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Who do you think the Imperium is more worried about

Chaos hands down.

Probably depends on where you are stationed and what part of the Inquisition you belong to.

We as players and outside observers know the greatest threat is xenos because of the Tyranids and Necrons. But in terms of who has been the greatest and most damaging foe of the Imperium, it is Chaos by a long mile.

 PhillyT wrote:


We as players and outside observers know the greatest threat is xenos because of the Tyranids and Necrons. But in terms of who has been the greatest and most damaging foe of the Imperium, it is Chaos by a long mile.

The way the fluff for the Silent King is set up, it seems like those two are mostly going to resolve each other- assuming, of course, some Eldar farseer doesn't manage to guide the majority of the Tyranids into the Eye of Terror.

I still think the Shadow in the Warp would be a serious threat to the Chaos gods, even on their home turf.

The Silent king wants that to be the goal for the Necrons, but it seems like a difficult proposition to convince the Dynasties to unite. They would need to see the tyranids as a real threat.

Chaos.

 PhillyT wrote:
We as players and outside observers know the greatest threat is xenos because of the Tyranids and Necrons.

Well I don't think that's true, Chaos has the ability to destroy reality itself. I think that's the greatest threat, over getting eaten or ruled by Necrons

Pretty low chance of that merger unless the ideas the the emperor's death causing the collapse is the ending.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
I still think the Shadow in the Warp would be a serious threat to the Chaos gods, even on their home turf.

We actually see a Chaos God interacting with the Shadow in Valedor. Slaanesh just pushes it aside when he wants to consume the Eldar dead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PhillyT wrote:
Pretty low chance of that merger unless the ideas the the emperor's death causing the collapse is the ending.

Well considering the Emperor is well on his way to dead and the powers within the warp are building I think that's the most likely outcome.

Except that it leads back to the various possible results of that death. If GW ever really selected an ending to their story, it won't be chaos merging with the real universe and killing everything. Doesn't really match up with their epic vision of Humanities clawing survival.

The Imperium as a whole views the Xeno threat as the biggest. This is only because the Imperium as a whole doesn't even know about Chaos.

Others like the Inquisition etc realise the true threat comes from Chaos as it can essentially turn humanity in against itself. This wouldn't happen from a Xeno threat as Humanity is extremely Xenophobic.

Well currently, unless they get everything else sorted out, the tyranids are going to steamroll the imperium and roll it up like a big fat cigar!

Chaos is the larger threat but that's not general knowledge. Chaos has unlimited war making capability and while it cannot sustain offensives over the long term (yet) it also cannot be eradicated. It has a safe area to retreat into and as mankind strengthens without the imperial truth, chaos also strengthens.

By contrast the necrons are a more conventional military problem, and could be crippled before they mobilize. Tyranid background is too idiotic to give a good analysis of.

Much like the tyranids, if there were no other threats, the Imperium could manage chaos. It is containable or at the very least counterable.

Unlike Chaos, which continues to be essentially the same threat now as it has been, the tyranids are immediate and final as a threat. If a solution is not found soon, there will likely be no solution.

 PhillyT wrote:
Much like the tyranids, if there were no other threats, the Imperium could manage chaos. It is containable or at the very least counterable.

Unlike Chaos, which continues to be essentially the same threat now as it has been, the tyranids are immediate and final as a threat. If a solution is not found soon, there will likely be no solution.

well the imperium right now is dealing with the 13th black crusade...so i dont think there worried about xeno threats right now...mostly chaos

For all the "failbaddon" stuff, the 13th black crusade is no joke and is occupying a lot of the Imperium's free military force. The Necrons and Tyranids are ultimately a bigger threat, but the Imperium doesn't exactly have any spare fleets to deal with them effectively.

 PhillyT wrote:
Except that it leads back to the various possible results of that death.

It's the one result we've been given consistently over multiple editions. It's pretty certain that that's what they're going for, GW themselves call Chaos "the Greatest Threat."

 PhillyT wrote:
If GW ever really selected an ending to their story, it won't be chaos merging with the real universe and killing everything. Doesn't really match up with their epic vision of Humanities clawing survival.

Of course the setting will never end so long as GW can help it, but talking from the perspective of the setting, where the Emperor is dying, a sudden Chaos victory which is dependent on the Emperor dying is likely to happen soon. Sooner at least than slow moving Nids can eat everyone or slow wakening Necrons can conquer every one.

 PhillyT wrote:
Much like the tyranids, if there were no other threats, the Imperium could manage chaos. It is containable or at the very least counterable.

They could manage Abaddon, but not Chaos itself. Only by total mastery of self could they do that, and that's not very likely.

 PhillyT wrote:
Unlike Chaos, which continues to be essentially the same threat now as it has been, the tyranids are immediate and final as a threat. If a solution is not found soon, there will likely be no solution.

Chaos is an ever changing threat, and currently is more powerful than ever before. Additionally, with more human psykers appearing and with the walls of reality growing thinner Chaos has ever more ways into the galaxy.

Within the highest echelons of the Imperium, those that actually know about Chaos and about everything else the Imperium is dealing with refer to CHAOS as "The Archenemy". Therefore, those in the know in the Imperium likely view Chaos as the biggest threat.

The 13th Black Crusade has also caused the largest mobilization of Imperial Forces since the Horus Heresy (which was also a Chaos event). Therefore, in terms of military might needed to manage the situation, Chaos is also the biggest threat there.

...or perhaps, maybe not, I suppose. The Tyrannid threat is estimated to require the Imperium to mobilize EVERY single human being, including children, in the galaxy to deal with, which would be a larger mobilization than the 13th Black Crusade. However, this is just an estimate. And is also so outrageous that they aren't even considering it an option and instead are trying to figure out another way to stop the Hive Mind. I wouldn't really consider this factor too much because until this actually happens, it's mostly just a what-if, and the narrative makes it pretty clear that if it ever DOES happen, an alternate solution will be found (because it's basically outright stated that the straight up solution of mobilizing everything is not going to happen).

Both Chaos and the Tyrannids threaten to destroy the entire Imperium in a way (If Abaddon succeeds, he'll start enveloping the entire galaxy in Chaos. The Tyrannids meanwhile is about when the full force will arrive), but Chaos is the more immediate threat.

Honestly, if GW ever does move forward with the story, the obvious way to go about it would be to just have all the Imperium's threats crash into each other (Chaos breaking out of the gate, Tyrranids full force, Grazghull's Waagh, majority of Necrons awakening... and they all slam right into each other). That way the plot can move forward without destroying the Imperium (well, without destroying it COMPLETELY, obviously. I'm sure much of the Imperium will be sandwhiched in between that giant mess)

i dont understand the "failbaddon" meaning?

I would imagine it varies in different sectors. The eastern front sees much more attacks from Orks, Tau and Tyranids than they do chaos. On the western front, the eye of terror is constantly spitting out heretics and traitor marines.

In short, the greater perceived threat is whoever has a knife to your throat.

LightKing wrote:
i dont understand the "failbaddon" meaning?

In the old lore it implied abbadons many black crusades, up until the current one, were military failures as he didn't succeed in conquering cadia. However most people mistake his goal as simply pushing past the cadian gate. In truth his goal for each crusade was a blinding success, such as acquiring his daemon sword or stealing a Blackstone fortress. This wasn't cleared up until the Black Legion Codex supplement which outlined what his goals are.

I should also point out even if they were failures, abbadons turned down daemonic ascension many times before. To even be offered it means he's clearly doing something right.

The Heading in the main book for Chaos is "The Greatest Threat." I think that says everything.

Chaos is the larger threat, because it's heavily implied and sometimes outright stated that humanity is on track to become a fully psychic race like the Eldar were. The existing threat is already the largest one, because it can turn people with far more insidious and subtle methods than any alien race can.

Add the possibility of humanity going the way of the Eldar, and it's fair to say the entire galaxy could drop into the warp if it wasn't for the Ordos Malleus and Hereticus going about stemming the tide of daemons and rogue psykers. The implication that the Tau are genetically engineered by the Eldar to stem Chaos by starving it fits into this narrative as well, implying that if psyker potential isn't written out of DNA, it merely ends up feeding Chaos. Though the Eldar would be biased towards coming to that conclusion even without Farseer dickery.

The Tyranids haven't required that the entire galaxy be mobilised, the threat is implied to require a 500% increase in Guard recruitment, which would be the same as arming every living soul in the Segmentum Solar, not the entire Imperium. Given that the Cain novels have given us glimpses into the Imperium stemming the Nid hordes in M42, I think it's fair to say that the immediate threat was stopped but the continuing threat remains far into that millenium. As an existential threat however, Chaos still ranks above them as Chaos can spring up anywhere at random, whereas xenotaint requires actual alien contact of some kind to spread, so the Ordo Xenos has an easier job of finding it by far.

Chaos is the greater ideological and theological threat since it was Chaos that was behind the interment of the Emperor. Chaos are the Devil to the Emperor's God.

However the Tyranids remain the greater existential threat. Although Chaos seeks ultimately to enslave humanity, humanity would still exist in some fashion as evidenced by the existence of the societies in the Eye of Terror. The Tyranids however would sweep the galaxy of life, and make humanity extinct.

one thing about nids to remember is that their "support network" requires them to take new territory. a costly long term war of attrituion could wel be all it takes to blunt the threat of a hive fleet tendrel.

BrianDavion wrote:
one thing about nids to remember is that their "support network" requires them to take new territory. a costly long term war of attrituion could wel be all it takes to blunt the threat of a hive fleet tendrel.

Though attritional warfare is one of the Imperium's preferences and advantages due to its size, attrition against the Tyranids is beyond the Imperium's capability to manage, as evidenced by the previous Tyranid Codices where the Imperium balked after Exterminatus of several hundred worlds by Kryptman, Battlefleet Solar was losing in attritional warfare to Leviathan, and when increasing mobilization to every man and woman in 3 Segmentums is recommended to even stand against the Tyranids. That is why the Imperium is so scared in general, because the Tyranids can outdo the Imperium at one of their greatest strengths.

Only the Orks have so far had any success with that against the Tyranids (and even that is up for debate as that war front is still unresolved).

Chaos! Nuff said.

Iracundus wrote:
However the Tyranids remain the greater existential threat. Although Chaos seeks ultimately to enslave humanity, humanity would still exist in some fashion as evidenced by the existence of the societies in the Eye of Terror. The Tyranids however would sweep the galaxy of life, and make humanity extinct.

I'm not sure we could call the survivors of a Chaos victory "human" in any real sense of the word. The word barely applies to the current denizens of the Eye of Terror, if it does at all.

When Slaanesh was born, she ate the souls of most of the Eldar in the process. I get the impression there are far more humans than there ever were Eldar simply because the former breed in greater numbers. It's quite possible that an increasing prevalence of psykers could have a similar or greater effect on humanity in the long term, hence the whole "dropping the galaxy into the warp" thing isn't just a matter of everyone going to live in the Warp under the Chaos gods, it would be an "almost everyone's souls would be sucked out of them to give birth to a new Chaos god" situation. Assuming that the Imperium's continuing efforts against the existing Chaos deities succeed, of course. I can't see any of the existing deities prevaling due to their competing ideologies.

Ranking it its probably something like Nids/Chaos, Then everything else.

Seems the imperium has faced enough Nids and chaos to know what kind of threat they actually are. While i dont think there has been enough conflict with necrons to view them as a massive threat (yet) or enough of Tau (for now).

not sure about eldar.

 GreaterGoodIreland wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
However the Tyranids remain the greater existential threat. Although Chaos seeks ultimately to enslave humanity, humanity would still exist in some fashion as evidenced by the existence of the societies in the Eye of Terror. The Tyranids however would sweep the galaxy of life, and make humanity extinct.

I'm not sure we could call the survivors of a Chaos victory "human" in any real sense of the word. The word barely applies to the current denizens of the Eye of Terror, if it does at all.

When Slaanesh was born, she ate the souls of most of the Eldar in the process. I get the impression there are far more humans than there ever were Eldar simply because the former breed in greater numbers. It's quite possible that an increasing prevalence of psykers could have a similar or greater effect on humanity in the long term, hence the whole "dropping the galaxy into the warp" thing isn't just a matter of everyone going to live in the Warp under the Chaos gods, it would be an "almost everyone's souls would be sucked out of them to give birth to a new Chaos god" situation. Assuming that the Imperium's continuing efforts against the existing Chaos deities succeed, of course. I can't see any of the existing deities prevaling due to their competing ideologies.

It is still survival. If the continued survival of humanity justifies anything and everything (as some on this forum are prone to claim), including all the atrocities perpetrated by the Imperium in the name of survival, then it justifies living under Chaos god domination versus the alternative of utter extinction by the Tyranids.

Actually the biggest threat to the imperium is itself. Were it not for the complete incompetence of the High Lords the imperium would be in a much better position to deal with both the Alien and the Heretic. Overzealous Inquisitors, IG officers that throw their forces into giant meat grinders, The Marines Malevolent. all of these are mankinds internal failings which allow the external threats to be so great.