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Something I was pondering earlier. Does anyone know if the Chaos Gods, are causing trouble in other galaxys? If not then surely the word "God" doesn't really fit as they are essentially extremely powerful beings, kinda like the Old Ones(Obviously the Chaos Gods are more powerful, but you get what I am saying)

You do realize that we know absolutely NOTHING of anything outside of the main 40k Galaxy.

Maybe, maybe not.

All we have for reference is existing inhabitants of the Milky Way. The only real intergalactic things we know are 1) Tyranids came from outside the galaxy and 2) There are orks beyond our Galaxy.

It stands to reason that, as the Warp is a parallel dimension, they could and would be acting beyond the Milky Way galaxy.

 Grey Templar wrote:
2) There are orks beyond our Galaxy.

Really?

The Chaos Gods are formed by the psychic effluence of the Milky Way. The Warp is not a "dimension" in the normal fictional sense, it's more like ambient radiation that can be "tuned in to", like a radio signal. If all life in the galaxy ceased, the Warp would cease to exist as well (which I am pretty sure was the Necron motivation for scouring all life, before the grand retcron where they became Robot Space Egyptians).

I definitely recall reading something about the Warp thinning out and diminishing the further it got from the Milky Way, not just the Astronomican. Plus, if the Astronomican "thins" as it goes from its source, it stands to reason that everything else Warp-related behaves this way as well (as does Tyranid Synapse, which we know to be an alien form of psychic power).

Also, the Old Ones messed up the Warp. If it was an extra-galactic force, there's nothing that one single race could do to mess it up so badly. Unless it was just really sensitive, in which case it should have been messed up beforehand. The alternative is that the "local" Warp around the Milky Way was all they messed up.

On the actual topic - yes. If the Warp really does extend to other galaxies (which, as I have said, I do not believe is true), then the Chaos Gods are so incomprehensibly minuscule that they'd do well not to venture out of their home territory.

 Jape wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
2) There are orks beyond our Galaxy.

Really?

I read somewhere that the Imperium has yet to discover a sector that isn't already populated (at least partly) by Orks. It was also theorized that they had just kept spreading since they're creation, and presumably (Since they can travel at least as fast as the IoM,) will always be further spread than humans.

 Jape wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
2) There are orks beyond our Galaxy.

Really?

IOM probe once intercepted signals from outside the galaxy. All of it originated from Orks.

 Wyzilla wrote:
IOM probe once intercepted signals from outside the galaxy. All of it originated from Orks.

The actual fluff about the probe in the Ork codex doesn't say anything about being outside our galaxy or not. Just that a probe launched from Terra 14,000 years ago (to "discover the limits of the universe") is still sending back faint signals, many of which the TechPriests identify as Orkish. If man travels somewhere in space the Orks are likely to be there or arrive soon.

 Alphabet wrote:
Something I was pondering earlier. Does anyone know if the Chaos Gods, are causing trouble in other galaxys? If not then surely the word "God" doesn't really fit as they are essentially extremely powerful beings, kinda like the Old Ones(Obviously the Chaos Gods are more powerful, but you get what I am saying)

Yes, other galaxies and even other dimensions.

Dead Sky, Black Sun wrote:Awful knowledge flooded Uriel as he stared into the portal opened in the fabric of the universe. He saw galaxies of billions upon billions of souls harvested and fed to the Lord of Skulls, the Blood God. ‘Emperor’s mercy,’ wept Uriel as he felt each of these deaths lodge like a splinter in his heart. New life and new purpose had once filled these galaxies, but now all was death, slaughtered to sate the hunger of the Blood God…

The Warp is born from the souls of the living. It also does not obey the Laws of Physics.

Thus, It can be said that The Warp does not exceed the boundaries of the Galaxy, yet is simultaneously far larger then the physical Galaxy. I highly doubt you could map the locations of the Chaos Gods' Throne Rooms to a map of the Milky Way, the only parts of the Warp that occupy a fixed point in space-time are Warp Storms and Warp Rifts like the Eye of Terror. If the volume of the Warp matched the volume of the Galaxy at 1:1 ratio, FTL via the Warp wouldn't work.

I've always found it easiest to liken it to the Dresdenverse's NeverNever. It's as big as the whole of humanity's imagination

Humans and Eldar aren't in the other, lesser 100 billion galaxies, so the Chaos Gods ignore them.

I'd imagine that, much like Moorcock's Chaos lords (or Gaiman's Endless), they appear in various incarnations in various times and places. Of which they might or might not be concious. The Chaos gods as we know them are reflections of - and interpretations by - the people of this galaxy. In other places they might exist in very different forms and hierarchies, to the point where you could argue whether they aren't different entities altogether.

The answer, I think, is simultaneously Yes and No. Actual hard fluff states that the warp isn't traversable beyond the galactic edge, as Warp travel relies on currents which are caused by living energy, etc. and the warp beyond the galaxy is perfectly calm and undisturbed, so the warp is there, but it isn't 'actionable'. Beyond that, the Chaos Gods, as per the Tyranids book, have never encountered the Tyranids before and have no knowledge of them or their effects on the warp until they arrive here, which implies that they do in fact only really have any effect on the Milky Way. However, I'm inclined to agree with Fabios statement regarding Moorcock in that they appear in various incarnations in various times and places. While they are all technically the same entity, they are also, at once, different, and not necessarily omniscient (re: the 'incarnations').

chaos0xomega wrote:
Beyond that, the Chaos Gods, as per the Tyranids book, have never encountered the Tyranids before and have no knowledge of them or their effects on the warp until they arrive here, which implies that they do in fact only really have any effect on the Milky Way.

Was it explicitly stated that it was the Chaos Gods themselves who didn't know of the Tyranids or just the Daemons fighting them? Also, it's possibly (though very unlikely) that there simply were no Psychic species in the galaxies the Tyranids had previously been in (aside from themselves) and so the Ruinous Powers had no gateways there.

I dont have my codex handy with me, the impression I got though was that the forces of Chaos as a collective whole were unfamiliar with the 'nids, which IMO would imply that the gods themselves were unaware of them.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I dont have my codex handy with me, the impression I got though was that the forces of Chaos as a collective whole were unfamiliar with the 'nids, which IMO would imply that the gods themselves were unaware of them.

The Nids had already fought Chaos Marines by that point, the Death Shadows I think, so I doubt it. I think it was just the Sinister Square or whatever the Greater were calling themselves.

 Jape wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
2) There are orks beyond our Galaxy.

Really?

Yers old fluff.

There was a book on orks published in 2nd edition time. In one of the opening pages it describes how deep space probes sent far beyond the Imperium, even beyond the Milky Way passed back info, and the Ad Mech were dismayed to find that signs of orks were present in every region they sent probes to