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Well after the gak show of Death Masque and the steadily approaching End Times I curious to hear what each factions end game is. It seems to me at least that xenos end games are getting curbed in exchange for Imperial focussed ones, because Space Marines are sooo cool. The reason I say this is Aun'va getting assassinated in Mont'ka and Ynnead getting flushed in Death Masque and Commaragh under threat from Khaines Gate they are really chopping down on plausible plans for Xenos to be relevant in the big scheme of things.

Orks have Ghazskull uniting the Waaagh!'s and making super Waaaagh!'s around the galaxy but ''unite the Orks'' isn't much of a grand end game plan. It'll be a threat but I can't imagine GW allowing the Imperium to be swept aside by a horde of Orks. Example of Grmgor Ironhide in Fantasy End Times, he united the Orcs and lead a massive WAAAAAAGH! that swept over the entire eastern part of the world, but he got no screen time because swamping people with numbers isn't cool enough to write about.

Tyranids don't have an end game save for eating the Astrominician, heck we don't even know if there are many more of them. I hugely doubt they will play a major part in the end times save for being a casual threat important characters can slaughter to look better, with the Fantasy analogy being Beastmen or Goblins ambushing the important characters armies but getting wrecked to make that character cooler.

Dark Eldar never had an end game to begin with.

Craftworld end game just crumbled, it may pick back up with an ''Avatar of Ynnead'', finding her fragments, but we all know how well Avatars of the Eldar pantheon deal with plot armour...

Harlequins may've been invested in Ynnead, but I believe they have something else in mind. Only faction so far that has an end game yet to be revealed and will probably be revealed alongside Ahriman's quest into the Black Library.

Tau don't have an end game as far as I am aware. I forecast them to go the way of the Brettonians, with horde faction (Orks or Tyranids) wiping out the empire off screen while the story focusses on a single important Tau character (either made up or Farsight) which will have minor relevance to the final battle.

Chaos don't have much of a plan either. Abbadons crimson path idea is moronic in timescale and none of the Chaos Gods actually want to wipe out humanity. Chaos has a plethora of End Game players, Primarchs and Ahriman (predicted major player) and Fateweaver and Abbadon and Typhus that I sure will make an appearance however I can only see Ahriman achieving something game changing.

Imperial end game is clutching at straws. Starchild theory could go horribly wrong and would undoubtedly destroy terra. Grey Knights have some silly pandora's box that GW might remember. But truth be told the Imperium has very few major players, just a lot of pawns. A Chapter Master can lead a mission but the end game players are the people with greater plans, and the only ones that pop up to me are the returning Primarchs. Hopefully they have a plan.

Necrons don't have an end game either, even if a full resurrection occurred the Necrons are a fractured people with few fan favourite characters. They should've kept the Void Dragon under mars, that was a cool end game. Sure they have end game weaponry like the Orray or Time Travel but I can't imagine it being used in the End Times. Predict Trazyn to make an appearance in the End Times when *generic space marine character* rescues a Primarch from his clutches.

Have I missed or misinturpritted any end games? Because to me at least GW will need to pull a lot out of their ass to make this end times story compelling due to the lack of ambition or end game most characters/factons have.

You forget that everyones end game plans are actually Tzeentch's end game plans for Tzeentch is orcastrating every action in the galaxy. Or is that just what he wants you to think so you won't listen to the voice in your head. Wait, is that Tzeentch? Or was it Alpharius? Or maybe Omegas? Are those alligned with chaos actually heretics? What if the Emperor is the only chaos God and he has projected the other four?

Chaos certainly has a plan but no one, not even Tzeentch who is making those plans, actually knows what those plans are. Or does he...

Was one thread whinging about Death Masque not enough?

 Lord Fishface wrote:
Was one thread whinging about Death Masque not enough?

If you read past the first two sentences perhaps you'd be able to respond more aptly to the question I'm asking?

The Tau are an endgame.

They expend across the galaxy, Chaos starves to death.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
The Tau are an endgame.

They expend across the galaxy, Chaos starves to death.

HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHhahahaaa....

Wait, your serious?

BWAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAGAHA!

But what chance do the Tau have against a determined Ork WAAAAGH! or a large Hive Fleet or a large scale Necron reawakening? They also have logistical problems, Tau ships are slow, they don't have great cross sector communication ala Astropaths yet they maintain a central government. There are too many factors that could wipe the Tau away I can't see them making to the end game as a race. I strongly believe they will be in the end game but they will probably be represented as a single surviving force of the empire (shadowsun or Farsight) in a very similar way to Brettonians.

You're underestimating Abaddon. He's the single most important threat for the whole galaxy. Even worse than Gazgkull because the latter isn't necessarily evil and possibly the only way to stop Abaddon even.
For the other factions:
There's something going on with Farsight for sure, he'll be important.
The Necrons will side with the imperium since they've been reduced to imperium but with machines in 5th edition.
I don't know Eldar fluff.
I agree with the Tyranids, so far they won't be much more than another nuisance. But I'd laugh hard if it would end like:
"Abaddon finally stood on the fallen ruins of Terra, decapitating his greatest foe, the corpse-emperor.
And suddenly: Tyranids nomnomnom."
The Inquisition has lost practically all of its military arms since GK, SoB and now even Death Watch have been separated from them in newer fluff. Probably it'll be erased when the emperor awakes and says "wtf did you do to my imperium?!"

The End game of humans is possibly planned by the Emperor.

In one of the HH boks he plays a game of regicide and the idea he gets from it seems rather complicated and more than a simple "beat chaos = win".

The main issue i see is, you can't have a "end game" without an end, maybe too many major players of the 40k verse don't want a end ?

Tyranids = eternal hunger = move on to next dinner
Orks = eternal violence = move on to next fight
Chaos = eternal chaos = prevent order forever
Necrons = eternal rule = they didn't go for immortality for nothing..
Humans = survive all these gribblies who want to be our undoing

 EmpNortonII wrote:
The Tau are an endgame.

They expend across the galaxy, Chaos starves to death.

not unless they exterminate all the subject races. Also tau ae Blunt not Blanks, Chaos will still receive a trickle of power even from them, especially since they are not creatures without emotions.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Also tau are Blunt not Blanks, Chaos will still receive a trickle of power even from them, especially since they are not creatures without emotions.

True, but if the galaxy was only Tau the Chaos powers would be greatly weakened. Not that it's likely to happen ofc, they're a small player even compared to something like the SoB...

Alright ill go down all the ones i can think of right off the bat.

Eldar: Prevent chaos by killing thing

Dark eldar: Torture and maim to get out of being eaten by the sex god.

Orks: WAAAAAAAARRRRGH!

Necrons: Be salty donkey-caves and kill everything in the universe

Chaos: DESTROY ALL! which ironically will end up in the destruction of the chaos gods as well.

Tau; Greater good, big happy galactic family

Imperial guard: Dont get shot, thats really it.

Space marines: GLORY FOR THE EMPEROR KILL ALL XENOS!

But really almost every ones end game is to rule the universe, thats it.

In 32k the Ork known as the Beast planned on forcing humanity into surrendering them and using them as slaves for a greater ork empire. Some hives in Armageddon surrendered in 40k.

Tyranids simply plan on eating and reproducing. It all depends if they can eat more than they lose.

The Eldar plan, both Craftworld, Commorragh and Exodite is surviving tell they regain their numbers or everyone else dies off. Comoragh Eldar probably have the best chance sense have the most secure sanctuary.

The Tau plan of getting big, using aliens as human sandbags till they do, then use their technology to wipe everyone who opposes them out(this isn't to far fetched if they can make as many Fire Warriors as Guardsmen).

Chaos which one, well I'll just go with Black Legion. They plan of progressively whittle down the Imperium through in a galactic insurgency where they always are the ones with overwhelming force and then running away while at the same time spreading chaos cults.

The Imperial endgame has changed. Even after the Horus Heresy the Imperium was still the unquestioned leading power in the galaxy. Now they are holding out hoping that either the Emperor will be reborn, the mechanicus will rediscover ancient technology or mankind turns into a psychic race.

The Necrons plan is to seal of the warp and wake up enough of their people so they can beat the Imperium and the Tyranids.

Imperium: Exterminate the filthy Xenos, Heretics and rule the galaxy in prosperity for all eternity

Renegades: Stay hidden, don't die, maybe fight Chaos/Xenos

Chaos Marines: Topple the Imperium

Chaos Daemons: Dem tasty souls

Eldar: Escape Slaanesh, kill off other races, return to glory

Deldar: Don't get eaten by Slaanesh

Nids: Nom nom

Necrons: Varies, some want return to glory, some want to go Dalek on everything else

Tau: Expand, greater good, or become evil rulers. I think they have no idea, just expand like a cancer.

Orks: Fight Club

The BRB has been explicit for several editions that the Emperor's end game is to protect the human race whilst they endure an evolution into a psychic race that is not troubled by daemons or chaos.

Wasn't the original RT fluff something about "the emerging psychic race of man"? I always thought that was the Imperial endgame

The Ork endgame is just to WAAAAAGH constantly. If the Orks manage to wipe out everyone else, then that's less of a win than they're at right now, as then they can only fight themselves. Considering that everyone else in the universe will fight with them, and that they can basically WAAAAGH in any direction and have a good time, I'd say that Orks are closer to their endgame than most other factions alongside Deldar (I think, I don't read much DE fluff but I think their goal is just "cause agony and feel pleasure").

Good grief, he's right. The Orcs are currently enjoying victory.

Vect doesn't have an endgame, apart from staving off the endgame for the indefinite future.

The Harlequin endgame is rumored to be around tricking Slaanesh to expending all of her power to restore the Eldar race.

Orks= endless party time

I actually have my own theory to the chaos gods and what they want. Sure, on the surface, they all want things like constant constant war, eternal plague, destructive hedonism, or chaos in its rawest form, change. However, I think they all have the same base motivation- balance.

It's similar to the idea behind the "prophecy" of the Star Wars prequels. Granted, I don't think Lucas actually thought this out, but the idea was that Anakin was to bring "balance" to the force at a time when the Jedi outnumbered the Sith several hundred to two. And yet everyone was so surprised when Anakin actually leveled the playing field by reducing the number to about 2:1. Anakin did bring balance, but it seemed destructive because of our perspective.

In lore, all of the chaos gods exist right now, save for Slaanesh. The chaos gods are the manifestations of war, plague, and schemes. Overall, the chaos gods naturally generate entropy just by their daily existences. Conversely, humans generate order in the same fashion. Organizing into societies, cleaning our rooms, making laws, setting routines, all of these are things we naturally do, all to balance out the chaos of life. This is balance, and it works.

Fast forward to the time of the great crusade. War only existed as a tool by the Imperium to conquer entire systems on a weekly basis, most every disease had been cataloged and cured, goddam everybody was self-righteous about everything (seriously, we see some drinking done in celebration in the HH novels but the overall tone of normal humans is temperance), and people were so monitored that schemes were difficult to concoct. Basically, the amount of order in the universe was vastly outweighing the entropy. This is what forced their hands. Just like a predator population will decline once it has hunted too much of its prey, thus allowing the prey to repopulate, the same happened with chaos and order, just in some mechanism a bit more esoteric due to the cryptic nature of the warp. Some mechanic caused the amount of order generated by humans to decline, thus allowing the amount of chaos generated by the warp and the gods to increase.

They don't want to kill all sentient life. First of all, they need physic energy to exist, but secondly, they're not about raw destruction. The chaos gods have created an imbalance of chaos now, and I think this will actually be their downfall. Much like order pushed chaos to the brink of extinction, only to be toppled at the last moment, the same will happen to order. This will be influenced by the warp. The warp is not sentient, but it is aware, in a sense. It doesn't scheme like Tzeentch does, but reading through the lore and the HH, it does seem to have a method of influencing events that just happen to work out in some way or another. In fact, these waves of order and chaos might be natural cycles of the universe at large, cycles of life and decay.

The chaos legions, and perhaps the gods themselves, do not understand or comprehend it, but they have no goal. They are an intrinsic force of nature, and nature does not have goals or desires. Nature is a cycle that has peaks and valleys- this pattern is seen in everything from predator-prey populations, to global climates, to river formations, and to periods of abundant or scarce life. We're just seeing things on a much bigger scale. Eventually, some natural pressure will prevent chaos from growing too large, and order will take the momentum.

Now, whether it's humans who are still around when this happens is yet to be seen.

ok first of all GL thought the prophecy through, you're simply assuming blance = a numerical balance, which has been stated multiple times explictitly this is not the case. he meant balance in a more eastren Philophosical sense. not a balance between light and dark but that dark was, by it's nature unbalancing.


as for the faction end games, for a lot of them it's just well.. survive. I mean whats the United States end game? frances end game? Canada's end game?

you're assuming all the factions HAVE an identifiable end game

 EmpNortonII wrote:
The Tau are an endgame.

They expend across the galaxy, Chaos starves to death.

They aren't they are really self reproducing canned pet food.

If I want nothing else to happen with the end times. I want Erebus to make an appearance again... and Kharn to finish the job he started at the end of the HH novel Betrayer.

Beating him to a bloody pulp. Like the little cockroach deserves.

Actually an epic duel between Lucius and Kharn would be all sorts of awesome. And on top of all that, I'd like to see the Ultramarines beaten around a bit more.

With the Imperial Fists coming to their aid and saving the day for once. Or even a random chapter like the White Scars saving everyone because - why not?

I think I can add the mechanicus's endgame is finding a sort of trump card technology that will win the wars they need, maybe a non back firing geller bomb or a starship manufacturing plant that can make like a ship a minute without problem, some kind of STC that will give them the resources they need to help push back the enemies surrounding them and claim all for the glory of mars!

What happened to Ynnead? I was sure she was the Ultimate Eldar end game. Isha and the laughing god are still around too. I always liked the idea that Isha and the Emperor hang out in the warp (I know she's imprissooned, but they could be communicating) and have some sort of plan togheter.

I can see this was posted a while ago. I mostly agree with OP.

As a side note: Dante is supposedly important. I don't quite remmember how it goes but I think there was the prothecy of a golden warrior turning the tide in the final battle (3.5ed ba codex). Though if this is true at all it could refer to a number of figures, both the Sanguinor, Custodes, any primarch or even Big E.

 Nerak wrote:
What happened to Ynnead? I was sure she was the Ultimate Eldar end game. Isha and the laughing god are still around too. I always liked the idea that Isha and the Emperor hang out in the warp (I know she's imprissooned, but they could be communicating) and have some sort of plan togheter.

I can see this was posted a while ago. I mostly agree with OP.

As a side note: Dante is supposedly important. I don't quite remmember how it goes but I think there was the prothecy of a golden warrior turning the tide in the final battle (3.5ed ba codex). Though if this is true at all it could refer to a number of figures, both the Sanguinor, Custodes, any primarch or even Big E.

Perhaps Sanguinius gets a cosmic battle-rez and manages to get a second crack at the big bad?

 Nerak wrote:
What happened to Ynnead? I was sure she was the Ultimate Eldar end game. Isha and the laughing god are still around too. I always liked the idea that Isha and the Emperor hang out in the warp (I know she's imprissooned, but they could be communicating) and have some sort of plan togheter.

Eldrad got greedy and tried to summon Ynnead before her time in a ritual during the Death Masque fluff. During which he drew the infinity circuits onto a psychoactive moon however the ritual was interrupted by the Death Watch, shattering the ritual links and stopping Ynneads power mid birth. The repercussions of this haven't been fully explored yet, but from my inference it could range from ''Nothing, the spirits fled back to the craftworlds and he can try again'', through to ''Ynnead was summoned but unable to manifest, now we have a baby malformed Ynnead somewhere in the warp'' to ''Ynnead is dead, Craftworlds are left without infinity circuit and are therefore without life support, Eldrad causes CWE to go extinct.''

While I quite like your idea about Isha, I've stolen my own headcannon from Lordlucans fantastic fanfiction Warhammer 60K: Age of Dusk. In that Isha has slowly gone insane under Nurgles watch and suffers from stockholm syndrome, a loving wife who wants all Eldar to join her as her Children under Nurgles care. Because in 60K nobody is allowed nice things.

Maybe I'm being cynical, but I am a survivor of the End Times, and I've seen the death of a game I loved. And I can draw a worrying amount of parallels to where 40K is going. It started out army books bringing up problems of world ending proportions that haven't been mentioned before (Corruption of the World roots, Manfreds confirmed return = Khaines Gate in Commarragh and the Final act of Cegorach)), then with campaign books advancing the story line (Sigmars Blood = Shield of Baal) and finally it was ramped up into the End times. And In almost Poetic Irony the End Times book:Khaine focussed on the Roles of the Elf Gods in the War of the Heavens being re-enacted by mortals I can see how certain 40K forces mirror the plight of the Old World. I just hope that 40K has something left when the dust cloud settles...

**Over-dramatization over**