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Why can’t the Imperium Nihilus be dominated by Chaos? Even if it falls, that only brings chaos to half of the known universe in 40k. The other half belongs to the imperium still. And there can be holdouts and bastions of the imperium within the Imperium Nihilus. I want GK to advance the plot more. Have Vigilus fall, and have the imperium Nihilus fall under the sway of chaos. Then we will truly have chaos vs imperium on an even basis rather than Chaos lurking in isolated areas, helmed in and guarded by fortress worlds.

Have the emperor ascend into godhood and bring forth new forces into the fray. Have chaos ascendant in the Imperium Nihilus half of the universe and also bring forth new and terrible chaos armies. Then we will have massive clashes of truly epic proportions.

Some say Ultramar, or Baal is in the imperium Nihilus. Well, they can be holdout bastions within the chaos dominated region. And we have read about space marine chapters whose home worlds have been destroyed, and they became space faring chapters. We can apply this to Ultra marines or blood angels too. Just because Ultramar or Baal is destroyed doesn’t mean the chapter has to go with it. They can fight on. In fact, we can say that precisely because Gulliman was so busy with the indominus crusade, hence the Ultramar system wasn’t prepared

err it IS dominated by chaos, countless sectors have fallen, Imperial armies can only make short warp jumps, drasticly limiting mobility, thats WHY vigilus is so important, so the IoM has a hope and prayer of liberating some of these lost worlds.

Bit much for Chaos to do. They don't really do take and hold much.

Personally I'd have just split the Imperium between following Guilliman or following the High Lords.

Given some of the short stories, it seems like they're mostly wheeling around having a grand old time slaughtering whatever they feel like while searching for whatever freaky goals their leaders have. So, yeah, they've more or less got what they want already.

BrianDavion wrote:
err it IS dominated by chaos, countless sectors have fallen, Imperial armies can only make short warp jumps, drasticly limiting mobility, thats WHY vigilus is so important, so the IoM has a hope and prayer of liberating some of these lost worlds.

This. What you're describing in the OP IS what's going on. Also, Ultramar's nowhere NEAR the Imperium Nihilus. Baal is actually pretty deep within it.

The issue is that Chaos haven't had a massive amount of time to properly colonise it, but they still will struggle for two reasons:
One is that they don't have the manpower to do it - even if they have ALL their pre-Rift armies, and pursuade 10% of worlds to join them, that's still not enough to properly colonise every world in the Nihilus.
Second is that it's not Abaddon's doctrine, nor is it really ANY of Chaos' doctrines. The ones who stay in the warp do so because it allows them to commune with Chaos (which, even in the Imperium Nihilus, isn't as good as being in the Eye), and those like Abaddon, Kharn, Angron or Ahriman aren't really the type to sit around empire building. The only ones who might do that are the Word Bearers or the Iron Warriors, but even then, they seem more bothered tearing down the Imperium rather than building their own.
Chaos is literally an army built on hate and pain - while we do see semi-stable Chaos societies spring up after conquest (Gaunt's Ghosts), these are largely done by human cultists, not Space Marines.

I'm not sure what you're talking about here, the Ultramarines already fell to chaos and are led by a demon primarch.