Alternatively, the Emperor and Malcador are equally responsible and equally clever in practical terms—Malcador is essentially the Alfred to the Emperor's Batman.

The Human Race in 40k is actually a group of Chaos daemons, while the Eldars are actually our descendants.
The Eldars are the descendants of modern human (aka the original Old Ones), revelling in their superior technology inherited from us, and made more beautiful and intelligent, and given great Psychic Powers thanks to generations of genetic engineering. Just prior to the zenith of Eldar civilization, their experiments with Hyperspace (hence the Webway), along with how their psychic lives are dominated by scientific rationality (rather than religious paranoia), created the first Chaos God of Order, the Emperor. The Eldars were so proud of belonging to the (super)human race, the Emperor and his daemons took after the (flawed) appearance of the Eldar and believed themselves to belong to the Eldar as well. Unfortunately, the Eldar's brave new world became so decadent they forgot their human origin, while the Emperor left the decaying civilization and formed his own new empire, firmly believing he and his daemons are real humans, not those crazy hedonistic humanoid aliens. Then the Emperor was weakened from a wound by a huge battle with Slaanesh, resulting in many of his Greater Daemons (the Primarchs) killed by other Chaos gods and replaced with the moles plotting to overthrow the Emperor from the inside. The actual daemonic nature of the Imperium is why the Imperium is as paranoid and Ax-Crazy as other Chaos Gods in the first place. How about the history of the Imperium? Either it is all a lie fabricated by the Emperor, or he changed the past.
  • Seeing as how the Eldar have histories dating back millions of years, the Eldar must have sent themselves back through time at some point.
  • Also, Dark Eldar used to be the 40k equivalent of the Corrupt Corporate Executive, exploiting lesser species and fellow Eldars for fun and profit. What would later become Dark Eldars enslaved so much creatures, spent so much, and were so greedy that they gave birth to Slaanesh and destroyed the civilization. Then, Dark Eldars have lived their lives of unthinkable depravity, just as much of the real life upper class do today.

Eldar and Old One time travels had messed up the galaxy and created hell of a lot things out of the blue.
In one time travel, several Eldars were lost in the distant past in a distant planet. They eventually became the ancestors of Mankind. It is why Eldar and human look so similar in spite of their distance from each other. In other planets in the past, other Eldars were infected by some fungi and became the prototype Orcs. They also gave birth to the Tau, and so much humanoid races.

Dark Eldars are a metaphor for the Real Life Corrupt Corporate Executive and evil leaders, the Fall of the Eldar how the human civilization collapses for good.
The corruption, overconsumption, and dictatorship of the upper class (represented by the decadence of the Eldar) results in environmental damage and society falling apart as unemployment rate hits 100% and everyone save for the upper class starve/are tortured to death while machines do all the work. Then, the Earth has deteriorated so much that it cannot support any life (the Fall of the Eldar). The Seers, representing scientists and anyone with wisdom, predicting such grimdark future, realized they couldn't prevent such disaster and therefore humans faced a And I Must Scream fate. They all went crazy and disappeared one day, never to be find even in the Warp.

Tzeentch is Sun Tzu.
It's obvious.
  • More like Sun Tzu is a Tzeentchian Daemon Prince.

Their was ethnic purges in Terra's past.
Simple reason why in the Grimdarkness of the far future, their are only white people: most of the others died to genocide. With the Imperium's hatred of the "scared human geno," and the current hatred of xenos, mutants, and other deviations from "pure" humanity, it isn't much of a stretch to think that that hatred evolved from hatred of ones fellow man. Some of the not white colonies were once people fleeing earth to escape the holocaust, but the records from both the colonists and the Imperium were lost in the thousands and thousands of years since what ever race wars left the vast majority of the Imperium white.

With the exception of Slaanesh, the Chaos Gods aren't inherently evil.
Think about it: Khrone is the god of bloodshed, war and rage-but also honour and bravery, and generally prefers a Worthy Opponent. Plus there's the fact that, as Atrocitus would put it, true rage comes from personal pain. Tzeentch may be the god of plotting and envy, but he's also the god of hope, knowledge, progress and ambition. The first three, and to a lesser extent ambition are valued traits. Nurgle is the god of rot, but he also loves every single living thing, albeit to a terrifying degree. Even Malal, god of self-destruction, is also the god of justice.

Why Slaanesh is the exception is due to the galaxy already being screwed up when he/she came into being, plus what led up to her/his creation. The reason why they've become the Greater-Scope Villain of the galaxy is likely due to how screwed up it already way, perverting what they may have originally been. Malal likely went insane first, and due to immorality being so virulent-the most moral person is an Anti-Villain and the God Emperor is practically a Dark Messiah.

There is a God akin to the omnipotent creator of the Abrahamic religion, and He is'''EVIL.'''
Hence why Warhammer 40,000 is so horrifying that it makes Apokolips, [[Berserk Midland]] and [[1984 Oceania]] combined look like a utopia in comparison. This god is likely the sole most evil being in existence-engineering the entire universe to be a perpetual, inescapable Fate Worse than Death. It gets worse - being a card carrying God of Evil, he felt to make it so that the concept of decency, compassion and mercy are stomped out, preventing the existence of true goodness. The fact that even the most moral faction, the Tau, are still in the Well-Intentioned Extremist camp is testament to how his creation has almost killed the concept of morality.
  • Isn't that always the way: G-d creates a paradise, but then his creatures mess it up and blame G-d for what they did.
    • No sane or loving God would let Warhammer 40K be how it is. You may be able to solve Epicurus' problem of evil in Real Life, but not in the galaxy of Imperium.

The Obliterators are an indirect consequence of one of the Emperor's Batman Gambits
The Emperor knew about the Dragon and made steps to ensure it stayed in the dorment state it's in by redirecting it's worship to him, the Adaptus Mechanicus cult unfortunently began to stray from that path which lead to the Omnissiah figure becoming more and more vague overtime resulting in a significant enough portion of this belief to be channeled "elsewhere" within the Warp to neither the Dragon nor the Emperor which resulted in the unintended consequence of creating a third party entity involved with the Mechanicus cult(s) beliefs.

This newfound entity has been around for a while and slowly grew in power as less and less belief went to the other two parties and going to it, giving it enough power to create the Obliterators, which is a response to the Adaptus Mechanicus's desires to ascend to a higher level via a perfect merge of flesh and machine. Obliterators arn't a result of some weird virus but is infact a purposeful mutation from this other "Omnissiah", which is also why they are not under the domain of the Four Chaos Gods because they've already been claimed.

The Flanderization of the Chaos gods can be simply explained by their nature and power source
Remember, the warp and the Chaos gods are the result of all the emotions and feeling of sentient life. At first, the Chaos gods were well rounded and had somewhat positive attributes (the war god didn't let his followers kill innocents since they didn't pose a threat) but as of late they became more brutal and eviler (the war god doesn't kill innocents yet because people who resist are putting up a better fight). The reason for this is simple. As the people in the setting get more depressed, more hopeless, and more insane, the warp and the Chaos Gods become more depressing, better at crushing hope, and more brutally insane, thus causing more depression, make less hope, and have more insane followers. It creates an ever deeper pit of horror and fear.

Should Horus had Won in the Horus Heresy, Humanity wouldn't have been the only race wiped out within 2 generations
All life in the galaxy would be extinct. Think about it, how else would chaos have been broken forever? (that and with the warp being what it is, there is nothing stopping a time traveling vessel from adding on a few more gereations to humanity.)
  • What about the Necrons, which aren't really "alive" in the normal sense, since most of them were resting in the 30,000 millenium, or the Tyranids, who are not from our galaxy and only the Scouting parties have arrived (and even Demon lords stay the fuck away from the hive fleets).

The Alpha Legion, much like the Sons of Malice serve Malal\Malice instead of Chaos Undivided.
The Alpha Legion's primarchs' primary reason for turning to chaos was to stop chaos. What better patron for such a group could one have than the patron (chaos) god of self destruction and the enemy of all the other chaos gods. Perhaps for bonus points they could be serving him unknowingly.

The Tyranids (or what ever is chasing them) is going to win
What the forces the Hive Mind has already delivered are only scouting parties, coming to see how good a Galaxy is for Om Nom Noming. When the actual fleet arrives, with what ever the bugs thinks are REAL troops with sufficient numbers (just dwell on that thought for a second), the Galaxy is @#$%ed royally. Nothing will be spared, only way to retreat from the horrors is to flee into the Warp, at which you should have just let yourself be eaten if you are desperate enough to do that. Through sheer numbers alone, the Imperium, the Orks, the Tau, the Eldar, even the Necrons will fall. None of them can wipe out the hive Fleets they have now. I doubt even if they worked together (and good luck with THAT) they still just will be overwhelmed.

God Emperor help anyone who still is alive when what the Tyranids are running from arrive.

Tzeentch helped with the creation of the Emperor of Mankind.
Think about it-Who is the Emperor? A Magnificent Bastard. And what did he plan to bring to Humanity? Hope and change. And who is Tzeentch? The god of scheming, Magnificent Bastardry, and also the god of hope and change. In order to exist, Tzeentch wouldn't just have to keep coming up with plans, but also ensure that hope exists. In the Grimdark future of 40K, hope by all rights should be extinct. That would weaken/destroy Tzeentch(without hope, how can one plan and scheme?), and he can't have that! Enter the God-Emperor of Mankind, the greatest Magnificent Bastard in the universe, who keeps humanity Badass and not sinking into a galaxy-wide Despair Event Singularity. Much like Tzeentch, the Emperor has thousands of gambits going on over thousands of years. Tzeentch is responsible for the creation of the God-Emperor, so that there's enough hope to remain powerful. Of course, Tzeentch can't have the EMPRAH overwhelming Chaos, so he helps keep the guy trapped on his Golden Throne-that way the Emperor is restrained, but hope isn't crushed. Just as planned.
  • On the other hand, the Emperor and Tzeentch used to be one. Or Tzeentch is the mutated Emperor himself.

The Emperor made so many mistakes with the Primarchs because they were too much like him.
The Emperor is, generally, a master of long-range planning and prediction, setting up plans that come to perfect fruition thousands of years later. So why would he make such basic mistakes to alienate half of his own sons? The answer is in the question—he created them as nearly equal to him as he could. Between their immense abilities and the social power to which he raised them, every decision they made altered fate immensely. After untold millennia of dealing with Puny Humans, the Emperor was used to "reading ahead in the script", effortlessly predicting and manipulating almost everyone he dealt with. He was unable to do this with his gene-sons, and was honestly confused in dealing with them; he fell back on high-handedness and callous practicality in many of his interactions with them, unknowingly planting the seeds for their rebellion.

The Imperial Truth was not just meant to starve Chaos
The Emperor did not plan his realm as a strictly atheist one as just an expedient means to deny worship to Chaos; it was a Motivational Lie on a a grander scale. He truly desired humanity to be proud and self-reliant, not kneeling to greater powers, following him not as an alien deity, but as its own greatest exemplar. With or without failures of prescience, this could easily explain the extreme humiliation of the Word Bearers—while he needed them to spread the Lectitio Divinitatus to some degree for his backup plan, the full extent of their efforts in this direction and the fact that they dared delay the Great Crusade for it was too much for him to bear, and he lashed out with superhuman power and the strength of an empire, but an all-too-human fury.

This is also likely part of why he held back against Horus until the death of Ollanius Persson; by the point they met in combat, only his backup plan of apotheosis could save the Imperium, and it represented the final failure of his ideals. Ollanius reminded him not only of the courage of common humanity, but of the good that faith could represent; only this brought him back from the Despair Event Horizon.

The Tyranids are running from the C'tan
  • Specifically, C'tan from another galaxy. Who's to say they only live in ours.
    • To make this worse, the 'nids may possibly be running from the Outsider, better known as the C'Tan of batshit crazy who was sealed away from the others in another galaxy because of how insane he was. Now consider what would happen if so much insanity were to enter Imperial space, and affect everything, including the Necrons. Hive Mind-controlled Tyranids would become easy pickings.

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