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I feel like GW moved the timeline on and created the dark imperium, half of the human empire that can’t see the astronomicon, but haven’t really described what’s going on in there.

The primaris troops were delivered to chapters in that region to reinforce them but what else?

Is the whole place being wrecked by chaos and xenos? Are systems turning into mini empires and forgetting about the emperor?

Overall the Imperium Nihilus is in a really tough spot, but as far as I know it's not really splintering on a "forgetting about the Emperor" level so far.

The Indomitus Crusade eventually made contact with the other side and managed to somewhat reinforce the Imperium Nihilusm, and Guilliman declared that Chapter Master Dante be the Regent of this part of space.

Currently the Imperium is struggling to keep the safe routes between the Imperium proper and Imperium Nihilus open (I think there are two, the Vigilus campaign was about one of them).

I personally go with mini empires, but all trying to claim to be acting in the name of the Emperor or Imperium as a whole. For me that sets up more Imperial vs Imperial faction conflicts without any obvious side being in the right. So maybe one group of worlds demands tax/aid/resources from other worlds, in the name of the Emperor so they can restore/maintain order across more worlds. They may even mean it but other worlds may view this as power grabbing and justify withholding their resources because they need to hoard the resources to make sure their own worlds stay stable.

Its not great. Being cut off from their source of supplies and reinforcements, the Imperial forces in Imperium Nihilus are in a pretty desperate situation.
The Chapters of the Blood (BA and their successors) got nuked during the Devestation of Baal and their chapter territories are either exterminatus'd or eaten by Nids. The Primaris were believed to bring a reprieve but then they showed susceptibility to both the Black Rage and Red Thirst.
The following is Spoilers for Spear of the Emperor:

If SM chapters are falling to chaos then whole systems of humans must be turning.

Sure. Cut of from the Emperor's light there's likely thousands of people falling to Chaos/Xenos/other worship.

 Gert wrote:
Sure. Cut of from the Emperor's light there's likely thousands of people falling to Chaos/Xenos/other worship.

Only thousands?

For every world that turns another stays true There's. There's a difference between turning away from the Emperor and just getting nuked by the hundreds of enemies that are lurking about. So thousands turning, hundreds of thousands getting destroyed/enslaved/eaten.

 Gert wrote:
For every world that turns another stays true There's. There's a difference between turning away from the Emperor and just getting nuked by the hundreds of enemies that are lurking about. So thousands turning, hundreds of thousands getting destroyed/enslaved/eaten.

I would argue the scale would be in the billions. The human race in 40k number in the quadrillions. Assuming the dark imperium side of the galaxy is less densely populated than the Terran side and there's probably still trillions of humans scattered across tens of thousands of worlds across the dark imperium.

40k scale is wacky to think about.

I really want to know how bad warp travel is throughout the dark imperium. Because a lot of planets are said to rely on foreign deliveries of food and water to survive. If those agri-worlds supplying those goods are destroyed, or trade severely disrupted it's most likely the biggest killer of humanity isn't Chaos, but famine.

I’d like to see a lot more stories set in the dark imperium, in many ways it should be a re set for some of the 40K setting. Half of the imperium has been dark for over 200 years, that’s enough time for systems to have gone to war with each other over supplies, for new cultures and communities to be created and technologies.

It’s basically a wild frontier where some people will be desperate to survive and some will be holding onto their wealth and resources at all costs. And the some Astartes show up and smash the place up.

In the core rule book the map shows that the tau have their 5th sphere of expansion in the dark imperium so maybe they have used it as an opportunity to bring more humans over to their empire

I find it good that Guilliman and Cawl are not overshadowing everything in that half of the Imperium (at least not yet). I would prefer multiple human mini-empires with multiple of them claiming to represent the Imperium so there is no clear "loyalist" side. While it is easy to cast the leaders of these mini-empires as corrupt and power hungry, I think a more nuanced portrayal captures the difficult task facing any Imperial leader. They are faced with massive threats and uncertainty all round and they may very well try to do what is right for their local region but find that in order to do so they need more power and resources. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Iracundus wrote:
I find it good that Guilliman and Cawl are not overshadowing everything in that half of the Imperium (at least not yet). I would prefer multiple human mini-empires with multiple of them claiming to represent the Imperium so there is no clear "loyalist" side. While it is easy to cast the leaders of these mini-empires as corrupt and power hungry, I think a more nuanced portrayal captures the difficult task facing any Imperial leader. They are faced with massive threats and uncertainty all round and they may very well try to do what is right for their local region but find that in order to do so they need more power and resources. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Rogue traders, who are used to working in the fringes of the imperium and beyond should thrive in the dark side of the imperium.

Codex rogue trader would be coooool

The general idea of time advancement is that its only been about 35 years since the Rift opened. The original plan for the Indomitus Crusade to have ended at Raukos after 200 years has been dropped because it was too big a time jump with nothing in-between.
With the Dawn of Fire series I'm sure we'll be seeing more tales from beyond the Rift in 40k.

 Gert wrote:
Its not great. Being cut off from their source of supplies and reinforcements, the Imperial forces in Imperium Nihilus are in a pretty desperate situation.
The Chapters of the Blood (BA and their successors) got nuked during the Devestation of Baal and their chapter territories are either exterminatus'd or eaten by Nids. The Primaris were believed to bring a reprieve but then they showed susceptibility to both the Black Rage and Red Thirst.
The following is Spoilers for Spear of the Emperor:

Spoiler:

The Emperor's Spears have to start conscripting Navy ships into their fleet as their losses are too high to be replenished through construction alone. Their brothers in the Star Scorpions have fallen to Chaos and turned against them and the Celestial Lions are leaderless and still in a bad way after the 3rd War for Armageddon.

Say, if nids ate blood angles is there any chance they could get some of the BAs flaws, like black rage? it'd be funny as hell if the nids found out assimilating alien DNA could come with downsides when batches of them started raging out and attacking their fellow nids.

Is it not possible to simply go around the great rift? Space is completely omnidirectional rather than an ocean where it's limited to a flat plane.

Does the great rift really extend vertically up and down to both extents of the astronomicans reach?

Why can't they just go around via Chinchare in the galactic "North"? Or go around the The Scourge Stars via Macragge to Attila in the galactic "South".

https://i.imgur.com/qZIMCB4.jpg

I drew the above up in paint in about 5 minutes. There's clearly stable routes around it on the map. Also, as I said it can't possibly extend infinitely up and down. So, there'd have to be methods to go around it there as well.

The 2 stable warp routes through the great rift is more like the panama and suez canal.

The core rule book states that there are only 2 routes through the great rift and they are war zones.

It makes sense what you say but maybe it’s too hard to show on a 2d map.

It’s also possible that the areas you have marked are not part of imperial space and therefore not safe for regular trade and movement

The Rift is a tear in the fabric of reality. Doesn't exactly follow the laws of physics and can be seen from every word in the galaxy, so yeah it's probably "high" enough that going over or under isn't an option.

There does seem to be an implication that pops up every now and again that the warp is much less navigable/effective outside the populated parts of the galaxy, potentially going outside the plane enough to get round the rift then becomes impractical?

Hive Fleet Leviathan was originally the first to operate outside the plane in a major way and their perpendicular attack was a big shock in universe when it happened.

I imagine that the IN is pretty terrible, and hell, maybe what i imagine is worse that what gw would do.

For one thing I imagine a lot of worlds becoming sort of like minikriegs, where the population is ruthlessly purged of any and all people who cannon make an 'adequate' contribution to the war effort. Those without essential skills might be turned into servitors en mass, maybe to the point the friendly local techpriests run out of implants to make people into drones, and possibly those sans skills and not physically fit to be servitors or if they run out of servitor "upgrade kits" they are herded into processing stations and come out corpse starch ration packs.

Now GW could never do this today, but i the 40k setting as it's been women could be forced to become pretty much perpetually pregnant brood mares producing 'units' evaluated at birth to be either soldiers, workers, servitors or summarily recycled or grown to a state where their organs be be harvested for transplants into the elite. This might be mandatory especially if people became unwilling to have children in such miserable conditions, like supposedly accounts for an unexplained shortfall of population in russia years after ww2.

Grimdark unrestrained by what the audience would find acceptable...

The admech might build more and more factorums to produce more and more weapons while civilian essentials were not produced, much as my grandfather told me of during WW2.

People being recycled into food might become the default penalty for any infraction.

I do wonder how the SOBs would be maintained in the IN since they must, according to classic lore, go to holy terra, which would be a problem in you're in the IN. Maybe some ships do get thru into the IN and possible some of them carry special holy terran shrines that have actual soil from the imperial palace on terra, maybe even like grass seed from terra if they still have grass, which would be used to create imperial shrines with the soil of terran on them so sisters could be sworn on what would be holy terran soil, much as say an american embassy in russia is considered american soil. Also it could be declared that by a miracle like the catholic church miracle of transubstation or whatever it's called a cracker and grape juice becomes the body of christ. So the holy shrines built with terran soil for sisters to be inducted on becomes, buy a miracle of faith, holy terran ground regardless of the planet.

So you could keep the sisters numbers up i imagine, with a little miraculous change in the old rules.

Space marine recruitment would likely go on a lot as before. Possibly some SM chapters deploy aid to the IN thru powerful ships sent thru the warzones.

Without black ships hunting psykers i imagine psyker control would be more of a problem for the IN, and more incursions would occur in it adding to the misery.

I could see rogue trader fleets becoming very powerful in the IN as some of them were nearly independent militaries in their own right. They could go on as forces to maintain trade and allowed more power to act as they saw fit to maintain the stability of the IN.

help might come from surprising sources, eldar who have no wish to see chaos grow stronger might take action to help keep some imperial worlds free of chaos. Tau might help some close to their space and willing to accept it, their shallow warp drives might be unaffected by the loss of the astronavicom, kroot mercs might fight for various reasons, possible the flesh of human casualties.

it's not impossible even the Alpha legion might for its own reasons aid imperial worlds.

Things would be ultra grimdark, but i'm sure a lot of imperial worlds would make it thru basically savage determination and blind unbreakable faith as the imperium always does.

Honestly, the planets that aren't right next to the rift are probably doing about the same, depending on scale. The average civilized world that is mostly self sufficient will see a drop off in trade and news, but otherwise should be pretty normal. Hive Worlds that rely on on imports are probably having a rough time though. "Stable" trade routes for ships without navigators have been a thing in the past, so short jumps between local systems will be possible. The Imperium as a whole is way less interconnected than folks think, with planets often only hearing from the wider Empire at large for their tithes. With the retcon to only twelve years since the rift opened, some planets might only now be starting to wonder, "Hey I haven't heard from the Administration in a bit..." like a person would with a family member they should, but dont want to talk to. Doesn't mean that half of the galaxy is peaceful, and the astronomicon being gone is definitely not good, but the Imperium never needed constant contact with Terra to function, and every world has not descended into anarchy "overnight" in the scale of 40k's timeline.

There's a few pages on what the other side of the Rift is doing in the BRB. It's your general gamish of mayhem and resilience, with an added flavor of "can't call the home office, gotta make do with what we've got".

There's a lot of fertile ground for stories set there (personal favorites are the implication of nascent proto-Imperiums cropping up around the well fortified/supplied sectors), but GW has left it relatively vague.

Lord Zarkov wrote:
There does seem to be an implication that pops up every now and again that the warp is much less navigable/effective outside the populated parts of the galaxy, potentially going outside the plane enough to get round the rift then becomes impractical?

Hive Fleet Leviathan was originally the first to operate outside the plane in a major way and their perpendicular attack was a big shock in universe when it happened.

It's very much a "here there be monsters" vibe the further away you get from the Galactic Core. The Ghoul Stars, the Eye of Terror, and the dreaded T'au all sit at the farthest reaches of human-controlled space, and obviously, the Nid's are extra-galactic.
Leviathan coming up from underneath the plane was a smart move by the Nid's and also gave GW a handly lore reason to have the "main" Nid faction pop up all over the place.

The descent into anarchy angle is often portrayed as due to the maddening effects of the rift which due to warp effects seems to have propagated at FTL speeds (otherwise virtually nobody in the Imperium would have seen it yet). Areas where there are Necron structures might dampen down that effect but otherwise Imperial worlds might have to be even more harsh and repressive to keep things under control.

The Vigilus books for example talk about how even looking up at the sky with the rift was forbidden and that nightmares troubled the sleep of many (though less so those of devout faith).

The increased unrest and the resulting apocalyptic cults (Chaos, GSC, or just plain "normal" cults) from this can lead to a backlash from the Imperial Cult, all of which is bad for productivity so Imperial Governors would have to clamp down if they want to remain in control and to meet any ongoing tithes (which may flow onwards only as far as the local sector capital due to disrupted warp travel)

Also don't forget the old story of 'for want of a nail".

maybe some worlds are mostly self sufficient. But many might need maintenance of some key parts from admech sources, which normally is done invisibly, automatically. No one notices until your main sewage treatment system breaks down because one small bit in a cogitator fails and no replacement part can be shipped from forgeworld Amazonius anymore.

TL/DR

I’m somewhat out of touch with 40K’s BL content (I find AoS far richer and more interesting).

Can folk offer a reading list to better explore the Imperium Nihilus stuff? PM it over if you think if might derail the thread.

Spears of the Emperor is all that comes to mind tbh.

mrFickle wrote:
I feel like GW moved the timeline on and created the dark imperium, half of the human empire that can’t see the astronomicon, but haven’t really described what’s going on in there.

The primaris troops were delivered to chapters in that region to reinforce them but what else?

Is the whole place being wrecked by chaos and xenos? Are systems turning into mini empires and forgetting about the emperor?

One good side effect of the split is that the Hive Mind for the first time (in ages?) got disrupted before alle their networks rebooted and reconnected again. That put chaos on the Tyranid radar big time. Tyranids usually do not fight chaos that much because you do not get nourishment. But as far as the tyranids see it they are the biggest threat to them. Hive fleet Kronos seems to be specialized at fighting chaos at a minimal loss of biomass. And hive fleet leviathan has been helping them regain their biomass.

Less focus from Tyranids is good for imperials in general. Certainly good new for the blood angels.

mrFickle wrote:

It’s also possible that the areas you have marked are not part of imperial space and therefore not safe for regular trade and movement

There has always been Imperial systems around the Eye of Terror.

Chinchare as I mentioned is an Imperial sub-sector. As is the Scarus Sector and Calixis Sector, the latter is home to many Imperial populated sub-sectors. That's why it doesn't make any sense to me.

If it's warp shenanigans fine. That's literal magic and I can't argue against it. Though I think having the ability to go around the Great Rift makes sense.

It should be like the novel/show Shadow and Bones going around is the safest but slowest way. Going through the Rift is possible but incredibly dangerous, almost certain death. With the 2 safe routes essentially being the most strategically valuable locations across the entire Imperium.

Going around would take too long and at each end there a huge Chaos empires to deal with, the Eye on the North end and the Scourge Stars at the South. Chaos forces are still pouring out of the Rift raiding and razing everywhere, the Nids are still about, the T'au and Necrons are pushing into Imperial space again. Nihilus is very much a problem but not the biggest one the Imperium has to deal with right now.

 Gert wrote:
Going around would take too long and at each end there a huge Chaos empires to deal with, the Eye on the North end and the Scourge Stars at the South. Chaos forces are still pouring out of the Rift raiding and razing everywhere, the Nids are still about, the T'au and Necrons are pushing into Imperial space again. Nihilus is very much a problem but not the biggest one the Imperium has to deal with right now.

What Chaos empires? The one that has existed inside the Eye from before the Great Rift? That these same systems had already put up with for millennia?

You also have to remember that space is massive and, again, omni-directional. It's said that undiscovered alien or human empires could exist in Imperial territory. Even if Chaos lays claim to a specific area of space. There's no way they could patrol all of it.

It also depends on the planet you're talking about. Mordian might prefer to reroute their shipping around the Eye via the safety of the Calixis Sector to Chinchare. Where goods could then be off loaded and then shipped across the safer side of the Imperium and vice-versa.

Obviously if you're a planet like Armageddon, Elysia, etc you'd prefer to secure and go through the Rifts safe passageway in the galactic north.