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So if Imperium is 1kk of worlds(even if 40kk or 600kk) then there is 99,99 of galaxy without Imperium presence. And if most of mankind navigation through stable warp tunnels so most of star systems are never visited.
So could be there another kingdom which doesn't connected to our? Like all their stable warp routs are nearby but never cross those which Imperium use.

Yes.

There are plenty of human worlds that are not connected to the Imperium, for the reasons you state. I find it unlikely that any of these empires (or whatever you want to call them) are as powerful or as widespread or as large as the Imperium. Sure, when you consider how vast the galaxy is it is technically possible, though the best I can come up with with is that what we know of the 40K universe it just isn't what the designers intended.


Also saying that the Imperium is made up of 1 million inhabited worlds just goes to show that numbers isn't Games Workshop's strong point. It's like the argument about there only being 1 million Space Marines in the whole of the Imperium. Sure, we can treat that as canon, but when you really think about it that few Space Marines is just an irrelevance in the galaxy wide scheme of things.

There could be, but it is unlikely a parallel civilization exists in the galaxy. The Imperium is very thinly spread, but it is very widely spread, and very paranoid. 10k years is easily enough to pick up radio signals or similar signs of other civilisations. Sublight probes are effective at such time scales. Also, there are species in the galaxy not constrained by stable warp routes (or at least not to the same degree): Aeldari, Orks, Tyranid, Necron, etc. It is highly likely these would have interacted with any other human civilisations and somehow caused the Imperium to become aware of them, but there is no evidence of this ever happening.

On the other hand, it wouldn't be out of the question for some future book to introduce the Neo-Interex or whatever and just handwave these issues. A galaxy is big enough to fit anything, and consistency was never the point of 40k.

It really depends on what you define as part of the Imperium. There's tons of stories of worlds that were at one point part of the Imperium, got cut off then rediscovered centuries later. At that point you have generations of independent evolution that while the Imperium considers part of the Imperium, could be considered a unique evolution of mankind.

I don't believe, however, that there are any examples of a pre-Emperor human civilization existing beyond Terra that would define it as a human civilization without Imperium roots.

Yes. There are.

The Imperium is only technologically and culturally stagnant. It’s otherwise surprisingly dynamic, with Rogue Traders tasked with seeking out new worlds for exploitation.

Sometimes it’s a relatively virgin world with no sapient life. Those? You can get cracking straight away. But there are still long lost outposts of humanity being found, other survivors of Long Night, or systems one part of but since severed from the Imperium.

Of those human worlds rediscovered? Could be Forgeworlds, Hive Worlds, Knight Worlds, Primitive Worlds etc.

That means there’s always some chance of discovering a world with a complete STC, which would potentially change the galactic status quo forever. Spesh if (and it’s not clear at the moment) a STC can make copies of itself.

The Leagues of Votann are basically another human society that operates on a similar scale to the Imperium.

There's bunches of them!

The Imperium usually brings them into the fold or steps on them when they're discovered, but they're out there. The Fantasy Flight RPGs dealt with that a lot - areas that used to be part of the Imperium and were recently re-accessed, with some wanting to return, some realizing that they didn't have the resources to fight back, and some outright resisting. There's secessionist movements as well, although those tend to get jumped on very quickly if the Munitorum can spare the manpower, and that's without getting into Chaos-following civilizations like the Sanguinary Worlds. It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure I remember Caine having a chuckle with another commissar about how the promises the Imperium offers 'border worlds' to get them to join peacefully are totally different from Tau propaganda and they mean them, honest they do, would the ambassador just go over there and tell lies?

Besides orks, the Imperium's most frequent enemy is simply other humans.

El Torro wrote:

Also saying that the Imperium is made up of 1 million inhabited worlds just goes to show that numbers isn't Games Workshop's strong point.

This is one of the few times GW has been correct when it comes to numbers.

The IoM is meant to be borderline insignificant in true galactic terms, that is the point.

Knight World's are allies with the Imperium, not its subjects.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Knight World's are allies with the Imperium, not its subjects.

That's arguably true for basically ANY entity within the Imperium.

The Imperium is not a cohesive entity-it's a loose alliance of a million different little systems.

The Mechanicum is basically its own distinct empire that just happens to be allied with that of Terra. That is why the eagle has two heads, after all. I interpreted the original question as being about large-ish parallel civilisations, not just small isolated clusters. There are plenty of the latter. Consider something like what happened with the Tau - discovered at a neolithic stage, slated for extermination and colonisation, but isolated for a few millennia by warp storms. If the timing had been slightly different, you'd had a human colony isolated for millennia instead. That is likely a common enough occurrence.

The question is more about civilisation which lost during Long night. And split by warp. The LoV is a good example

The way I think about the question.

Consider all the threats the Imperium faces.

If the size of the Imperium is galactically insignificant, it follows that it's only ever encountered an equally insignificant subset of the threats that exist within the galaxy. The current size of the Imperium is constrained by the cost of dealing with those threats.

For a parallel human empire to exist, it would need to be more efficient at dealing with the constraint of external threats than the Imperium has proven itself to be over tens of thousands of years. Efficiency could mean a lot of things - better weapons, better modes of transportation, better social / economic systems, better adaptions to the environment, etc.

This rules out the possibility of a large human empire emerging from Terran colonists cut off from the rest of humanity at some point. As they would have started with the same technology as the Imperium, they would be subject to the same constraints without the same systems / resources to sustain them. Sure, there can be isolated worlds full of people, and there can be small empires that span a few worlds. It would just have to be even less significant than the Imperium.

But this leaves open the possibility that, through a series of adaptations, humanity became something else. One of the defining characteristics of all races in 40k is adaptation. Necrons used to be human-ish before digitalizing their entire civilization into the robots they are today. Tau are fish who require exo-suits to operate out of their native environment. Tyranids are adaptation to any situation in the galaxy, no way of knowing what they started off as originally. Orks, at one point in their far flung past, were ruled by Grots who oversaw Boys for labor.

Would it be possible for a lost colony of humans to adapt to a new environment so as to overcome the constraints faced by the Imperium to establish a galactic empire? Absolutely. And it could be much larger than the Imperium as it would have to be more efficient at dealing with external threats.

After 10,000 or so years, would the subjects of this empire still be recognizably human? Absolutely not. Such a civilization would likely have no memory of it's human origins and consider any humans it encounters the same as it would any other threat.

 techsoldaten wrote:
One of the defining characteristics of all races in 40k is adaptation. Necrons used to be human-ish before digitalizing their entire civilization into the robots they are today. Tau are fish who require exo-suits to operate out of their native environment. Tyranids are adaptation to any situation in the galaxy, no way of knowing what they started off as originally. Orks, at one point in their far flung past, were ruled by Grots who oversaw Boys for labor.

I don't think this follows. The Necrontyr did not become Necrons to adapt, they did it partly because they were tricked, and partly to win an unncessary war. And they have not changed since. Tau are not fish and operate fine outside of their suits. Apart from fairly superficial tactical adaptations, Tau only did a single major cultural change, when they were unified by the ethereals. We don't fully know that much about the ancient history or the Orks and Eldar, but it seems like they've been similar to their current state (modulo the Fall) for millions of years. Orks do get bigger when they fight a lot, which I suppose is a kind of adaptation.

It is striking that the Imperium pretty much never adapts humanity to be more suitable for a given climate, despite biotechnology being one of the areas where humanity is very advanced, but instead changes the climate through terraforming. I think 40k is more the story of not adapting to circumstances, but rather using bigger and bigger hammers until sheer brute force solves the problem. The Leagues of Votann are an example of a human civilization that has no problem modifying humans to fit their environment, but the Imperium really is not like that.

Tyranids do adapt, that's their whole shtick, but they are also very much extra-galactic.

I thought Grots used to be called Brainboys and ran the Orks, Tau were mostly living in ponds at the time of the Heresy, and the Necron exogenesis was an attempt at race-wide immortality through digital transformation.

Don't know if you have to accept the polymorphic premise to understand the cost argument. The main thing I'm saying is the size of the Imperium is proportional to the cost to fight off external threats.

Human colonists, separated from the resources the Imperium is able to provide, would be starting from scratch logistics-wise. Unlikely they could establish an empire of comparable size unless they could reduce the cost of fighting off external threats. That leads to them evolving into something not so human..

The Brainboyz became the Snotlings.

The Tau came from the plains of their homeworld (from the first Tau Codex) so despite their aquatic sounding vehicle names, they are actually descended from plains hunters.

The Necrontyr became the Necrons in an attempt at immortality but also to strengthen themselves to war against the Old Ones. They were a short lived race that developed cancers at an early age and who still died young despite their civilization developing high technology. It seems whatever was the cause of their short lifespan was so deep and fundamental that it could not be fixed through genetic engineering, at least not without making them no longer Necrontyr.

Non-Imperial humans can definitely still be a thing in current 40K. The galaxy is huge.

The Snotling thing isn't hard fact just a theory, just like how there's a theory the Brainboyz are the Krork or Old Ones.

T'au vehicles have aquatic names because those are Imperial designations, not T'au. All T'au vehicles have a technical designation (the Hammerhead being TX7) that the T'au will use, they just aren't as dramatic or enjoyable to read. So even in BL novels they'll be referred to by their Imperial destination because that's what the models are called.

As for the Necrontyr, they're expertise lay in physics rather than biology and could never manage to find a way to repair their DNA. They extended their lives using a form of cryosleep for travel between worlds but given that the stsr of their homeworkd was being fed on by the Nightbringer, it's likely that had a part to play in the radiation that ruined the Necrontyr.

If the Necrontyr had physics expertise, they really ought to have been able to figure out radiation shielding, even if it is evil C'tan radiation (aren't C'tan extremely tied to the physical universe?). Also, cryosleep is really fancy biotech on its own. The Necron origin story doesn't make a huge amount of sense if you nitpick the details (like much of 40k), but it is narratively cool, so I'm OK with it.

Part of the mystery of the Necrontyr is understanding just how short lived they were.

We’re told they suffered horribly due to their homeworld’s hyperactive star wrecking their DNA and that. We’re told they lead short, pain filled lives, and looked at the functionally immortal Old Ones with envy.

The war kicked off when the Old Ones refused to share the secret of their longevity and other toys.

But, when you’re jealous of the lifespan of a functionally immortal species? What does a short life span even look like. Years? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Longer? It’s all relative. To a Mayfly, or even a lovely soft slobbery Doggo, us smelly hoomans live forever. Lovely and slobbery as Doggos are, outside of any children they know? Their life span tragically isn’t long enough to really notice their Hooman ageing.

But anyways. Radiation shielding. It seems it’s a case that The Damage Was Done. So harmful was their native star, it wrecked their genome entirely. So even with century ships with suspended animation/stasis for the occupants eventually arriving somewhere with a presumably less baleful star? The harm was baked into them.

To the OP, as a Chaos fan I must say it's rather sad that Chaos worlds are quite an unexplored topic in 40K lore. We know they exist, we know they're large enough to be recruiting grounds for CSM Legions, we know they can't be all Chaos all mutation and death all the time, but we don't actually know how they work and how any mortal can survive growing up within the Eye of terror. (because that's what GW likes to show: World turns daemon, everything goes downhill and every plant and bug starts eating you if you're not turned into a spawn, starved or enslaved by CSM).
I'd like to see actual Chaos worlds were people can live "normal" lives. When the Imperium is a fascists dream, maybe a tzeentch world is not worse than straight anarchism, with conflicting warlords, few rules, but somehow people make their living and psychic powers are just like a tool many just use for their boring lives and get used to that every months there's a change in power and your hometown does funny things like in Inception.
A nurgle world can't mean suffering and dieing by desease all the time, otherwize they wouldn't survive for 10K years. There have to be worlds of boring field work day in, day out; or someone taking care of mushrooms, giant maggots, toads, whatever. Or giant chemistry complexes run by normal people that have access to health care because Nurglites also like healing and Biologi Putrifiers have to get their stuff from somewhere and don't want their workers to die all the time. And every 7th day the community comes together and makes trifold prayers.
A khorne world might work exactly as we see the Yautja in Predator Badlands.
Surely a slaanesh world can't be worse than Rome in the spartacus series.
All in all there has to be a human Chaos civilisation we hear very little about. It's possible we even have planets with not only humans but also Xenos on them, working happily together because they all share the same belief and enemies. Yes, life in the Eye will probably always be unstable and it's possible one day your field of fine mushrooms turns to ashes or tries to eat you because Tzeentch doesn't like your patron. But maybe there are also worlds that have proper protection for the population by the Legions or other Chaos forces or even the gods themselves.

We get a pretty good look at what a Chaos planet is like in the Gaunt's Ghosts books, where we see the planet Gereon under long term occupation by Chaos. They have a functioning society, but if anything it's even more oppressive and brutal than the Imperium typically is.

 Pariah Press wrote:
We get a pretty good look at what a Chaos planet is like in the Gaunt's Ghosts books, where we see the planet Gereon under long term occupation by Chaos. They have a functioning society, but if anything it's even more oppressive and brutal than the Imperium typically is.

Who was occupying it?
Black Legion? Night Lords? Daemons? Cultists?

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Pariah Press wrote:
We get a pretty good look at what a Chaos planet is like in the Gaunt's Ghosts books, where we see the planet Gereon under long term occupation by Chaos. They have a functioning society, but if anything it's even more oppressive and brutal than the Imperium typically is.

Who was occupying it?
Black Legion? Night Lords? Daemons? Cultists?

Blood pact, I assume, so khorne Guard. Stands to reason there have to be different kinds of worlds. We get a little glimpse at the plague planet in Lords of Silence, which is just a Barbarus 2.0

Sabbath worlds is part of region where main religion is chaos. So occupied worlds are suffer but there's a bit of explanation of how chaos society is live. Even how they do gross book..

Pawns of chaos is set on a chaos world with the imperium as the invading aggressor.

the whole necrons "short lives permanent DNA damage but miraculously not damaged in the reproductive bits so they can still reproduce perfectly fine, just die quickly" was never particularly satisfying.

And the relegation of the c'tan as gods to weak creatures that can be dominated only made it worse.

IMO it would have been much better if the necrons by chance happened to produce the tastiest bioenergy in existence and the unconcsious star gods just drained them wherever they went. So the necrons thought their bodies were broken, but they couldn't fix the problem without changing all their DNA to make them not necrons anymore. The current nonsense about c'tan eating souls makes no sense - souls are warp energy and the c'tan are highly vulnerable to warp energy. It would be like humans eating plutonium...

So the old ones were like, we can't fix you because being you is the problem and they never realised the c'tan were the ones to blame so they gave them consciousness and sought aid. Only to find that their hunger for the necron bioenergy got worse and then they basically forced the necrons to make the biotransfer because the accelerated drain seemed to imply their species was terminally dying.

But then the curtain is drawn back and it was actually the c'tan all along and the necron tragedy is truly tragic, one of circumstance and their war on the old ones also tragic, because there was nothing the old ones could have done for them.


Also, I'm pretty sure in one of the older ork publications it states as fact that the snotlings are the degenerated remnants of the brain boyz.

Very old and still just an Imperial theory in WD 118 and Waaaagh! The Orks (1989 and 1990 respectively). It pops up from time to time because, y'know got to keep some humour in Orks.

But as with so much older background in the age of the Internet, theory becomes fact because sources never get looked at.

 Gert wrote:
Very old and still just an Imperial theory in WD 118 and Waaaagh! The Orks (1989 and 1990 respectively). It pops up from time to time because, y'know got to keep some humour in Orks.

But as with so much older background in the age of the Internet, theory becomes fact because sources never get looked at.

I think you'll have to re read your sources then, because the snotling entry on waargh the Orks states it as fact rather than as a theory.

I stand corrected, but that's also Rogue Trader, where the background was a wild west of ideas that hadn't been codified into what we know as 40k today.