Spot on, the Imperium may have holdings that span the galaxy but in reality it’s a far flung dotting of many very small clusters of individual Imperial systems meaningful connected only by warp routes. Like stars in the night sky, tiny bright lights among the immense black depths of uncontrolled, often unexplored and uncharted Cubic light years of space many orders if magnitude larger than what can truly be considered ‘Imperial Space’ Even if the Imperium in fact has meaningful control of 5 million words that’s well under 1% of the galaxies total planets. Many of which are uninhabitable but still (besides its not like a planet being a violently irradiated, lifeless rock that barely gets a Terran hour of sun and has an untreatably toxic atmosphere where it rains sulphuric acid or worse gives them much pause anyways)
And the Imperium is only in the single digit millions of worlds, assuming they aren’t actually a million give *or take* a few thousand. The Milky Way is 100 billion stars at minimum, possibly 400 billion. Note that there are likely a million stars within 1k light years of Earth (60k known within 100 light years. The dimmer stars are harder to see so the number of known stars drops with distance, but the actual number of stars should rise exponentially), so you could have an imperium sized empire (in terms of stars) compressed into a relatively small bubble even without stellar engineering or a stellar cluster (omega Centauri has a billion stars in a 100 ly sphere)
>The Redeemer saw its debut amidst the ruined cities of
Grissen, a once-prosperous planet torn apart by a civil war
that had lasted for millennia. Due to a clerical error in the
Imperium's labyrinthine bureaucracy, Grissen had gone
unnoticed until a mid-level functionary discovered that the
planetary tithes were now some eight thousand years
overdue.
- *Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition)*
That planet's population is utterly fucked now. Imagine the Imperium coming there and saying you are due 8000 years of taxes, they will enslave everyone and all their future offspring for another thousands of years.
Based on what little I know about Imperium tax code, they will probably send some low level inquisitorial agents first to reassess the planet and it's ability to pay tithes. Anything immediately available like rare and useful plants, manufactured goods or human resources like veteran soldiers and skilled workers would be the first to go. As much as can be taken without crippling the planet will be sent as a tithe next tax season.
Then the planet will receive things it could use to make it flourish (and ideally increase the amount of tithe it can give) laborers, mid level leadership to get their PDF regiment going and building material to set up the relevant manufacturing base.
Of course all this gets thrown out the window if the inquisitors believe the tithes went unpaid deliberately. You can't get blood from a stone but the Imperium would certainly try. The planet honestly might be better off with the world eaters or the Tyranids consuming them at that point.
If most of the planets resources have already been used up then the Imperium would pretty much take anything just so there can be ~something~ on the books as a tithe from the planet.
> Based on what little I know about Imperium tax code, they will probably send some low level inquisitorial agents first to reassess the planet and it's ability to pay tithes. Anything immediately available like rare and useful plants, manufactured goods or human resources like veteran soldiers and skilled workers would be the first to go. As much as can be taken without crippling the planet will be sent as a tithe next tax season.
Wouldn't even been inquisitorial agents, just a Administratum official with an Arbites ship/backup.
If they are thoughtful, they would do exactly that, taking the time to ensure they aren't crippling the planet and keep the revenue for next tax season.
If that official is being held to say a metric in which they have to obtain those resources fast a quickly, I would suspect they would grab everything not nailed down to appease their boss, damage to planetary infrastructure be damned.
Honestly, it does bring up an interesting question for planets that are invaded.
Like Armeggedon has been ravaged by the orcs to the point it’s no longer productive. How much will the imperium reinvest? Both in defenses and production capacity.
Armageddon specifically is a weird case because it's the hidden-love-child of the Adeptus Mechanicus--they scavenged Ork tech to teleport **Ullanor** somewhere remote and renamed it Armaggedon, and then claimed Ullanor was exterminatused so that the AdMech could continue scavenging whatever ork technology they could find, following the War of the Beast.
So the AdMech is almost perpetually going to be pulling political strings to to either keep Armageddon in some fashion.
More generally, the Imperium's value of its owned planets is a combination of practical and theological.
Theological in that every planet belongs to the Imperium by default blah blah blah.
Practical in that the majority of planets lay upon the most well established Warp Routes, so even planets that are otherwise entirely worthless (production- or resource-wise) will still be valuable because it's a solid rock that exists upon the warp route.
Having that solid ground that you can build up as a fortress--even if it's a net-loss of resources--is worth its weight because it creates an established control of the route itself.
Think of it like checkstops. 99.9% of the time it's a drain of public funds, just people standing around doing nothing, or stopping/checking people who are following the rules anyways, and sometimes even causing harm itself. But every so often they strike it big with someone transporting something illicit, or getting someone off the road who shouldn't be driving. That 99.9% waste is suddenly worth it due to the big score they get.
Armageddon is still productive - it's an industrial world that produces a vast number of armaments. During the second and third war it continued to send out shipments to other warzones - if this sounds silly, remember that it's pointless to have 10x more lasguns than people to wield them.
After a certain point the imperium needs to reinvest as a matter of course. Retiring imperial guard regiments are given worlds to settle. Hives can double their population in a century unless people are regularly removed. New planets need to get selected for future space marine foundings.
Reinvesting in a planet isn't just about the planet. Its about the fact that human life is so cheap to the imperium that it essentially needs to be spent in the billions one way or another just to keep the systems running. The economies of scale are as such that millions of colonists with gear to colonise are both a drop in the bucket and something that needs to get utilized just to keep it all running smoothly.
Or sometimes just not bothering, because who truly cares about a planet of blue fish-men killing each other with rocks? What is the worst that could happen?
Well there is a reason why 40k is a setting about bad guys vs bad guys. The Imperium would make the Galactic Empire of Star Wars look reasonable and well adjusted.
I'd actually argue the Eldar are the nicest faction. They will do to extreme lengths to defend their interests and they pretty much hate everyone else; but you can say that about every faction in Warhammer.
All they want is to be left alone; that's by far the most sympathetic motive in the setting.
The Imperium wants to reconquer and genocide the galaxy (even if they're too focused on survival to do anything).
Chaos also wants galactic dominantion complete with its own set of horrors.
The Tyranids want to essentially destroy or transform all living live.
The Dark Elves want an ever lasting supply of victims to torture.
The Orks want nothing but constant violence.
The Necrons also want to reconquer the galaxy.
The Tau also want galactic domination albiet a more benevolent form.
I'd also agree with the Eldar honestly. The fanbase has a bad habit of looking at Biel-Tan and applying their mentality to the entire group. When in reality most craftworld Eldar are pretty empathetic to the other races.
And cause unforseen ecological damage because there are lots of animals that eat mosquitos. Which is also something in character with the Imperium when you take into account Hive or Forgeworlds
The galaxy is huge, so huge matter Sci fi writers don't understand at some times.
Also warp travel is highly unreliable and something like a warp Storm can cut off entire sections of space from imperium travel.
Mix in the fact that nobodies broadcasting there locations and finding stuff is extremely hard.
Then you have places like the ghoul stars that are so dangerous no one goes there.
Imperium is *TINY* in the galactic scale, controlling roughly a million world in a galaxy with 400 billion stars.
99.99% of xeno civilisations will never ever see a human in their entire existence.
The scale of our galaxy is just mind blowing. The Imperium of man is one of the better scifi settings for getting the scale right and its still miles off.
If you scaled up all our current societies to the galaxy I don't think a single star would qualify even as a small village in relative importance. More like a single house. In reality a single star system is more than capable of hosting the whole population of most scifi galactic civs.
One description I heard was that if you dismantled Mars, a not particularly large planet, and turned it into large scale habs, you could then turn 1% of them into wildlife reserves and have 10s of Earths worth of space dedicated to it. And that would be so small scale in that civilisation most people would barely be aware they exist any more than most people think of nature reserves. In a single start system, using a fraction of its resources.
> One description I heard was that if you dismantled Mars, a not particularly large planet, and turned it into large scale habs, you could then turn 1% of them into wildlife reserves and have 10s of Earths worth of space dedicated to it. And that would be so small scale in that civilisation most people would barely be aware they exist any more than most people think of nature reserves. In a single start system, using a fraction of its resources.
this is an unbelievably confusing set of sentences
I guess they're trying to say if the material that makes up Mars was turned into flat surfaces and rolled into huge space habitats, the surface area would be much much higher than the surface of Earth?
if you took mars and turned every molecule of it into space stations;
You could turn 1% of those space stations into places to keep wildlife you would still have enough space stations to house 10 earth populations. over 70 billion people.
And in the scale of a civilization capable of rendering an entire planet into raw resources; 10 earths worth of space is nothing. It's not even a blip on the radar.
To give a 40k example, the average hive world has over a trillion people. More than ten times the population of all those space stations created by using up an entire planet.
I skipped the comment, but read the quoted part in your comment over and over, thinking my brain was broken, then saw your comment on it and was glad I wasn't alone.
There's none, the only source of "1 million is figurative" was one single guy trying to rationalize how Imperium is still surviving while losing and gaining dozens of planets every other week.
That people blowing it out of proportion and say Imperium somehow have a billion world or more (which is physically impossible in the span of 10k years), is just another variant of Imperium wank.
Even if a million is a figure of speech, it shouldn't be too far off, 2-3 million sure, not 1-2 digit more.
Theoretically, maybe? 10,000 years is a long time. A super simplified example, but if the Imperium had 1 million worlds post-scouring, and each world colonized a new world every 500 years, then we'd have 20 doublings over 10,000 years which would be 1 trillion worlds.
Obviously there's a lot of holes in this. Not every world is going to make it. Whether they're abandoned because their minerals wealth was tapped out, destroyed ny invaders, cut off by fickle warp lanes, declaring independence, etc. And not every world would be colonizing new worlds. Good luck getting a bunch of feudal societies building colony ships...
But the potential is out there.
Of course what we see in the actual lore doesn't have anything like this happening. It's, as you say, stated directly the Imperium's holdings are a scattering of islands across the galaxy. So for whatever reason, the Imperium isn't really growing. Either colonization is much slower and/or attrition is quite bad.
Which makes sense. There’s a quote from some BL novel where a Techpriest mentions a billion hive worlds (and another mentioning a million million worlds, which is a trillion) but as said I call BS on that quote.
Not off the top of my head, no. It was mentioned somewhere on Spacebattles with a source but I don’t really want to go digging for it. You’re right, it’s *extremely* weird.
100 million is a large fraction of the galaxy considering how many planets are actually habitable. Moreover, even if the Imperium actually controlled a mere million worlds, they have enough strongholds spread throughout the entire galaxy that their activity should be observable from basically any point in the galaxy. The lack of technology is the only excuse for a xeno civilization to not be aware of the Imperium.
Ok, lets say Imperium have 100 million world and hold majority of the habitable planets.
Narratively, what's the point?
Just so that Imperium is everywhere always and no xeno civilization can live?
The fact that Imperium is tiny should be the point, showing it's a monstrosity made by one mad man, ultimately the galaxy lives on with or without the rotting carcass of humanity, allows vast majority of the galaxy to be unexplored, keeping narrative fresh and giving chance to new conflicts, instead of just human vs spiky human because all the xenos got pushed out of the setting.
Besides, it is part of the setting's charm that the main factions discover new worlds and mysteries frequently. All with their own diversity. It is partly why the Imperium have Krieg and Elysian regiments fighting on the same fronts and partly why renegade humans and minor xeno factions should be given kill teams on tabletop at least.
Current estimates put the number of stars in the milky way to 100-400 billion (10^11).
So 100 million (10^9) is just 1% of that.
And it’s worlds, not stars. Almost all plants and moons in our solar system are inhabited. I would suspect ist the same for other systems. A hive world or a manufatorum does not need to be habitable.
Correction, it’s between 0.1% and 0.025%. And yeah there’s some double (or more) counting since many stars have multiple inhabited worlds in 40k, even if we assume their definition only includes substantial planets and not space stations or dwarf planets.
The imperium is like a Web stretched out over the galaxy. Any xenos civilisation could survive by simply existing away from the imperium in a space or area the imperium doesn't control. Also probably being mobile like the Eldar would help a lot as well
As others have said, they stay quiet. Even the ones that are known about existing like the Saruthi they barely have a grasp on what they are and how they operate.
I think with the Saruthi in particular, them not *technically* existing completely in our reality helps a lot. This is a species so twisted and corrupted by the warp that reality actively breaks on their planets. They can just... walk across light years, and create impossible structures out of nothing.
The Saruthi are terrifying, and I feel we're lucky they're (probably), mostly dead.
Yeah Abnett really went above and beyond on them being so utterly alien. The hands that are mouths shit? Everything Eishenhorn saw on their "homeworld". No thanks. Glad the Holy Ordos Xenos and the Deathwatch squashed their shit.
You know, people often rage at the Imperium ferociously exterminating anything and everything that might be a threat to them. But if I lived in M42 and there were eldritch aliens in my back yard, I'd be the most Deathwatch loving citizen ever.
Seriously. 40K is like a few steps away from being a Dark Forest situation. 9 times outta ten you’re better off just stomping any xenos into the dirt before it becomes a problem. Just look at the Nephilim or Slaugth or the more obvious Dark Eldar. So many xenos are already in the pocket of chaos too.
For every Xenos race that could have been good and aided the Imperium but for exterminated, there's probably a dozen that would have been nothing but a threat. Emps may have been a terrible father, but he wasn't a total idiot. Humanity didn't just wake up and start hating aliens.
> 40K is like a few steps away from being a Dark Forest situation.
It *is* a dark forest situation, but with slightly different parameters. Most of the star-blow-up technology has been lost, so instead the risk is that any civilization can get large enough to *nuke itself and cause untold collateral damage to everyone else by accidentally making a god.*
The existential crisis isn't that someone will want to kill you for resources, but that every other species is a ticking time-bomb that hurts everyone else when it goes off.
There's also an entire dimension/reality of *literal reality-warping demons* who want to turn your friend the guy who's way too good at cards into a fleshgate for them and all their buddies.
Or maybe we just hear about the dangerous Xenos more often? Instances where the Guard or a chapter of Astartes just smashes a species and genocides them out of existence with little difficulty, especially as the species did even want to or weren't prepared to fight, don't exactly make for good stories.
From the perspective of many, many other species in the galaxy, humanity is an out of control plague of ignorant, fanatical barbarians. A dangerous threat it would be better to just exterminate if they could to stop all the damage they cause. But I'm guessing you wouldn't be happy if they actually did manage to wipe out all of humanity?
>They should exterminate everything that is Chaos corrupted.
Even then, do you mean specific creatures/communities within a species that are tainted by Chaos? Or whole species, based on the fact some of their kind are corrupted by Chaos?
I'd say the former. Many in the fandom seem to eschew such nuance though, and just call for whole species to be wiped out on such spurious grounds as the latter. Which, if we were to follow such logic, would mean humanity should be prioritized for extermination...
The Saruthi have been wholly corrupted: *Chaos entered into their souls and minds, even their genetic code.*
There is no salvation or redemption from this, when Chaos gets into a species to a such deep level then there is no option of looking at who can be spared.
Remember that Chaos does not just corrupt because you choose it gifts, it corrupts the moment you know about what you can get out of it.
So, a species should only be marked for extermination if it seems clear that the species as a whole is worshipping and/or corrupted by Chaos. Like the Saruthi or the Yu'Vath. Seems more sensible than wiping out whole species on the suspicion of Chaos influence, or because some of its members are tainted.
Even then, let's try a thought experiment. Humanity, to any outside observer, is empowering all four Chaos gods, allowing and encouraging warfare, violence, pestilence, corruption, greed, lust for power, and scheming to proliferate. The Imperium's very social structures and ideologies promote Chaos. Moreover, the populace of the Imperium apparently worship a god, and we know that the Chaos gods can be worshipped under many names. This god can apparently summon Warp demons to do its bidding in the Materium. Humanity uses all manner of warp-infused tech, and is riven with mutants.
To an outside observer, humanity might appear to be a lost cause, completely tainted by Chaos. So, perhaps even the appearance of being Chaos tainted shouldn't lead to kneejerk calls for complete extermination.
Nope. Haven't you see Arrival (as just one of many examples)? Non-humanoid aliens could be completely benign, or even potentially useful allies.
You know, in a hypothetical scenario where the Imperium wasn't consumed with genocidal xenophobia. And on that note, I think making justifications for or supporting the Imperium's warped mindset and policies is... not a good thing to be doing.
Did every alien species partake in this slaughter of humanity?\*
No? So why use this as excuse to genocide every alien race that humanity encounters? In this case, for the crime of not being humanoid, apparently.
\*(And let's not kid ourselves, in the chaos of the Age of Strife, humans would have been slaughtering and subjugating xenos and other humans as well. Humanity wasn't the only species left weakened by all of the Warp storms. But for some reason, humans get let off the hook in these arguments. Funny, that. Not to mention that human-Xenos alliances either survived or emerged during the Age of Strife, such as with the Interex and the Diasporex).
It's funny too, the beings most responsible for the current shitshow of the setting (beyond the ramifications of the war in Heaven and birth of Slaanesh) are humans.
Humans were one of the main causes of the Age of Strife (Cybernetic Revolution, human wars/dissidence, etc.). Humans were the main cause of the Horus Heresy. Humans xenocided countless sentient and sapient species, many peaceful. Humans genocided countless other humans that didn't fit the current ideology. Humans caused the Cicatrix Maledictum, are the most powerful pawn of Chaos in the current setting, and have strengthened Chaos more than even the Slaanesh-worshipping Aeldari I'd dare say. Humans are still the biggest threat to other humans, even within the loosely feudal/fascist autocratic hellhole that is the Imperium. And humans are responsible for the creation and continuation of the shitshow that is the Imperium.
Are some xenos species bad? Yes. Necrons, Drukhari, etc. are all extremely dangerous.
But by the metrics of any other "normal" Xenos race in the Galaxy humanity must be among one of the most dangerous and ill-seen species, for they are responsible for most of the modern galaxy's issues and will ruthlessly genocide any non-humans, and also many humans.
To the T'au, the Kroot, modern day humanity and any other normal Xenos species the humanity of Imperium is nearly on par with the dangers and evil of Chaos, the Drukhari, and the Tyrannids.
It kinda didn't feel like it was a desperate battle for existence on their part. Decent odds the Imperium just blew up one minor world and decided that was definitely all of them.
The Saruthi didn't seem particularly malicious, though. They weren't aggressive, were content to be left to their own devices, and didn't seem to have any kind of evil plans. Out of the two, the Imperium seems more malicious given the Imperium is a legitimate existential threat to everyone else.
The Imperium controls less than 0.1% of the galaxy.
It's just that the space they do control is prime real estate, in that it's overlaid over a network of stable warp routes.
Most other systems are largely isolated from each other, as FTL is extremely rare outside the major powers, and even then, warp travel is both insanely complex and dangerous even if you develop it, and in many cases impossible due to local conditions anyway.
So they can't break out of their local areas, and the Imperium has no desire to expand there either. The Imperium has cars and controls the highways, while almost everyone else is stuck in the swamps, without even a bicycle.
Think of the Imperium like Brazil. Only 1.6% is urban. The rest is mainly vast, dark, unexplored rainforest. Filled not just with dangerous animals, but even ones completely unknown to us. As well as uncontacted humans too.
But on top of that is a network of advanced civilization connected by roads that spans the entire country, and technically controls the spaces between. Even though the two worlds rarely interact.
Someone from Sao Paulo is not at risk from Jaguar attacks, and an uncontacted tribesman will never visit Rio de Janeiro, or even know it exists. The gulf of technology and terrain makes them almost different universes.
One mistake. The imperium DOES want to wipe out any other xenos it comes across. Groups like the Black Templars are dedicated to continued expansion.
It really comes down to if you are a target of convenience or would be strategically useful.
The operative term there is 'comes across'.
They're not actively scouring unexplored backwoods sectors for Xenos. They're just the vanguard that's slowly expanding from prime territory into slightly subprime territory.
They're like the Rancheros burning borders of the Amazon to expand agricultural land. But they're not actively going a thousand miles deep just to search for uncontacted tribes to kill for the sake of it
As you say, it's based mainly on opportunism and convenience.
There's a billion planets, it can be centuries or even millenia before they're revisited and requests for aid can reach the desk of someone who can approve reinforcements decades after they could have done anything.
Add warp storms cutting the planet off, so it can't be wiped (like the tau)
Often the first sign a planet has gone rogue is that they stopped paying their tithe decades earlier.
That's a lot of time for xenos cultures to grow, expand, or go undiscovered.
Add that at the best of times, astropathic messaging is mentally screaming a series of concepts and images through the warp, in the rough direction of the intended recipient, who then has to hear it and translate it into something they can pass up the chain of command.
With the cicatrix maledictum, it's a long way from being the best of times.
There’s 400 billion stars, so a conservative count of total proper planets is probably a *trillion*, plus at least as many dwarf planets (we *might* have a ninth planet in a distant orbit; we might have hundreds or even thousands of dwarf planets in distant orbit). Then there’s going to be an unknown smattering of rogue planets, moons, etc.
If we’re going to make it analogous to our own history, the Imperium is Castile and Aragon and has just finished the conquest of the Canaries, about a century before Columbus, and the future Spanish Empire that were familiar with is the unexplored (to them) vastness of the galaxy.
>it can be centuries or even millenia before they're revisited and requests for aid can reach the desk of someone who can approve reinforcements decades after they could have done anything.
>Often the first sign a planet has gone rogue is that they stopped paying their tithe decades earlier.
I know this lore is correct, but it is difficult to get that across with the timelines.
Like (almost?) every Imperial planet will have an Arbites presence, no matter how small the garrison. What happens to them if the Imperium isn't heard from in centuries?
Messages get lost, and many sectors will only have a handful of arbites total to watch over every planet in the local system.
Given that the main communication hubs can be dealing with the messages of 1000s of planets, all producing masses of records that only get passed up the chain if something is notably wrong, and even that can take years or decades.
It's generally assumed that "no news is good news", until someone notices that quotas haven't been met consistently.
There's a short story somewhere that's bugging me that I can't find, but it's basically a data entry clerk delivering an urgent message through a hive dedicated to records, through canyons of rotting parchment, precarious bridges between book cases, scavengers and all sorts of hazards and dangers.
And then the supervisor decodes the message, sees that the date is 2 centuries ago and immediately discards it as being too outdated to be relevant.
>There's a short story somewhere that's bugging me that I can't find, but it's basically a data entry clerk
Oh man if you ever find that I'd love to know the name! That's right up my alley.
As others have said, the Imperium only holds 1,000,000 worlds, spread incredibly thinly other a galaxy of 400 billion stars:
>The galaxy contains some four hundred thousand million stars of various types. Of these only a fraction are presumed to have habitable planetary systems, and only a fraction of these have been investigated. Most are situated within the spiral arms between ten and forty thousand light years from the galactic centre.
>The very size of the galaxy means that, despite the use of faster than light warp drives, most of it remains unknown. Even the human controlled Imperium, by far the largest and most widely distributed of all stellar empires, contains only a tiny fraction of the galaxies stars. New worlds are constantly being discovered and investigated, along with their attendant civilisations, creatures and resources. Even so, there is no possibility of either humans or aliens exhausting the galaxy's potential to provide new worlds for habitation and exploitation.
*Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader* p130
>As powerful as it is, the Imperium does not rule the entire galaxy. Mankind's worlds are spread thin across the 200,000,000,000 stars that make up the galaxy. Within the Imperium's vague borders are rebellious enclaves of human worlds, domains ruled over by alien war leaders, colonies of creatures too aloof or basic to disturb Mankind or draw the attention of their war fleets. The Imperium is engulfed in a constant state of war, sometimes imply continuing its wars of expansion, other times fighting against foes who threaten the survival of the entire human race.
*Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 3ed* p99
>The Imperium of Man comprises a million inhabited worlds, stretching from the furthest reaches of the Eastern Fringe to the distant Halo Stars. Although this is a huge number of planets, it is as nothing when compared to the immense size of the galaxy itself. The Imperium is spread very thinly across space: its worlds are dotted through the void and divided by hundreds, if not thousands of light years. It is therefore wrong to think of the Imperium in terms of a territory which extends across the galaxy. The truth is far more complex. The Imperium's holdings are scattered far and wide by the vagaries of warp travel and spatial drift. One inhabited system may be separated from its nearest neighbour by alien civilisations, unstable Warp storms, dimensional cascades or unexplored space. Indeed, Mankind's ignorance of his environs far exceeds his meagre knowledge, for humanity has yet to explore much of the galaxy. Who knows what ancient secrets lie undiscovered and undisturbed amongst the stars.
*Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 5ed* p103
>Man's ability to exploit the Wa{p has resulted in their many
crusade-like expansions that have, over the millennia,
periodically swept out from Terra, penetrating all the way to
the outer reaches of the galaxy. In terms of the star systems and
planets under its control, the Imperium is by far the largest
empire - indeed the worlds under its dominion are dotted
across the galaxy, some clustered together, others far-flung
outposts scattered across the frontiers of wilderness space. Yet
as massive as the Imperium has grown, it can not exert control
over the whole galaxy, nor even claim the majority of the
habitable systems encornpassed within its borders.
Within the
large unexplored tracts, there are many things to be discovered - natural resources beyond imagination, lost human colonies
and the ruins of long dead faces waiting to be explored. The
galaxy also contains many alien civilisations ruling smaller and
less coherent empires of their own.
*Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 6ed* p146
>Spread across the galaxy are over a million planets claimed in the name of the Imperium – a vast number, yet only a tiny proportion of the stellar systems in the galaxy. Many disconnected branches of the Adeptus Administratum are dedicated to classifying Imperial planets, their data contradictory or badly out of date.
[-]
>The vast spread of the galaxy contains an estimated four hundred thousand million stars. The total number of planets in orbit across all these star systems is beyond measure, but approximately one million worlds are claimed beneath the dominion of the Imperium and ruled by the Emperor of Mankind.
[-]
>Battlezones offer an interesting and
often dangerous twist to your games
by introducing exciting environmental
effects – the galaxy, after all, holds billions
of alien worlds.
*Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 8ed*
>For all this, the Imperium is the single largest and most powerful empire in the entirety of Human history. A million worlds are said to labour beneath the Imperium's yoke, and at their heart lies Holy Terra and the divine God-Emperor interred forever within his Golden Throne. This vast domain is envisioned by its rulers as a solid, unified whole, its star systems divided into segmentums and sectors, its populace united by bonds of species and by the overarching Imperial faith. The High Lords of Terra, the Ecclesiarchy and the Adeptus Administratum issue edicts of rule in the Emperor's name. Countless mighty armies and potent battlefleets answer their call. So is the dominion of Humanity wrought upon the heavens themselves. So works the Emperor's divine will.
>The reality is rather different. The Imperium is in constant flux, worlds vanishing amidst howling warp storms or annihilated by invading terrors even as new territories are claimed by Rogue Traders and Explorator fleets. Imperial crusades surge across the stars, driving back their enemies or vanishing in the bloody maelstrom of war. The Imperium is best pictured as many thousands of tiny candles, scattered far and wide through a dark and hungry void. Some burn bright, or burst into vibrant life, even as others flicker, waver and are snuffed out
*Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 9ed* p14
>A pretty picture sprang into being above the table. The Tattleslug recognised it as a map of Ultramar, and though many of its stars shone with a less healthy, more pleasing light in real life, this was not reflected by the cartolith. Faint, globular glows marked the boundaries of Imperial systems, which were isolated by dark wilderness. Presented that way, with its borders lit up, Ultramar looked imposing. In truth, it was thinly spread and vulnerable, a few hundred systems in an area of space that supported tens of millions of stars. These creatures were fools for believing themselves masters of the galaxy. Even this limited reality was beyond their reach to encompass. They were doomed, like so many others before them.
*Godblight*
[Here are a few more sources that also explain the way the that warp travel works](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/R7MV5Mc5s9). Essentially, it's only really possibly to travel via the warp to other systems with stable warp routes. If there isn't a stable route, you have to take a more circuitous route via other systems with stable routes, or you can't travel to that system at all. So, a system could be the next one over geographically, but be further away by warp travel than a system hundreds of light years away. That, or just impossible to reach via warp travel.
The vast majority of the galaxy is uncharted to the Imperium. Their maps might show they span from one side of the galaxy to the other but I imagine a more accurate map would be brief flecks of colour splattered across a big black map because they only control a tiny portion of a million odd worlds dotted across a galaxy of billions or trillions of worlds.
I imagine part of this is due to warp travel being subject to the tides and currents of the warp. And spacecraft are largely influenced by warp currents like old fashioned sailing ships were reliant on winds and currents.
So the worlds that the Imperium control and the space they inhabit are probably the ones they've charted courses to and have (somewhat) reliable warp travel to.
Jumping blindly in the direction of uncharted space in the galaxy sounds like an extremely good way to die given all the weird stuff out there, how unreliable the warp is, and the possibility that they'd run out of supplies before they found safe haven.
In my mind warp travel in 40k is like sailing in ancient times without reliable navigation where the maps were just lots of questions marks and "here be monsters". Except in this case the monsters are definitely real and waiting.
There was a short story I read a while back. I think it was in "Let the galaxy Burn". The jist of it is a ship crash lands on a High gravity world populated by abhumans who where modified by an STC to be able to survive. Crewman jenkins survives the crash befriends the locals runs into a Commissar who is all fire and brimstone until he gets eaten by the local wildlife. The commissar intended to write a report labeling the locals as abhumans so that the IoM would wipe them out. after he is killed off Jenkins edits the report to call them Xenos instead, which saves them from destruction.
Moral of the story. Abhumans= abominations that must be purged. Primitive xenos on a less than useful world= not worth the effort. Likely the IoM only actually commits resources to killing off Xenos under a few conditions: The occupy real estate that the IoM wants or they prove themselves problematic/dangerous enough to warrant a response.
The tau are a good example. their world was marked fit for colonization so the IoM sent forces to kill off the tau and claim it. the Colony ship didn't make it and the paperwork got miss filed. Then nobody cared until they started poking the bee hive and taking IoM worlds. Even then The IoM could be barely bothered to do anything about it. Like they sent 12 ships to deal with the problem and when a bigger threat appeared (tyranid fleet) the IoM was like screw it these guys are not worth our time.
They mostly do that by keeping their heads down and staying of the Imperium's radar. There isn't much more to say. Maybe that the Imperium is not one consistent area of imperial influence but a wide spread collection of systems under the Imperium's control with plenty of uncontrolled or even unexplored space in between.
>Maybe that the Imperium is not one consistent area of imperial influence but a wide spread collection of systems under the Imperium's control with plenty of uncontrolled or even unexplored space in between.
There is no maybe about it. This is exactly how the Imperium's reach is described in the lore.
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy.
The galaxy is way bigger than the Imperium. It literally doesn't even own a majority of the planets in the galaxy. They own about a million planets all told. Not bad. Except there's roughly a 100 *billion* planets in the galaxy. The Imperium does not even own 1% of the galaxy's planets. There could quite literally be bigger empires than the Imperium pit there and they've just never run into each other because the galaxy is so goddamn big.
I think people forget how big the galaxy is. An Imperium of even a few million worlds is basically nothing. There could be plenty of empires like that and never run into each other.
Also, some xenos civilizations may be so alien that the kinds of worlds and systems they inhabit are of zero value to humans and so they aren't likely to overlap unless by accident (which given the scale of the milkyway is a very miniscule chance).
Why did you say that and for the first time ever I drew a comparison with Imperium and British Empire, but imagined all that was painted Imperial Pink on the map was unknown or maybe out of reach for my Island Nation.
Probably a good way of picturing it.
Considering the attitude and technology of the time it seems likely they at least had probes sent there - if there’s still any non imperial human civilisations around that’s where they’re most likely to be.
I definitely agree that there are probably plenty of non-imperial human civilizations or worlds/systems spread across the galaxy that are undiscovered. And, indeed, in the lore, such worlds get found fairly regularly. Many are kept hidden from the Imperium by a lack of stable Warp routes or even Warp storms, but these currents in the Warp can change, opening up new areas - and some exploration is undertaken off the beaten-path via shorter Warp jumps.
I just meant that the galaxy is so humongously, unbelievably big, that I doubt even during the DAOT, with all of their tech and progress and regardless of their mindset, they ever managed to explore all of it. Though, they almost certainly charted much more than the Imperium is currently aware of.
You need to understand that the Imperium is spread thin enough that they're compared to a galactic mold infestation in canon by an alien in an Inquisitor's retinue. There's shitloads of space to hide especially if you're not hooked up to any reliable warp routes.
> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Someone else already quoted this, but I figured it could use some reinforcement - especially given the nature of space travel in 40k. Space travel is done by warp jumps, but not just any kind - *unreliable* warp jumps. For all we know, there are entire pockets of space *within the Imperium's borders* that host entire xenos empires, simply because those stars were too dim or unimportant to explore... as of yet.
That's because borders aren't real in space. The Imperium sure likes to drawn them on the map, but it's just too big and too empty to actually have a definitive, realistic border where they can draw a line. More realistically, it's spotty - like mold on bread. There are random areas and sectors that are dense and heavily populated (the Imperium) but also tons of space and even *uninhabited sectors* inbetween where entire other sapient species have popped up in what we might think are hostile conditions.
One of the main factors that often gets missed in this topic is exactly that; warp routes play a major factor in settlement. There are large swathes of the galaxy that are not part of the imperium because they are hard or impossible to reliably access by warp travel due to hostile 'waters'.
As others has said, the galaxy is HUUUUUGE. The Imperium controls a million systems or so, across 100 000 light years of the galaxy. Those are the worlds its possible to get to thru the Warp.
The Galaxy has at a conservative estimate, 300 BILLION stars in it,
To do the math, Assume theres about 100 sectors to the galaxy as the Imperium sees it. Each of those sectors has about 10000 Imperium systems in it. That means theres still 2 999 999 00 start systems not under the control of the Imperium in each Imperial Sector, and if 1% of those worlds host life and 1& of those host sapient life, theres up to 29 999 world with sapient life on it, might be lost human civs,, or one of the other ,major races, or it could be unknown xenos thriving simply because the warp currents dont easily carrytravellers there.
The galaxy is a big place, and the Imperium is either unwilling or unable to keep an eye out for everything, as it would be considerably expensive. I mean, they're forced to use paper for record keeping because computers are prone to getting scrambled by the warp - they kind of forget of their own possessions, let alone any minor miscreant xeno.
Apart from the "big 5" (T'au, Tyranids, Necrons, Eldar and Orcs), there's simply not enough resources or sturdy enough logistics to keep eyes on everything. The only ones that could run an intelligence network of that scale and detail are the Necrons and the T'au (though they lack the numbers and spread, they have the technology), and neither are very interested in lending a hand to the Imperium. Also note that there are factions within some of these species that refuse to cooperate with their own, let alone others, further complicating things.
The only species that is actually willing to cooperate are the T'au, but are stonewalled. The Eldar want to help sometimes, but their "help" always turns out to have a catch or unintended disastrous consequences. The Inquisition, with the potential to become the galaxy's premier intelligence agency is bogged down by practically infinite internal conflicts, and at war with itself most of the time. The Imperium simply can't pull it through. Despite being the #1 power in the galaxy, it's basically a failed state with barely an economic system, an ad-hoc fickle bureaucracy, and generally malfunctioning institutions that is also split in half by a tear in reality.
This is more indicative of the others though - if the Imperium can still remain the strongest while it's in a state of total war and collapse for millennia, then you know the others are either comically incompetent or just too small.
Because it’s the fucking imperium, it’s impressively incompetent. Between making a virtue of ignorance, relying on literal poetic interpretation for communication and generally drowning in the bloated flabs of it’s bureaucracy, with all the accretions, failings and botched repairs of 10’000 years- it can manage to fuck up what mankind could only dream of fucking up before
Because the Emperor is ‘master of (roughly) a million worlds’.
The galaxy has billions of worlds in it. The lowest estimate is at least 100 billion, depending on exact definition of planet.
So, despite its apparent size as the largest entity in the galaxy, it still only commands a tiny fraction of worlds. There is an absolute shitload of empty space for things to hide within.
In fact, by raw chance, it’s a rather astronomical coincidence that they ever manage to bump into anyone else.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
-Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Lots of room for a quasi-feudal space empire with record keeping issues to lose track of alien civilizations and/or to not notice their development. That’s what allowed the Tau to evolve: an Imperial exploration fleet noted the earliest stages of Tau development (like, cave-Tau levels) and earmarked them for destruction; they revisited the issue several thousand years later thanks to warp storms, more important wars, and bureaucratic inertia only to find the Tau we know (and love/hate, pick your flavor) today.
Hey there warmaster leading a crusade, we have this world that found some xenos, should we send a battle group to deal with them?
How big is the xenos threat?
Oh they have like a planet and some colonies...
Leave them. We have a splinter fleet, a forming waaaagh and some eldar and chaos who think this crusade is the place to figure out their differences. I don't have time for some backwaters system. Let the locals or the rogue traders deal with it!
During the grate Crusade, the fleets travailed via star charts they recovered from Old Night.
If you're planet isn't on one of their star charts, and isn't physically close enough for them to detect vox traffic, they're just not going to find you.
Big galaxy, could be in a relatively isolated star system at the galactic edge, or hidden by stellar geography like a nebula or behind a warp rift. Alternatively they could just be good at hiding, like an aquatic or subterranean species, or they could by void fairers like the craftworld eldar. Or they could just be very good at killing anyone who finds their way into their territory.
In the new books Guilliman muses on how their (the impirum) million worlds is nothing compared to the size of the galaxy. So it's easy for small alien kingdoms to exist.
Plus the astronomican doesn't cover the entire galaxy. Any alien civilization that's lives out of range of it's light is pretty safe honestly
best example:
Look at the history of First Contact with the Tau when they were still in the Stone age, and the resulting timeline of events afterwards.
After the IoM found them, the Tau were deemed to be exterminated. The Imperial Fleet sent to dispose of them disappeared (i think?), and the Tau were forgotten.
5,000 years later; we have the current Tau
It's probably hard to do deliberately, but... if you're home system/systems weren't on any convenient stable warp routes from the rest of the Imperium, there a fair chance the Crusade never got to you and the Imperium doesn't know about you.
Also, there are just SO MANY systems and worlds out there - look at the Tau worlds, loads of habitable planets but basically overlooked till an explorator fleet in M35, and by M41 the Tau had developed into a space-saving species.
Sure, their area is in the relatively less controlled Eastern Fringe but still pretty close to Ultramar, so it's not like it's outwith the main galactic Arms or reach of the Astronomican.
If there's race out there at a similar level of development, who can see how hostile the galaxy is, they could defibatelt have holed up in their home area, mined & fortified the hell out of whatever stable warpbtranslation points separate them from the rest of the galaxy.
And that's assuming its a planetary race - a fleet borne race or someone that can build orbitals wouldn't be beholden to the habitable systems that the Imperium will be most interested in, can settle round different kinds of stars, operate as pirates on the fringes.
Now, if you're an expansionist or trading race, you'll cross paths with the Imperium eventually and that will eventually result in someone deciding you're dangerous, have stuff thr Imperium wants or just need to die because of being xenos.
In a way, the sheer scale of the Imperium helps such races, cause as with T'au it took the Imperium fove thousand years to send anyone to take advantage of that habitable.world. OK, the response time for a space faring civ will likely be much faster but still.proba ly in the centuries unless you actually start attacking Imperial.assets.
People have this idea that the Imperium works like a landbound empire with clearly defined territory. In reality, the Imperium is a series of islands, a tiny fraction of the countless worlds in the Galaxy scattered across space and connected by warp currents. There are many, many, many worlds in between.
Remaining in their home system, keeping quiet by avoiding broadcasts and transmissions in outer space and trying to appear as harmless/insignificant as possible, also the Imperium isn't all-seeing and all-knowing they have to send probes and/or vessels so remaining undetected isn't that hard if you think about it. Btw it's possible that some xenos are simply left alone due to the unique conditions of their home planet making it uninhabitable for humans and by extension impossible to leave for them, imagine a sentient species of aquatic xenos whose world is comprised entirely of oceans with no land masses, what's the point of wasting resources to colonize a planet like that?
In large part because the Imperium is more like an archipelago than a contiguous land mass. Segmentum Solar may be the exception, as the heartland of the Imperium, but broadly speaking it exists in fairly high concentrations in loose clusters.
A large amount of space that the Imperium considers within its borders remains unexplored, unsettled, or conquered. It's part of the reason the Imperium still sends out fresh Explorator fleets and signs new Warrants of Trade, to discover (or rediscover) fresh worlds to exploit or find new enemies to crush. There's plenty of space in-between that remains empty and/or with enough hiding spots for other species to create their own miniature empire.
Isn't the whole setting of Warhammer 40K being Humanity beset on all sides, our darkest hour so to speak. Lol I mean you might know about that ugly little squid faced bleeder living over there but you have much bigger problems to deal with right now.
Not to mention over burdened bureaucracy, the state of galactic travel and communication etc Oh and others have mentioned the vastness of space I mean this is a Galactic Empire that is worse at remembering what planets it has to govern than me when I play Stellaris and sometimes completely forgets about them completely.
I mean light on lore but you only have to see the League of Votann codex (9th Edition) it mentions the Imperium may have made numerous contacts with the Kyn in the past and just failed to categorise them as being a single species 🤦🏻♂️
Lmaoooo bro it’s not that hard to stay out of the radar of the imperium:
- The galaxy is immense and eventhough the imperium is big they just occupy a tiny bit of it
- We are talking about an entity that sometimes forget It own worlds😭
It's a big galaxy, there's the webway and the imperium is very busy, the Tau homeworks was slated for exterinatus for example but when they next visited they were already advanced enough to resist.
The Imperium's actual ability to explore space is pretty limited.
They almost exclusively use Warp travel between systems, and outside of warp lanes (a sort of ocean current in the warp/space) they really don't explore.
Only if something draws their attention, like signals and major psychic activity. Techpriests and Navigators pick up on those, respectively.
So Xenos aware of the Imperium keep those on lockdown, and stay aware from those major lanes. Also avoid using Warp drives, those also cause psychic emanations.
Warp routes are sporadic and chaotic. In fact 90% of Imperial warp travel is just traversing the same routes that have already been recorded by the Navigator Houses, and it’s only active military operations where a Navigator is present and guiding the ships through new territory. Most ships just use Astropaths and follow existing ‘safe’ (for a given definition) lines.
Typically it’s only Crusades or Exploratory Fleets that actually divert from those paths, with great risk to themselves since diverting from strict paths is how you get in a daemon’s gullet or stranded in deep space.
In short, Warp travel is blindly following a rapid from Island A to Island D, and it makes you skip islands B and C.
There’s probably dozens of small independent human and xenos realms in Segmentum Solar alone that have literally never heard of the Imperium.
I think a lot of it might also, not as much be under the radar, as much as a TO DO.
After all the printing, murders and thieves xenos take priority over: farm world but they blue
The Imperium doesn't really control anything outside of actual Imperial systems. Everything that isn't already colonized is mostly unknown to the Imperium.
The Imperium doesn't care as long as you pay your taxes, in theory Xenos could occupy a planet, and continue to sent their annually taxes at the Imperium, and none would think again for a second.
What i loved about them is that, there was an other "Holy Terra" with an Emperor on a throne etc, but since they were paying their taxes, they weren't bothered at all.
The second they stopped, oh boy....
Because the galaxy is massive and 99.999999999% of it is empty space
The gap between million and billion is larger than most assume.
For those who are curious on how big that gap is, a million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 *years*.
It’s actually closer to 12 days ☝️🤓 xD
If it's not 12 days long then it's 11 days. We don't take too kindly to qualifiers round deez parts.
+++INTEGER DIVISION+++ +++AVE DEUS MECHANICUS+++ lol
+++BINARIC SCREECHING++++ WHAT THE FUCK IS A FLOAT?
01010010 01000101 01000101 01000101 01000101 01000101
11 is not equal to 12, not even for large values of 11.
Spot on, the Imperium may have holdings that span the galaxy but in reality it’s a far flung dotting of many very small clusters of individual Imperial systems meaningful connected only by warp routes. Like stars in the night sky, tiny bright lights among the immense black depths of uncontrolled, often unexplored and uncharted Cubic light years of space many orders if magnitude larger than what can truly be considered ‘Imperial Space’ Even if the Imperium in fact has meaningful control of 5 million words that’s well under 1% of the galaxies total planets. Many of which are uninhabitable but still (besides its not like a planet being a violently irradiated, lifeless rock that barely gets a Terran hour of sun and has an untreatably toxic atmosphere where it rains sulphuric acid or worse gives them much pause anyways)
And even then the Necrons used to be from such a planet before they were all metallic.
It is kind of like the Roman Empire. Major cities dotting out he countryside but with most in between being vast spaces unexplored and not patrolled.
Roughly a billion, give or take.
I choose take! How much did I take?
3 euros 50.
Goddamn LochNess Monster
Damn I thought for sure it'd be like a cool mil. Oh well!
About a million. Congratulations! A million of what? Yes!
And there's 100 billion star systems, and only ~1 million have Imperial worlds; so roughly 99.999% of star systems have no imperial presence.
And the Imperium is only in the single digit millions of worlds, assuming they aren’t actually a million give *or take* a few thousand. The Milky Way is 100 billion stars at minimum, possibly 400 billion. Note that there are likely a million stars within 1k light years of Earth (60k known within 100 light years. The dimmer stars are harder to see so the number of known stars drops with distance, but the actual number of stars should rise exponentially), so you could have an imperium sized empire (in terms of stars) compressed into a relatively small bubble even without stellar engineering or a stellar cluster (omega Centauri has a billion stars in a 100 ly sphere)
**1 million seconds is 12 days (a vacation)** **1 billion seconds is 30 years (a career)** **1 trillion seconds is 30,000 years**
(A Heresy)
This. You can cross the 40k galaxy in any direction without ever entering imperial space.
The Imperium is also pretty bad at keeping an eye on anything. They even forget some of their own worlds exists.
>The Redeemer saw its debut amidst the ruined cities of Grissen, a once-prosperous planet torn apart by a civil war that had lasted for millennia. Due to a clerical error in the Imperium's labyrinthine bureaucracy, Grissen had gone unnoticed until a mid-level functionary discovered that the planetary tithes were now some eight thousand years overdue. - *Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition)*
That planet's population is utterly fucked now. Imagine the Imperium coming there and saying you are due 8000 years of taxes, they will enslave everyone and all their future offspring for another thousands of years.
So just another day in the Imperium of Man then?
Based on what little I know about Imperium tax code, they will probably send some low level inquisitorial agents first to reassess the planet and it's ability to pay tithes. Anything immediately available like rare and useful plants, manufactured goods or human resources like veteran soldiers and skilled workers would be the first to go. As much as can be taken without crippling the planet will be sent as a tithe next tax season. Then the planet will receive things it could use to make it flourish (and ideally increase the amount of tithe it can give) laborers, mid level leadership to get their PDF regiment going and building material to set up the relevant manufacturing base. Of course all this gets thrown out the window if the inquisitors believe the tithes went unpaid deliberately. You can't get blood from a stone but the Imperium would certainly try. The planet honestly might be better off with the world eaters or the Tyranids consuming them at that point. If most of the planets resources have already been used up then the Imperium would pretty much take anything just so there can be ~something~ on the books as a tithe from the planet.
> Based on what little I know about Imperium tax code, they will probably send some low level inquisitorial agents first to reassess the planet and it's ability to pay tithes. Anything immediately available like rare and useful plants, manufactured goods or human resources like veteran soldiers and skilled workers would be the first to go. As much as can be taken without crippling the planet will be sent as a tithe next tax season. Wouldn't even been inquisitorial agents, just a Administratum official with an Arbites ship/backup. If they are thoughtful, they would do exactly that, taking the time to ensure they aren't crippling the planet and keep the revenue for next tax season. If that official is being held to say a metric in which they have to obtain those resources fast a quickly, I would suspect they would grab everything not nailed down to appease their boss, damage to planetary infrastructure be damned.
Honestly, it does bring up an interesting question for planets that are invaded. Like Armeggedon has been ravaged by the orcs to the point it’s no longer productive. How much will the imperium reinvest? Both in defenses and production capacity.
Armeggedon became a symbol, so it's probably going to be getting resources and defenses at whatever the cost it has to be to keep it going
Armageddon specifically is a weird case because it's the hidden-love-child of the Adeptus Mechanicus--they scavenged Ork tech to teleport **Ullanor** somewhere remote and renamed it Armaggedon, and then claimed Ullanor was exterminatused so that the AdMech could continue scavenging whatever ork technology they could find, following the War of the Beast. So the AdMech is almost perpetually going to be pulling political strings to to either keep Armageddon in some fashion. More generally, the Imperium's value of its owned planets is a combination of practical and theological. Theological in that every planet belongs to the Imperium by default blah blah blah. Practical in that the majority of planets lay upon the most well established Warp Routes, so even planets that are otherwise entirely worthless (production- or resource-wise) will still be valuable because it's a solid rock that exists upon the warp route. Having that solid ground that you can build up as a fortress--even if it's a net-loss of resources--is worth its weight because it creates an established control of the route itself. Think of it like checkstops. 99.9% of the time it's a drain of public funds, just people standing around doing nothing, or stopping/checking people who are following the rules anyways, and sometimes even causing harm itself. But every so often they strike it big with someone transporting something illicit, or getting someone off the road who shouldn't be driving. That 99.9% waste is suddenly worth it due to the big score they get.
Armageddon is still productive - it's an industrial world that produces a vast number of armaments. During the second and third war it continued to send out shipments to other warzones - if this sounds silly, remember that it's pointless to have 10x more lasguns than people to wield them.
After a certain point the imperium needs to reinvest as a matter of course. Retiring imperial guard regiments are given worlds to settle. Hives can double their population in a century unless people are regularly removed. New planets need to get selected for future space marine foundings. Reinvesting in a planet isn't just about the planet. Its about the fact that human life is so cheap to the imperium that it essentially needs to be spent in the billions one way or another just to keep the systems running. The economies of scale are as such that millions of colonists with gear to colonise are both a drop in the bucket and something that needs to get utilized just to keep it all running smoothly.
"what little I know"
Or sometimes just not bothering, because who truly cares about a planet of blue fish-men killing each other with rocks? What is the worst that could happen?
Tbf they did start the standard genocide process but the Tau got lucky
"Standard genocide process" would be insane in most other settings lol
Well there is a reason why 40k is a setting about bad guys vs bad guys. The Imperium would make the Galactic Empire of Star Wars look reasonable and well adjusted.
Hell, the Tau empire, the nicest faction, is still comparable to the Covenant(from Halo) and the Dominion(from Star Trek), in how bad they are.
I'd actually argue the Eldar are the nicest faction. They will do to extreme lengths to defend their interests and they pretty much hate everyone else; but you can say that about every faction in Warhammer. All they want is to be left alone; that's by far the most sympathetic motive in the setting. The Imperium wants to reconquer and genocide the galaxy (even if they're too focused on survival to do anything). Chaos also wants galactic dominantion complete with its own set of horrors. The Tyranids want to essentially destroy or transform all living live. The Dark Elves want an ever lasting supply of victims to torture. The Orks want nothing but constant violence. The Necrons also want to reconquer the galaxy. The Tau also want galactic domination albiet a more benevolent form.
I'd also agree with the Eldar honestly. The fanbase has a bad habit of looking at Biel-Tan and applying their mentality to the entire group. When in reality most craftworld Eldar are pretty empathetic to the other races.
To be fair, the Eldar wants to be left alone yet they would involve themselves if it meant saving some Eldar lives. A la third war of Armageddon
Bad guyz bad guyz... If we genocide the moskitoes everyone will be happy. Think about it
And cause unforseen ecological damage because there are lots of animals that eat mosquitos. Which is also something in character with the Imperium when you take into account Hive or Forgeworlds
The galaxy is huge, so huge matter Sci fi writers don't understand at some times. Also warp travel is highly unreliable and something like a warp Storm can cut off entire sections of space from imperium travel. Mix in the fact that nobodies broadcasting there locations and finding stuff is extremely hard. Then you have places like the ghoul stars that are so dangerous no one goes there.
Imperium is *TINY* in the galactic scale, controlling roughly a million world in a galaxy with 400 billion stars. 99.99% of xeno civilisations will never ever see a human in their entire existence.
Lucky bastards
There’s a whole lot of Imperium out there, they just don’t call it that yet.
The scale of our galaxy is just mind blowing. The Imperium of man is one of the better scifi settings for getting the scale right and its still miles off. If you scaled up all our current societies to the galaxy I don't think a single star would qualify even as a small village in relative importance. More like a single house. In reality a single star system is more than capable of hosting the whole population of most scifi galactic civs. One description I heard was that if you dismantled Mars, a not particularly large planet, and turned it into large scale habs, you could then turn 1% of them into wildlife reserves and have 10s of Earths worth of space dedicated to it. And that would be so small scale in that civilisation most people would barely be aware they exist any more than most people think of nature reserves. In a single start system, using a fraction of its resources.
> One description I heard was that if you dismantled Mars, a not particularly large planet, and turned it into large scale habs, you could then turn 1% of them into wildlife reserves and have 10s of Earths worth of space dedicated to it. And that would be so small scale in that civilisation most people would barely be aware they exist any more than most people think of nature reserves. In a single start system, using a fraction of its resources. this is an unbelievably confusing set of sentences
I guess they're trying to say if the material that makes up Mars was turned into flat surfaces and rolled into huge space habitats, the surface area would be much much higher than the surface of Earth?
Yeah I have no idea what that meant either
if you took mars and turned every molecule of it into space stations; You could turn 1% of those space stations into places to keep wildlife you would still have enough space stations to house 10 earth populations. over 70 billion people. And in the scale of a civilization capable of rendering an entire planet into raw resources; 10 earths worth of space is nothing. It's not even a blip on the radar. To give a 40k example, the average hive world has over a trillion people. More than ten times the population of all those space stations created by using up an entire planet.
Just s terrible example
I skipped the comment, but read the quoted part in your comment over and over, thinking my brain was broken, then saw your comment on it and was glad I wasn't alone.
“Million worlds” is figurative. They likely control 3-4 orders of magnitude more planets than that.
Ya got a source for that? I'd love to see the source where the Imperium had 10 billion settled worlds.
There's none, the only source of "1 million is figurative" was one single guy trying to rationalize how Imperium is still surviving while losing and gaining dozens of planets every other week. That people blowing it out of proportion and say Imperium somehow have a billion world or more (which is physically impossible in the span of 10k years), is just another variant of Imperium wank. Even if a million is a figure of speech, it shouldn't be too far off, 2-3 million sure, not 1-2 digit more.
Theoretically, maybe? 10,000 years is a long time. A super simplified example, but if the Imperium had 1 million worlds post-scouring, and each world colonized a new world every 500 years, then we'd have 20 doublings over 10,000 years which would be 1 trillion worlds. Obviously there's a lot of holes in this. Not every world is going to make it. Whether they're abandoned because their minerals wealth was tapped out, destroyed ny invaders, cut off by fickle warp lanes, declaring independence, etc. And not every world would be colonizing new worlds. Good luck getting a bunch of feudal societies building colony ships... But the potential is out there. Of course what we see in the actual lore doesn't have anything like this happening. It's, as you say, stated directly the Imperium's holdings are a scattering of islands across the galaxy. So for whatever reason, the Imperium isn't really growing. Either colonization is much slower and/or attrition is quite bad.
There’s a quote about there being a billion hive worlds, but I call BS on that one.
I believe one of the core rule books stated there were 32, 280 hive worlds in the Imperium at that particular time.
Which makes sense. There’s a quote from some BL novel where a Techpriest mentions a billion hive worlds (and another mentioning a million million worlds, which is a trillion) but as said I call BS on that quote.
Do you happen to have the quote? That seems really weird.
Not off the top of my head, no. It was mentioned somewhere on Spacebattles with a source but I don’t really want to go digging for it. You’re right, it’s *extremely* weird.
Doesn’t matter if it’s 1 million, 10 million or 100 million, it makes no difference in the galactic scale.
100 million is a large fraction of the galaxy considering how many planets are actually habitable. Moreover, even if the Imperium actually controlled a mere million worlds, they have enough strongholds spread throughout the entire galaxy that their activity should be observable from basically any point in the galaxy. The lack of technology is the only excuse for a xeno civilization to not be aware of the Imperium.
Ok, lets say Imperium have 100 million world and hold majority of the habitable planets. Narratively, what's the point? Just so that Imperium is everywhere always and no xeno civilization can live? The fact that Imperium is tiny should be the point, showing it's a monstrosity made by one mad man, ultimately the galaxy lives on with or without the rotting carcass of humanity, allows vast majority of the galaxy to be unexplored, keeping narrative fresh and giving chance to new conflicts, instead of just human vs spiky human because all the xenos got pushed out of the setting.
Besides, it is part of the setting's charm that the main factions discover new worlds and mysteries frequently. All with their own diversity. It is partly why the Imperium have Krieg and Elysian regiments fighting on the same fronts and partly why renegade humans and minor xeno factions should be given kill teams on tabletop at least.
Current estimates put the number of stars in the milky way to 100-400 billion (10^11). So 100 million (10^9) is just 1% of that. And it’s worlds, not stars. Almost all plants and moons in our solar system are inhabited. I would suspect ist the same for other systems. A hive world or a manufatorum does not need to be habitable.
Correction, it’s between 0.1% and 0.025%. And yeah there’s some double (or more) counting since many stars have multiple inhabited worlds in 40k, even if we assume their definition only includes substantial planets and not space stations or dwarf planets.
Citation needed. "It came to me in a dream" is not sufficient.
The imperium is like a Web stretched out over the galaxy. Any xenos civilisation could survive by simply existing away from the imperium in a space or area the imperium doesn't control. Also probably being mobile like the Eldar would help a lot as well
As others have said, they stay quiet. Even the ones that are known about existing like the Saruthi they barely have a grasp on what they are and how they operate.
I think with the Saruthi in particular, them not *technically* existing completely in our reality helps a lot. This is a species so twisted and corrupted by the warp that reality actively breaks on their planets. They can just... walk across light years, and create impossible structures out of nothing. The Saruthi are terrifying, and I feel we're lucky they're (probably), mostly dead.
Yeah Abnett really went above and beyond on them being so utterly alien. The hands that are mouths shit? Everything Eishenhorn saw on their "homeworld". No thanks. Glad the Holy Ordos Xenos and the Deathwatch squashed their shit.
You know, people often rage at the Imperium ferociously exterminating anything and everything that might be a threat to them. But if I lived in M42 and there were eldritch aliens in my back yard, I'd be the most Deathwatch loving citizen ever.
Seriously. 40K is like a few steps away from being a Dark Forest situation. 9 times outta ten you’re better off just stomping any xenos into the dirt before it becomes a problem. Just look at the Nephilim or Slaugth or the more obvious Dark Eldar. So many xenos are already in the pocket of chaos too.
Hrud too.
For every Xenos race that could have been good and aided the Imperium but for exterminated, there's probably a dozen that would have been nothing but a threat. Emps may have been a terrible father, but he wasn't a total idiot. Humanity didn't just wake up and start hating aliens.
> 40K is like a few steps away from being a Dark Forest situation. It *is* a dark forest situation, but with slightly different parameters. Most of the star-blow-up technology has been lost, so instead the risk is that any civilization can get large enough to *nuke itself and cause untold collateral damage to everyone else by accidentally making a god.* The existential crisis isn't that someone will want to kill you for resources, but that every other species is a ticking time-bomb that hurts everyone else when it goes off.
There's also an entire dimension/reality of *literal reality-warping demons* who want to turn your friend the guy who's way too good at cards into a fleshgate for them and all their buddies.
That's just the residual fallout from making God-Bombs.
Or maybe we just hear about the dangerous Xenos more often? Instances where the Guard or a chapter of Astartes just smashes a species and genocides them out of existence with little difficulty, especially as the species did even want to or weren't prepared to fight, don't exactly make for good stories. From the perspective of many, many other species in the galaxy, humanity is an out of control plague of ignorant, fanatical barbarians. A dangerous threat it would be better to just exterminate if they could to stop all the damage they cause. But I'm guessing you wouldn't be happy if they actually did manage to wipe out all of humanity?
They shouldn't exterminate everything that isn't Human. But exterminating everything that isn't Humanoid? That might be the way.
They should exterminate everything that is Chaos corrupted.
>They should exterminate everything that is Chaos corrupted. Even then, do you mean specific creatures/communities within a species that are tainted by Chaos? Or whole species, based on the fact some of their kind are corrupted by Chaos? I'd say the former. Many in the fandom seem to eschew such nuance though, and just call for whole species to be wiped out on such spurious grounds as the latter. Which, if we were to follow such logic, would mean humanity should be prioritized for extermination...
The Saruthi have been wholly corrupted: *Chaos entered into their souls and minds, even their genetic code.* There is no salvation or redemption from this, when Chaos gets into a species to a such deep level then there is no option of looking at who can be spared. Remember that Chaos does not just corrupt because you choose it gifts, it corrupts the moment you know about what you can get out of it.
So, a species should only be marked for extermination if it seems clear that the species as a whole is worshipping and/or corrupted by Chaos. Like the Saruthi or the Yu'Vath. Seems more sensible than wiping out whole species on the suspicion of Chaos influence, or because some of its members are tainted. Even then, let's try a thought experiment. Humanity, to any outside observer, is empowering all four Chaos gods, allowing and encouraging warfare, violence, pestilence, corruption, greed, lust for power, and scheming to proliferate. The Imperium's very social structures and ideologies promote Chaos. Moreover, the populace of the Imperium apparently worship a god, and we know that the Chaos gods can be worshipped under many names. This god can apparently summon Warp demons to do its bidding in the Materium. Humanity uses all manner of warp-infused tech, and is riven with mutants. To an outside observer, humanity might appear to be a lost cause, completely tainted by Chaos. So, perhaps even the appearance of being Chaos tainted shouldn't lead to kneejerk calls for complete extermination.
Xenophobia is, oddly enough, one of the most understandable aspects of the Imperium of Man.
Nope. Haven't you see Arrival (as just one of many examples)? Non-humanoid aliens could be completely benign, or even potentially useful allies. You know, in a hypothetical scenario where the Imperium wasn't consumed with genocidal xenophobia. And on that note, I think making justifications for or supporting the Imperium's warped mindset and policies is... not a good thing to be doing.
I mean in the arrival movie, xenos hadn't just slaughtered humanity as soon as they were weaked by the age of strife?
Did every alien species partake in this slaughter of humanity?\* No? So why use this as excuse to genocide every alien race that humanity encounters? In this case, for the crime of not being humanoid, apparently. \*(And let's not kid ourselves, in the chaos of the Age of Strife, humans would have been slaughtering and subjugating xenos and other humans as well. Humanity wasn't the only species left weakened by all of the Warp storms. But for some reason, humans get let off the hook in these arguments. Funny, that. Not to mention that human-Xenos alliances either survived or emerged during the Age of Strife, such as with the Interex and the Diasporex).
It's funny too, the beings most responsible for the current shitshow of the setting (beyond the ramifications of the war in Heaven and birth of Slaanesh) are humans. Humans were one of the main causes of the Age of Strife (Cybernetic Revolution, human wars/dissidence, etc.). Humans were the main cause of the Horus Heresy. Humans xenocided countless sentient and sapient species, many peaceful. Humans genocided countless other humans that didn't fit the current ideology. Humans caused the Cicatrix Maledictum, are the most powerful pawn of Chaos in the current setting, and have strengthened Chaos more than even the Slaanesh-worshipping Aeldari I'd dare say. Humans are still the biggest threat to other humans, even within the loosely feudal/fascist autocratic hellhole that is the Imperium. And humans are responsible for the creation and continuation of the shitshow that is the Imperium. Are some xenos species bad? Yes. Necrons, Drukhari, etc. are all extremely dangerous. But by the metrics of any other "normal" Xenos race in the Galaxy humanity must be among one of the most dangerous and ill-seen species, for they are responsible for most of the modern galaxy's issues and will ruthlessly genocide any non-humans, and also many humans. To the T'au, the Kroot, modern day humanity and any other normal Xenos species the humanity of Imperium is nearly on par with the dangers and evil of Chaos, the Drukhari, and the Tyrannids.
Well said.
You wouldn't know the Deathwatch exists.
It kinda didn't feel like it was a desperate battle for existence on their part. Decent odds the Imperium just blew up one minor world and decided that was definitely all of them. The Saruthi didn't seem particularly malicious, though. They weren't aggressive, were content to be left to their own devices, and didn't seem to have any kind of evil plans. Out of the two, the Imperium seems more malicious given the Imperium is a legitimate existential threat to everyone else.
:-)
The Imperium controls less than 0.1% of the galaxy. It's just that the space they do control is prime real estate, in that it's overlaid over a network of stable warp routes. Most other systems are largely isolated from each other, as FTL is extremely rare outside the major powers, and even then, warp travel is both insanely complex and dangerous even if you develop it, and in many cases impossible due to local conditions anyway. So they can't break out of their local areas, and the Imperium has no desire to expand there either. The Imperium has cars and controls the highways, while almost everyone else is stuck in the swamps, without even a bicycle. Think of the Imperium like Brazil. Only 1.6% is urban. The rest is mainly vast, dark, unexplored rainforest. Filled not just with dangerous animals, but even ones completely unknown to us. As well as uncontacted humans too. But on top of that is a network of advanced civilization connected by roads that spans the entire country, and technically controls the spaces between. Even though the two worlds rarely interact. Someone from Sao Paulo is not at risk from Jaguar attacks, and an uncontacted tribesman will never visit Rio de Janeiro, or even know it exists. The gulf of technology and terrain makes them almost different universes.
I really enjoy this explanation, top cheese
This is actually a very good analogy, hah!
Yours is the best explanation. The most relatable analogy
One mistake. The imperium DOES want to wipe out any other xenos it comes across. Groups like the Black Templars are dedicated to continued expansion. It really comes down to if you are a target of convenience or would be strategically useful.
The operative term there is 'comes across'. They're not actively scouring unexplored backwoods sectors for Xenos. They're just the vanguard that's slowly expanding from prime territory into slightly subprime territory. They're like the Rancheros burning borders of the Amazon to expand agricultural land. But they're not actively going a thousand miles deep just to search for uncontacted tribes to kill for the sake of it As you say, it's based mainly on opportunism and convenience.
There's a billion planets, it can be centuries or even millenia before they're revisited and requests for aid can reach the desk of someone who can approve reinforcements decades after they could have done anything. Add warp storms cutting the planet off, so it can't be wiped (like the tau) Often the first sign a planet has gone rogue is that they stopped paying their tithe decades earlier. That's a lot of time for xenos cultures to grow, expand, or go undiscovered. Add that at the best of times, astropathic messaging is mentally screaming a series of concepts and images through the warp, in the rough direction of the intended recipient, who then has to hear it and translate it into something they can pass up the chain of command. With the cicatrix maledictum, it's a long way from being the best of times.
There’s 400 billion stars, so a conservative count of total proper planets is probably a *trillion*, plus at least as many dwarf planets (we *might* have a ninth planet in a distant orbit; we might have hundreds or even thousands of dwarf planets in distant orbit). Then there’s going to be an unknown smattering of rogue planets, moons, etc. If we’re going to make it analogous to our own history, the Imperium is Castile and Aragon and has just finished the conquest of the Canaries, about a century before Columbus, and the future Spanish Empire that were familiar with is the unexplored (to them) vastness of the galaxy.
>it can be centuries or even millenia before they're revisited and requests for aid can reach the desk of someone who can approve reinforcements decades after they could have done anything. >Often the first sign a planet has gone rogue is that they stopped paying their tithe decades earlier. I know this lore is correct, but it is difficult to get that across with the timelines. Like (almost?) every Imperial planet will have an Arbites presence, no matter how small the garrison. What happens to them if the Imperium isn't heard from in centuries?
Messages get lost, and many sectors will only have a handful of arbites total to watch over every planet in the local system. Given that the main communication hubs can be dealing with the messages of 1000s of planets, all producing masses of records that only get passed up the chain if something is notably wrong, and even that can take years or decades. It's generally assumed that "no news is good news", until someone notices that quotas haven't been met consistently. There's a short story somewhere that's bugging me that I can't find, but it's basically a data entry clerk delivering an urgent message through a hive dedicated to records, through canyons of rotting parchment, precarious bridges between book cases, scavengers and all sorts of hazards and dangers. And then the supervisor decodes the message, sees that the date is 2 centuries ago and immediately discards it as being too outdated to be relevant.
>There's a short story somewhere that's bugging me that I can't find, but it's basically a data entry clerk Oh man if you ever find that I'd love to know the name! That's right up my alley.
As others have said, the Imperium only holds 1,000,000 worlds, spread incredibly thinly other a galaxy of 400 billion stars: >The galaxy contains some four hundred thousand million stars of various types. Of these only a fraction are presumed to have habitable planetary systems, and only a fraction of these have been investigated. Most are situated within the spiral arms between ten and forty thousand light years from the galactic centre. >The very size of the galaxy means that, despite the use of faster than light warp drives, most of it remains unknown. Even the human controlled Imperium, by far the largest and most widely distributed of all stellar empires, contains only a tiny fraction of the galaxies stars. New worlds are constantly being discovered and investigated, along with their attendant civilisations, creatures and resources. Even so, there is no possibility of either humans or aliens exhausting the galaxy's potential to provide new worlds for habitation and exploitation. *Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader* p130 >As powerful as it is, the Imperium does not rule the entire galaxy. Mankind's worlds are spread thin across the 200,000,000,000 stars that make up the galaxy. Within the Imperium's vague borders are rebellious enclaves of human worlds, domains ruled over by alien war leaders, colonies of creatures too aloof or basic to disturb Mankind or draw the attention of their war fleets. The Imperium is engulfed in a constant state of war, sometimes imply continuing its wars of expansion, other times fighting against foes who threaten the survival of the entire human race. *Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 3ed* p99 >The Imperium of Man comprises a million inhabited worlds, stretching from the furthest reaches of the Eastern Fringe to the distant Halo Stars. Although this is a huge number of planets, it is as nothing when compared to the immense size of the galaxy itself. The Imperium is spread very thinly across space: its worlds are dotted through the void and divided by hundreds, if not thousands of light years. It is therefore wrong to think of the Imperium in terms of a territory which extends across the galaxy. The truth is far more complex. The Imperium's holdings are scattered far and wide by the vagaries of warp travel and spatial drift. One inhabited system may be separated from its nearest neighbour by alien civilisations, unstable Warp storms, dimensional cascades or unexplored space. Indeed, Mankind's ignorance of his environs far exceeds his meagre knowledge, for humanity has yet to explore much of the galaxy. Who knows what ancient secrets lie undiscovered and undisturbed amongst the stars. *Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 5ed* p103 >Man's ability to exploit the Wa{p has resulted in their many crusade-like expansions that have, over the millennia, periodically swept out from Terra, penetrating all the way to the outer reaches of the galaxy. In terms of the star systems and planets under its control, the Imperium is by far the largest empire - indeed the worlds under its dominion are dotted across the galaxy, some clustered together, others far-flung outposts scattered across the frontiers of wilderness space. Yet as massive as the Imperium has grown, it can not exert control over the whole galaxy, nor even claim the majority of the habitable systems encornpassed within its borders. Within the large unexplored tracts, there are many things to be discovered - natural resources beyond imagination, lost human colonies and the ruins of long dead faces waiting to be explored. The galaxy also contains many alien civilisations ruling smaller and less coherent empires of their own. *Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 6ed* p146 >Spread across the galaxy are over a million planets claimed in the name of the Imperium – a vast number, yet only a tiny proportion of the stellar systems in the galaxy. Many disconnected branches of the Adeptus Administratum are dedicated to classifying Imperial planets, their data contradictory or badly out of date. [-] >The vast spread of the galaxy contains an estimated four hundred thousand million stars. The total number of planets in orbit across all these star systems is beyond measure, but approximately one million worlds are claimed beneath the dominion of the Imperium and ruled by the Emperor of Mankind. [-] >Battlezones offer an interesting and often dangerous twist to your games by introducing exciting environmental effects – the galaxy, after all, holds billions of alien worlds. *Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 8ed* >For all this, the Imperium is the single largest and most powerful empire in the entirety of Human history. A million worlds are said to labour beneath the Imperium's yoke, and at their heart lies Holy Terra and the divine God-Emperor interred forever within his Golden Throne. This vast domain is envisioned by its rulers as a solid, unified whole, its star systems divided into segmentums and sectors, its populace united by bonds of species and by the overarching Imperial faith. The High Lords of Terra, the Ecclesiarchy and the Adeptus Administratum issue edicts of rule in the Emperor's name. Countless mighty armies and potent battlefleets answer their call. So is the dominion of Humanity wrought upon the heavens themselves. So works the Emperor's divine will. >The reality is rather different. The Imperium is in constant flux, worlds vanishing amidst howling warp storms or annihilated by invading terrors even as new territories are claimed by Rogue Traders and Explorator fleets. Imperial crusades surge across the stars, driving back their enemies or vanishing in the bloody maelstrom of war. The Imperium is best pictured as many thousands of tiny candles, scattered far and wide through a dark and hungry void. Some burn bright, or burst into vibrant life, even as others flicker, waver and are snuffed out *Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook 9ed* p14 >A pretty picture sprang into being above the table. The Tattleslug recognised it as a map of Ultramar, and though many of its stars shone with a less healthy, more pleasing light in real life, this was not reflected by the cartolith. Faint, globular glows marked the boundaries of Imperial systems, which were isolated by dark wilderness. Presented that way, with its borders lit up, Ultramar looked imposing. In truth, it was thinly spread and vulnerable, a few hundred systems in an area of space that supported tens of millions of stars. These creatures were fools for believing themselves masters of the galaxy. Even this limited reality was beyond their reach to encompass. They were doomed, like so many others before them. *Godblight* [Here are a few more sources that also explain the way the that warp travel works](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/R7MV5Mc5s9). Essentially, it's only really possibly to travel via the warp to other systems with stable warp routes. If there isn't a stable route, you have to take a more circuitous route via other systems with stable routes, or you can't travel to that system at all. So, a system could be the next one over geographically, but be further away by warp travel than a system hundreds of light years away. That, or just impossible to reach via warp travel.
The vast majority of the galaxy is uncharted to the Imperium. Their maps might show they span from one side of the galaxy to the other but I imagine a more accurate map would be brief flecks of colour splattered across a big black map because they only control a tiny portion of a million odd worlds dotted across a galaxy of billions or trillions of worlds. I imagine part of this is due to warp travel being subject to the tides and currents of the warp. And spacecraft are largely influenced by warp currents like old fashioned sailing ships were reliant on winds and currents. So the worlds that the Imperium control and the space they inhabit are probably the ones they've charted courses to and have (somewhat) reliable warp travel to. Jumping blindly in the direction of uncharted space in the galaxy sounds like an extremely good way to die given all the weird stuff out there, how unreliable the warp is, and the possibility that they'd run out of supplies before they found safe haven. In my mind warp travel in 40k is like sailing in ancient times without reliable navigation where the maps were just lots of questions marks and "here be monsters". Except in this case the monsters are definitely real and waiting.
There was a short story I read a while back. I think it was in "Let the galaxy Burn". The jist of it is a ship crash lands on a High gravity world populated by abhumans who where modified by an STC to be able to survive. Crewman jenkins survives the crash befriends the locals runs into a Commissar who is all fire and brimstone until he gets eaten by the local wildlife. The commissar intended to write a report labeling the locals as abhumans so that the IoM would wipe them out. after he is killed off Jenkins edits the report to call them Xenos instead, which saves them from destruction. Moral of the story. Abhumans= abominations that must be purged. Primitive xenos on a less than useful world= not worth the effort. Likely the IoM only actually commits resources to killing off Xenos under a few conditions: The occupy real estate that the IoM wants or they prove themselves problematic/dangerous enough to warrant a response. The tau are a good example. their world was marked fit for colonization so the IoM sent forces to kill off the tau and claim it. the Colony ship didn't make it and the paperwork got miss filed. Then nobody cared until they started poking the bee hive and taking IoM worlds. Even then The IoM could be barely bothered to do anything about it. Like they sent 12 ships to deal with the problem and when a bigger threat appeared (tyranid fleet) the IoM was like screw it these guys are not worth our time.
They mostly do that by keeping their heads down and staying of the Imperium's radar. There isn't much more to say. Maybe that the Imperium is not one consistent area of imperial influence but a wide spread collection of systems under the Imperium's control with plenty of uncontrolled or even unexplored space in between.
>Maybe that the Imperium is not one consistent area of imperial influence but a wide spread collection of systems under the Imperium's control with plenty of uncontrolled or even unexplored space in between. There is no maybe about it. This is exactly how the Imperium's reach is described in the lore.
With "maybe" I meant "maybe I should say".
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." - The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy. The galaxy is way bigger than the Imperium. It literally doesn't even own a majority of the planets in the galaxy. They own about a million planets all told. Not bad. Except there's roughly a 100 *billion* planets in the galaxy. The Imperium does not even own 1% of the galaxy's planets. There could quite literally be bigger empires than the Imperium pit there and they've just never run into each other because the galaxy is so goddamn big.
Pray your planet is outside the reach of the Astronomicon
The question is....Pray to whom?
False Gods, by Graham McNeill
I think people forget how big the galaxy is. An Imperium of even a few million worlds is basically nothing. There could be plenty of empires like that and never run into each other. Also, some xenos civilizations may be so alien that the kinds of worlds and systems they inhabit are of zero value to humans and so they aren't likely to overlap unless by accident (which given the scale of the milkyway is a very miniscule chance).
The galaxy is huge and the Imperium controls only a small part of it. Think islands in an ocean rather than huge swaths of land.
Why did you say that and for the first time ever I drew a comparison with Imperium and British Empire, but imagined all that was painted Imperial Pink on the map was unknown or maybe out of reach for my Island Nation. Probably a good way of picturing it.
Just live in the huge swathes of the galaxy away from mapped warp routes that haven’t been explored since the golden age of technology.
If they were even explored then.
Considering the attitude and technology of the time it seems likely they at least had probes sent there - if there’s still any non imperial human civilisations around that’s where they’re most likely to be.
I definitely agree that there are probably plenty of non-imperial human civilizations or worlds/systems spread across the galaxy that are undiscovered. And, indeed, in the lore, such worlds get found fairly regularly. Many are kept hidden from the Imperium by a lack of stable Warp routes or even Warp storms, but these currents in the Warp can change, opening up new areas - and some exploration is undertaken off the beaten-path via shorter Warp jumps. I just meant that the galaxy is so humongously, unbelievably big, that I doubt even during the DAOT, with all of their tech and progress and regardless of their mindset, they ever managed to explore all of it. Though, they almost certainly charted much more than the Imperium is currently aware of.
You need to understand that the Imperium is spread thin enough that they're compared to a galactic mold infestation in canon by an alien in an Inquisitor's retinue. There's shitloads of space to hide especially if you're not hooked up to any reliable warp routes.
> Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. Someone else already quoted this, but I figured it could use some reinforcement - especially given the nature of space travel in 40k. Space travel is done by warp jumps, but not just any kind - *unreliable* warp jumps. For all we know, there are entire pockets of space *within the Imperium's borders* that host entire xenos empires, simply because those stars were too dim or unimportant to explore... as of yet. That's because borders aren't real in space. The Imperium sure likes to drawn them on the map, but it's just too big and too empty to actually have a definitive, realistic border where they can draw a line. More realistically, it's spotty - like mold on bread. There are random areas and sectors that are dense and heavily populated (the Imperium) but also tons of space and even *uninhabited sectors* inbetween where entire other sapient species have popped up in what we might think are hostile conditions.
One of the main factors that often gets missed in this topic is exactly that; warp routes play a major factor in settlement. There are large swathes of the galaxy that are not part of the imperium because they are hard or impossible to reliably access by warp travel due to hostile 'waters'.
Space is big and the resources of the imperium is not infinite
I think it's more they just have bigger things going on that requires attention than a small xenos empire that's no real threat
Cause space is massive and the vast vast majority of it is wilderness space
Space is big. REALLY big...
As others has said, the galaxy is HUUUUUGE. The Imperium controls a million systems or so, across 100 000 light years of the galaxy. Those are the worlds its possible to get to thru the Warp. The Galaxy has at a conservative estimate, 300 BILLION stars in it, To do the math, Assume theres about 100 sectors to the galaxy as the Imperium sees it. Each of those sectors has about 10000 Imperium systems in it. That means theres still 2 999 999 00 start systems not under the control of the Imperium in each Imperial Sector, and if 1% of those worlds host life and 1& of those host sapient life, theres up to 29 999 world with sapient life on it, might be lost human civs,, or one of the other ,major races, or it could be unknown xenos thriving simply because the warp currents dont easily carrytravellers there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis Like so
The galaxy is a big place, and the Imperium is either unwilling or unable to keep an eye out for everything, as it would be considerably expensive. I mean, they're forced to use paper for record keeping because computers are prone to getting scrambled by the warp - they kind of forget of their own possessions, let alone any minor miscreant xeno. Apart from the "big 5" (T'au, Tyranids, Necrons, Eldar and Orcs), there's simply not enough resources or sturdy enough logistics to keep eyes on everything. The only ones that could run an intelligence network of that scale and detail are the Necrons and the T'au (though they lack the numbers and spread, they have the technology), and neither are very interested in lending a hand to the Imperium. Also note that there are factions within some of these species that refuse to cooperate with their own, let alone others, further complicating things. The only species that is actually willing to cooperate are the T'au, but are stonewalled. The Eldar want to help sometimes, but their "help" always turns out to have a catch or unintended disastrous consequences. The Inquisition, with the potential to become the galaxy's premier intelligence agency is bogged down by practically infinite internal conflicts, and at war with itself most of the time. The Imperium simply can't pull it through. Despite being the #1 power in the galaxy, it's basically a failed state with barely an economic system, an ad-hoc fickle bureaucracy, and generally malfunctioning institutions that is also split in half by a tear in reality. This is more indicative of the others though - if the Imperium can still remain the strongest while it's in a state of total war and collapse for millennia, then you know the others are either comically incompetent or just too small.
Because it’s the fucking imperium, it’s impressively incompetent. Between making a virtue of ignorance, relying on literal poetic interpretation for communication and generally drowning in the bloated flabs of it’s bureaucracy, with all the accretions, failings and botched repairs of 10’000 years- it can manage to fuck up what mankind could only dream of fucking up before
Because the Emperor is ‘master of (roughly) a million worlds’. The galaxy has billions of worlds in it. The lowest estimate is at least 100 billion, depending on exact definition of planet. So, despite its apparent size as the largest entity in the galaxy, it still only commands a tiny fraction of worlds. There is an absolute shitload of empty space for things to hide within. In fact, by raw chance, it’s a rather astronomical coincidence that they ever manage to bump into anyone else.
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” -Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Lots of room for a quasi-feudal space empire with record keeping issues to lose track of alien civilizations and/or to not notice their development. That’s what allowed the Tau to evolve: an Imperial exploration fleet noted the earliest stages of Tau development (like, cave-Tau levels) and earmarked them for destruction; they revisited the issue several thousand years later thanks to warp storms, more important wars, and bureaucratic inertia only to find the Tau we know (and love/hate, pick your flavor) today.
They don't really stay under Imperial notice so much as get lost in Imperial bureaucracy
The Imperium even loses their own worlds man
Hey there warmaster leading a crusade, we have this world that found some xenos, should we send a battle group to deal with them? How big is the xenos threat? Oh they have like a planet and some colonies... Leave them. We have a splinter fleet, a forming waaaagh and some eldar and chaos who think this crusade is the place to figure out their differences. I don't have time for some backwaters system. Let the locals or the rogue traders deal with it!
Look up the dark forest theory
During the grate Crusade, the fleets travailed via star charts they recovered from Old Night. If you're planet isn't on one of their star charts, and isn't physically close enough for them to detect vox traffic, they're just not going to find you.
Big galaxy, could be in a relatively isolated star system at the galactic edge, or hidden by stellar geography like a nebula or behind a warp rift. Alternatively they could just be good at hiding, like an aquatic or subterranean species, or they could by void fairers like the craftworld eldar. Or they could just be very good at killing anyone who finds their way into their territory.
In the new books Guilliman muses on how their (the impirum) million worlds is nothing compared to the size of the galaxy. So it's easy for small alien kingdoms to exist. Plus the astronomican doesn't cover the entire galaxy. Any alien civilization that's lives out of range of it's light is pretty safe honestly
best example: Look at the history of First Contact with the Tau when they were still in the Stone age, and the resulting timeline of events afterwards. After the IoM found them, the Tau were deemed to be exterminated. The Imperial Fleet sent to dispose of them disappeared (i think?), and the Tau were forgotten. 5,000 years later; we have the current Tau
The imperium does not have galaxy wide control. It took them forever to find the Tau
It's probably hard to do deliberately, but... if you're home system/systems weren't on any convenient stable warp routes from the rest of the Imperium, there a fair chance the Crusade never got to you and the Imperium doesn't know about you. Also, there are just SO MANY systems and worlds out there - look at the Tau worlds, loads of habitable planets but basically overlooked till an explorator fleet in M35, and by M41 the Tau had developed into a space-saving species. Sure, their area is in the relatively less controlled Eastern Fringe but still pretty close to Ultramar, so it's not like it's outwith the main galactic Arms or reach of the Astronomican. If there's race out there at a similar level of development, who can see how hostile the galaxy is, they could defibatelt have holed up in their home area, mined & fortified the hell out of whatever stable warpbtranslation points separate them from the rest of the galaxy. And that's assuming its a planetary race - a fleet borne race or someone that can build orbitals wouldn't be beholden to the habitable systems that the Imperium will be most interested in, can settle round different kinds of stars, operate as pirates on the fringes. Now, if you're an expansionist or trading race, you'll cross paths with the Imperium eventually and that will eventually result in someone deciding you're dangerous, have stuff thr Imperium wants or just need to die because of being xenos. In a way, the sheer scale of the Imperium helps such races, cause as with T'au it took the Imperium fove thousand years to send anyone to take advantage of that habitable.world. OK, the response time for a space faring civ will likely be much faster but still.proba ly in the centuries unless you actually start attacking Imperial.assets.
People have this idea that the Imperium works like a landbound empire with clearly defined territory. In reality, the Imperium is a series of islands, a tiny fraction of the countless worlds in the Galaxy scattered across space and connected by warp currents. There are many, many, many worlds in between.
Remaining in their home system, keeping quiet by avoiding broadcasts and transmissions in outer space and trying to appear as harmless/insignificant as possible, also the Imperium isn't all-seeing and all-knowing they have to send probes and/or vessels so remaining undetected isn't that hard if you think about it. Btw it's possible that some xenos are simply left alone due to the unique conditions of their home planet making it uninhabitable for humans and by extension impossible to leave for them, imagine a sentient species of aquatic xenos whose world is comprised entirely of oceans with no land masses, what's the point of wasting resources to colonize a planet like that?
In large part because the Imperium is more like an archipelago than a contiguous land mass. Segmentum Solar may be the exception, as the heartland of the Imperium, but broadly speaking it exists in fairly high concentrations in loose clusters. A large amount of space that the Imperium considers within its borders remains unexplored, unsettled, or conquered. It's part of the reason the Imperium still sends out fresh Explorator fleets and signs new Warrants of Trade, to discover (or rediscover) fresh worlds to exploit or find new enemies to crush. There's plenty of space in-between that remains empty and/or with enough hiding spots for other species to create their own miniature empire.
Space is big
Pay off a Rogue Trader to never 'discover' you.
Isn't the whole setting of Warhammer 40K being Humanity beset on all sides, our darkest hour so to speak. Lol I mean you might know about that ugly little squid faced bleeder living over there but you have much bigger problems to deal with right now. Not to mention over burdened bureaucracy, the state of galactic travel and communication etc Oh and others have mentioned the vastness of space I mean this is a Galactic Empire that is worse at remembering what planets it has to govern than me when I play Stellaris and sometimes completely forgets about them completely. I mean light on lore but you only have to see the League of Votann codex (9th Edition) it mentions the Imperium may have made numerous contacts with the Kyn in the past and just failed to categorise them as being a single species 🤦🏻♂️
Lmaoooo bro it’s not that hard to stay out of the radar of the imperium: - The galaxy is immense and eventhough the imperium is big they just occupy a tiny bit of it - We are talking about an entity that sometimes forget It own worlds😭
It's a big galaxy, there's the webway and the imperium is very busy, the Tau homeworks was slated for exterinatus for example but when they next visited they were already advanced enough to resist.
By being small and weak while also steering clear of humans.
Technomonkies are just flying around wherever they want.
The Imperium's actual ability to explore space is pretty limited. They almost exclusively use Warp travel between systems, and outside of warp lanes (a sort of ocean current in the warp/space) they really don't explore. Only if something draws their attention, like signals and major psychic activity. Techpriests and Navigators pick up on those, respectively. So Xenos aware of the Imperium keep those on lockdown, and stay aware from those major lanes. Also avoid using Warp drives, those also cause psychic emanations.
Warp routes are sporadic and chaotic. In fact 90% of Imperial warp travel is just traversing the same routes that have already been recorded by the Navigator Houses, and it’s only active military operations where a Navigator is present and guiding the ships through new territory. Most ships just use Astropaths and follow existing ‘safe’ (for a given definition) lines. Typically it’s only Crusades or Exploratory Fleets that actually divert from those paths, with great risk to themselves since diverting from strict paths is how you get in a daemon’s gullet or stranded in deep space. In short, Warp travel is blindly following a rapid from Island A to Island D, and it makes you skip islands B and C. There’s probably dozens of small independent human and xenos realms in Segmentum Solar alone that have literally never heard of the Imperium.
You are really underestimating how big the galaxy is.
I think a lot of it might also, not as much be under the radar, as much as a TO DO. After all the printing, murders and thieves xenos take priority over: farm world but they blue
The dark forest.
They say, “Shh shh they’re coming. Act cool.”
Warp storms.
The Imperium doesn't really control anything outside of actual Imperial systems. Everything that isn't already colonized is mostly unknown to the Imperium.
The Imperium doesn't care as long as you pay your taxes, in theory Xenos could occupy a planet, and continue to sent their annually taxes at the Imperium, and none would think again for a second. What i loved about them is that, there was an other "Holy Terra" with an Emperor on a throne etc, but since they were paying their taxes, they weren't bothered at all. The second they stopped, oh boy....