Imperium (Warhammer 40,000)

The Imperium of Man (Latin: Imperium Hominis) is a fictional galactic empire located in the Milky Way, consisting of the vast majority of human controlled worlds in the 41st millennium, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe created by Games Workshop. In the fiction, the Imperium is depicted as a loose empire, nominally consisting of roughly millions of human-inhabited worlds in explored space and united through imposed religious conviction, extreme xenophobia, militarism, fascism, despotic hierarchical rule, and threats of brutal disciplinary force. The founder of the Imperium, an enigmatic and mysterious persona known only as the 'Emperor of Mankind' is in theory the supreme ruler of this galaxy-spanning empire, although in practice the highest tier of command is the supreme council known as the High Lords, based on Terra (Earth in the 41st millennium AD), who have ruled for ten millennia under the Emperor's name, as the Emperor lays dormant on the Golden Throne in a nearly unresponsive state of hyper-focused attention to maintaining, among other things, the Astronomicon, a psychic navigational beacon dependent upon his powers alone.

The Imperium in the 41st millennium
In the 41st millennium, the Imperium is nominally ruled by the "most beneficent Emperor of Mankind". However, since his near death and 'ascension' to the Golden Throne following the confrontation with his traitorous son Horus, the duties of actually ruling the Imperium are carried out by the Senatorum Imperialis, the twelve High Lords of Terra. These include the Fabricator General of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Master of the Administratum, the Ecclesiarch of the Ministorum, an Inquistorial Representative, the Grand Provost Marshall of the Arbites, the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigator Houses (Navis Nobilitae), the Master of the Astronomicon, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum and the Master of the Astra Telepathicus. A further three seats are varyingly filled by the leaders of seven other Imperial organizations.

The challenges for any human government controlling an empire 100,000 light years across has led to the development of an extremely brutal totalitarian theocracy. The sheer size of the Imperium means no meaningful existence can be applied to the majority of humans, the prime Imperial concern being the survival of the species' tenuous hold on the majority of habitable planets in the galaxy. Individual freedom and liberty are of no concern, as the Imperium constantly wages war against the numerous alien, genetic, rebellious (and worse) threats humanity has encountered during its colonization of the stars. Life is seen as cheap and plentiful, so the existence of the Imperium is largely concerned with the vast numbers of troops and material they have at their disposal. As the Imperium's Vindicare Temple motto puts it, "Exitus acta probat" - the outcome justifies the deed: the Imperium's self-preservation, as a collective entity, is its only concern.

The immense number of worlds under imperial control display a huge variety of conditions and ecosystems. Many worlds are huge, polluted, and dotted with hive cities (essentially a supermassive city consisting of skyscrapers hundreds of stories high), housing the vast bulk of humanity, that are completely reliant on external support to sustain their huge populations. Forge worlds housing continent-spanning factories sating the inexhaustible demand for arms and war machinery exist in every system of the galaxy. Fortress worlds, like those of the Cadian System act as bases and staging areas for the Imperium's military forces. Many worlds’ surfaces have been completely given over to the production of crops and agriculture in order to feed humanity's teeming trillions, while other planets have been completely strip mined for raw materials.

Other worlds cut off from normal interstellar traffic through war, warp storms or other means have been isolated from most of humanity for centuries or even millennia, the general populace ignorant of the Imperium's existence, their technology base slowly deteriorating until their society resembles that of pre-technological Earth. Feudal civilizations develop, with visiting Imperial Administration officials or cartographers being considered gods by the primitive locals, due to the decades-long, even centuries-long gap between their visits.

Due to the limited nature of interstellar communication (telepathy and messenger ships) and the numerically and spatially vast size of the Imperium, the High Lords cannot maintain any sort of detailed control of individual planets, or even star systems. Instead, such control is maintained by a series of planetary overlords known as "Imperial Commanders" or "Planetary Governors", who oversee the intricacies of each planet and report up to the higher powers in charge of the Imperial systems, sub-sectors, sectors and Segmentums they belong to. This system extends all throughout the Imperium with the exception of the Space Marine homeworlds, cardinal worlds of the Ecclesiarchy, and Adeptus Mechanicus forge worlds.

The nature of government on each planet differs wildly throughout the Imperium - some planets are known to elect their governors bound to a constitution, parliament or other democratic instrument; others have their governors chosen through the feudal system of inheritance through bloodline or familial ties. However, most Imperial governors are depicted as being the sole military dictators of their populace.

The Emperor of Mankind
The Emperor of Mankind was born in c8000 BC in Anatolia. A gestalt reincarnation of dead human shamans, he is the most powerful psyker the galaxy has ever seen, easily rivaling the power of the Chaos Gods. Throughout history, the Emperor discreetly guided humanity from the shadows, until the 29th millennium AD, when an intractable galaxy-wide dark age prompted him to reveal his nature. Leading an army of genetically-enhanced warriors, the Space Marines, he reunified the worlds of humanity and declared himself Emperor of Mankind.

Not long after the founding of the Imperium, the Chaos Gods corrupted a number of the Emperor's Space Marine followers, who revolted against their sire. Though the revolt was crushed, the Emperor was critically wounded in the conflict and was placed on permanent life support on the Golden Throne.

In the 41st millennium, the Emperor is a half-dead thing, barely responsive and no longer partaking in day-to-day politics. He is worshiped as a god by most of humanity, and the Imperium government is a brutal theocracy. From the Golden Throne, the Emperor feeds on the souls of sacrificed human psykers and projects a constant psychic beacon, the Astronomican, across the galaxy which enables human ships to navigate through the confusing alternate dimension of the Warp for faster-than-light travel. He also is slowly growing in strength both psychically and healing physically, gaining the ability to bless saints like those in the Sisters of Battle or the orders of Sensei and Illuminati which share an ancient link to the Emperor himself. He can also call down warp storms of almost holy light on enemies of Mankind and wipe out whole battlefleets. The Emperor could be considered a God of Order like those of the Eldar and strange sightings of vengeful angels and warriors of light appearing in the tide of war as his divine counter to the Chaos Gods.

Demonstrating the Emperor's will, the Imperium provides an unbound technology base from both the Golden and Dark ages of Technology, an unlimited, brutalized, and battle-ready society of manpower and warmachines, fleets of multi-kilometer sized warships, the thousand Chapters of the super human Space Marines, and the billions of standard troops and tanks of the Imperial Guard that has helped the Imperium stand for ten thousand years.

The Adeptus Terra
The Adeptus Terra, the great heart of Earth, is the central governing organization of the Imperium. It is an enormous and bureaucratic organization whose scriptoria, continent-sized archives and pilgrimage sites occupy nearly all of the hiveworld of Terra that is not taken up by the Sanctum Imperialis, the Emperor's vast throne room, which itself takes up the better part of the northern hemisphere. The Adeptus Terra seems to be largely synonymous with its largest component organization, the Administratum. The Adeptus Terra is so immense, and operates so inefficiently, that whole departments of it still service agencies which no longer exist and worlds dead for thousands of years.

The Administratum
The Adeptus Terra's main bureaucratic body and largest division is the Adeptus Administratum. This organization's purpose is the administration of the Imperium at all levels, its tasks including the assessment of planetary tithes: the goods, war materials and Guard regiments each Imperial world is regularly required to provide for the Imperium. It is a vast organization involving the efforts of countless billions of adepts, who for the most part are hereditary slave workers, bureaucratic officials and petty scribes. The estimate that ten billion adepts are involved in the mere administration of the Imperial Palace gives some idea of the Administratum's massive size. Of all the organizations of the Imperium, the Administratum is considered the least prestigious, but its highest ranking members are among the most powerful men in the Imperium. The Administratum is based in the Imperial Palace on Terra but its adepts are found throughout the Imperium.

The Ecclesiarchy
The Adeptus Ministorum, or Ecclesiarchy, is ruled by the Ecclesiarch, and is the official church of the Imperium, preaching the Divine Teachings of the Emperor which maintains that the Emperor is Humanity's saviour and god. Responsible for maintaining morale, securing allegiance, encouraging devotion, and ensuring spiritual purity among the populace of the Imperium, it sends missionaries and warrior priestesses throughout the galaxy to enforce their fanatical devotion to their beliefs.They are supported by the Sisters of Battle, along with Frateris Militia and divine war-relics in the role of protecting the sacred or shrine worlds, counted separately from the regular Imperial empire due to their forbidden status and the saints and divine angels of past warriors and mammoth cathedral-castellum vehicles ready to be unleashed via the activation of holy relics. The shrine and sacred worlds also provide much of the blessed vehicles and weaponry used by the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy in planet wide temple-depots responsible for production, consecration, and storage.

The Adeptus Sororitas comprise the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus, "Witch Hunters", which is tasked with hunting down and destroying heretics and unsanctioned psychics (commonly known as "rogue psykers" or "witches"). They rely on faith and powered armor, similar to those fielded by the venerable Space Marines, and although they are not the same "super-soldier" in terms of genetically gifted combat ability and endurance, their unshakable faith allow the Sisters of Battle to fight beyond the limits of other human warriors. They are also equipped with superior armor and weapons, sometimes wielding holy relics crafted with exceedingly rare technology and of incredible power.

The Departmento Munitorum
The Departmento Munitorum is the central command of the Imperial war machine, organizing the logistics of planetary 'tithes', troop movements and troop deployment. The Departmento is one of the many departments of the Administratum, but is far more decentralized than the other divisions of the Adeptus Terra, establishing a presence on any world with a significant tithe-grade. Distress calls from an invaded world are processed by the Munitorum, and will be passed up the ladder of system-subsector-sector-Segmentum-Imperium HQ until a division with enough reach can raise the armies needed from neighboring systems and respond. Thus, the harder a foe strikes at the Imperium the greater the retribution will be.

They also build the massive fortresses which most Imperial forces rely on via their engineer divisions and if necessary their ancient walking bastion-hives or flying fortresses which provide a supply/fire-base of operations on otherwise inhospitable planets like death worlds.

Due to the vast distances of space, combined with the internal bureaucracy of the Departmento Munitorum, decision-making tends to be very slow, and calls for help may not be acted on for years or even centuries. It is not uncommon for war fleets to arrive at warzones to discover that the war they were dispatched to fight is long since over.

The Adeptus Mechanicus
Known as the Tech-Priests of Mars, the Adeptus Mechanicus is based on the ancient factory world of Mars, and are a quasi-independent organisation and empire unto themselves, with their own armed forces and institutional culture. These 'enginseers' and 'techpriests' of the Imperium create and maintain most of the Imperium's more advanced machinery and weaponry, despite the fact that their understanding of technology is limited at best - most procedure is based on ritual and religious dogma rather than genuine engineering or mechanical skill. Their extremely conservative beliefs regarding the advancement of human technology such as locking up entire STC libraries on Mars, coupled with their stranglehold on the Imperium's manufacturing capabilities, has ensured that humanity's technological advancement has mostly stagnated for 10,000 years.

The Collegia Titanica (sometimes simply known as the Titan Legions) is an organisation within the Adeptus Mechanicus specifically mentioned as being charged with building, maintaining and controlling the greatest war machines of the Imperium - the Titans. These gigantic mechanical walkers, most millennia old, are used in the vast apocalyptic conflicts that are commonplace in the fiction's lore. They are organized within the legions stationed in each of the warzones and forgeworlds of the Milky Way galaxy. Titans are usually supported by the Adeptus Mechanicus' own Skitarii (or Tech-Guard), who are the mainline military arm of the Adeptus Mechanicus (roughly equivalent to cyborg Imperial Guard legions). Other forces of the Mechanicus even larger than the Titan Legions themselves and include the Centurio Ordinatus, caretakers of the large purpose-built war machines, and Legio Cataphracti, vast phalanxes of huge armoured fortress-vehicles and Ordo Reductor, masters of siege warfare and macro-cannon size land artillery.

The Adeptus Mechanicus are mentioned quite heavily in "The Soul Drinkers: Book One." In this book, Archmagos Khobotov is a leader in the Mechanicum who, like many other high-ranking members of the Adeptus Mechanicus, lost more and more of his humanity as he advanced in rank, eventually becoming more machine than man.

The Inquisition
Independent of the rest of the Adeptus Terra are the Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition. Its agents are responsible for uncovering and dealing with any potential threat to the Imperium from within their all-encompassing jurisdiction. These responsibilities are often discharged using the most extreme measures imaginable from sentencing entire sectors to slavery, to calling down Exterminatus (often a virus that combusts a planet's entire ecosystem) via highly ancient and forbidden weapons and planetary siege machines from the Dark age of Technology. Each Inquisitor bears a seal that grants him the right to command any citizen or resource within the Imperium to the end of carrying out his duties, from individuals or single vessels, all the way up to entire Imperial Guard regiments or Imperial Navy fleets in times of dire danger.

I carry with me an Inquisitorial seal. It is a small, unassuming object contained in a neat box of Pluvian Obsidian. It is a modest thing. Relatively plain, adorned with a single motif and simple motto. Yet with this little object I can sign the death warrant of an entire world and consign a billion souls to oblivion.

Officio Assassinorum
An inconspicuous, highly secretive, but vital part of the Imperial machinery of war, the Officio Assassinorum trains and deploys assassins all over the galaxy, to seek out and exterminate dangerous individuals. Each assassin is the product of lifelong training at one of the Assassinorum Temples, each Temple specializing in a particular state of the art of death-dealing, each incredibly effective at their vocation. So highly skilled are these individuals that it is taken that the dispatch of a single assassin by the Officio will mean certain death to whomever (or whatever) the target may be.

As of the current canon there are six specified clades of assassins. They are as follows:

Vindicare: Latin for "justify, vindicate, avenge". Specializing in targeted elimination from a distance; not unlike the snipers utilized by modern military forces. The hallmark of their craft is the Exitus rifle—a rifle of such craftsmanship that its value is greater than the worth produced by many quiet Imperial worlds. The motto of the temple is: "Exitus Acta Probat": The Outcome Justifies the Deed.

Callidus: Latin for "cunning". Specializing in trickery, deception, deceit, infiltration and impersonation. Their greatest asset is their ability to use the shape-changing drug Polymorphine. This drug, coupled with special training, allows Callidus agents to change their very shape and appearance allowing them to impersonate other persons, members of the opposite sex, and even humanoid aliens like Orks and Eldar.

Eversor: Latin for "destroyer". Eversor Assassins are the most gruesome products of the Officio Assassinorum. They are drug crazed killing monsters, enhanced by bio-engineering and experimental surgical procedures. Their state of mind is amplified to turn a mere dislike for the enemy into raging hatred, or the wish to serve the Imperium into suicidal determination. Their main objective on the battlefield is to rip out the heart of an enemy operation in the most unsubtle way. By slaughtering all enemies in the vicinity they ensure the command structure is entirely destroyed.

Culexus: no clear translation, though it might come from the Latin Word "culex" meaning mosquito, a reference to their ability of draining the very life from their targets Motto of the temple is: "That which is unknown and unseen always commands the greatest fear". The Culexus Assassins are the most sinister, feared, and hated of all Imperial Assassins. They are humans without souls, which inspires unease and dread in humans, especially psykers. They specialize in killing psykers, as their nature makes them immune to psychic and Daemonic powers and extremely deadly to those using them.

Venenum: Latin for "poison". As of current canon it is unclear whether or not the Venenum Temple still exists. Its only appearance thus far is in the "Horus Heresy" entry Nemesis. Venenum assassins specialize in the use of poisons and toxins to eliminate targets. Assassins trained in this method are the very best in the galaxy: being able to administer toxins of the greatest efficacy without anyone—their target or otherwise—being aware of what has happened.

Vanus: Latin for "empty". As of current canon it is unclear whether or not the Vanus Temple still exists. Its only appearance thus far is in the "Horus Heresy" entry Nemesis. The Vanus Assassins are primarily used as intelligence-gatherers and in matters of grand strategy and intelligence tactics they are without peer, their political insight unparalleled by the savants of the Imperium. A Vanus Assassin might be likened to a supreme manipulator crossed with a master computer hacker. Quite possibly the most accurate summation of the Vanus Temple's methods was stated by the operative Fon Tariel: "the cleanest kill is one that another performs in your stead with no knowledge of your incitement."

There also exists a "Temple Secretum," an Assassinorum temple named for its dedication to keeping the Imperium's darkest secrets rather than for a preferred method of killing. There is no real, substantive information regarding this temple.

The Imperial Commanders
In addition to the Adeptus Terra and the militaries, the High Lords also command the Segmentum Commanders, who each oversee one of the five galactic regions known as the Segmentae Majoris: Segmentum Solar, Segmentum Pacificus, Segmentum Obscurus, Segmentum Tempestus and Ultima Segmentum. Each Segmentum Commander oversees his sector Commanders, who in turn oversee subsector Commanders, who oversee Imperial Commanders, also known as planetary governors. The higher ranks in this system are usually combined with a basic planetary governorship as well as interplanetary duties. This system is the means by which the Imperium maintains control of the separate planets that make it up.

Forces of the Imperium
In the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the Imperium represents Mankind's only hope for survival in a grim, merciless future set in the forty-first millennium. The Imperium is surrounded by alien species, and is also under continual attack by the forces of Chaos and by an extragalactic species known as the Tyranids.

The Imperium's defense forces consist of the:
 * Imperial Guard
 * Imperial Navy
 * Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines, genetically engineered super-soldier monks, organized into Chapters)
 * Adeptus Custodes (The Emperor's ten thousand strong personal bodyguard, primarch-like in might, stationed at the continent-spanning Imperial Palace on Terra)
 * Adeptus Arbites (the police force of the Imperium)
 * Adepta Sororitas (exceptional female warriors belonging to the Ecclesiarchy)
 * The Inquisition (organized into the Ordo Hereticus, Ordo Malleus, and Ordo Xenos. Inquisitors are entrusted with supreme authority to prosecute the Imperium's enemies.)
 * Adeptus Titanicus (the Titan Legions; massive, anthropomorphic weapons platforms governed by a primitive artificial intelligence created by the Adeptus Mechanicus; the single most devastating non-Naval weapon available to the Imperium)
 * Adeptus Mechanicus (the engineering obsessed lords of Mars that oversee the Imperium's technology)
 * Officio Assassinorium (the Imperial Assassins)
 * Various other specialized organizations

In addition, every populated world in the Imperium is required to possess its own government military forces for the planet's own defence (PDF). Individual Planetary Defence Forces vary widely from planet to planet, even more so than Imperial Guard regiments, because they adhere far more to the culture and traditions of their homeworld. Some are of the lowest quality, whilst others are better trained and equipped than most regiments in the Imperial Guard (such as the PDF of Cadia). The Imperium has many other organizations than just those listed here that are highly specialized. These groups are rarely seen or heard of except in background and when they are mentioned they are presented as forces to be reckoned with.

Language in the Imperium
In the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man contains many languages. High Gothic is the official language while Low Gothic is used to describe the many local variations of High Gothic. In the literature Low Gothic is often represented with the language of the reader, and High Gothic with Latin, although these are only representations as the languages used so far in the future would be vastly different from anything used today. Lingua Technis is a specialized variant of High Gothic used by the Adeptus Mechanicus, sometimes also called "tech cant" by those not initiated into the Adeptus Mechanicus itself but who have cause to be exposed to it on a regular basis. The language has been described as incorporating various machine commands in a format similar to binary code.

High Gothic
High Gothic is the official language of The Imperium of Man. Its origins lie with the languages of Terra, and was the dominant language used by the population of Earth before the Emperor united the tribes of Earth under one banner and began the Great Crusade. The language is considered a "higher class" language, mostly used by highly educated members of the Imperium. As such, it was chosen to be utilized as the common language of the Imperium, and was asserted upon the reconquered cultures during the crusade. High Gothic is utilized as a classical tongue within the Imperium, and is used during rituals and such like. Only highly educated members of the Imperium would ever use the language, and then only when the circumstances dictate.

Though Latin is used to represent High Gothic in the official fiction published by Black Library it has been stated by high ranked Games Workshop officials that this is not the actual language, and is instead used to simulate what High Gothic would sound like to a Low Gothic speaker.

Low Gothic
Low Gothic is the language used by the all of the populace of the Imperium of Man. It is not really one language, but is instead a generalized "catch-all" term for any of the hundreds of debased, corrupted, or specialized local variants of the Imperium's standard linguistic form High Gothic. Literally billions of daughter tongues, dialects, and cultural variants exist.

Cultural Variants come into existence when a population, or section of a population is isolated from the main Imperial culture for a prolonged period of time. Words are twisted or re-purposed to better describe the conditions they must deal with. One of the classic examples is the Low Gothic Trade Tongue of Catachan which has 52 different words for green including 'Sinople' which literally and in use means both red and green at the same time.

Dialects can mostly be attributed to simple expedience. To properly say something in High Gothic can take a very long time if the subject is complicated or at all ambiguous as the language is designed to be exceedingly exacting and precise. Most dialects attempt to speed up conversation by paring down excessive verbiage. This does however make the language less clear and exact, which is why High Gothic is preferred for diplomacy and administration.

In fiction, low Gothic is simply rendered as English, though it is presumably a pastiche of hundreds of present-day languages.

Trade Cants
Trade Cants are derivatives specialized forms of Low Gothic tooled to efficient use for one specific topic of industry, such as farming, machine work, fishing or war. This is perhaps the most prevalent category as many Imperial planets are 'designed' and administered to use one narrow field of effort. (See also: Forge world, Agri world.) The so called "Combat Cants" of the Imperial Guard are based more closely on High Gothic than most of these variants. In some cases however this can become rapid, clipped 'hoc-com' Languages for one or more regiments after they are retired from duty as active wartime cyphers.

Proto-Gothic
While technically a separate language, Proto-Gothic is in many places used as nothing more than yet another variant of Low Gothic. Proto-Gothic is the original language from which High Gothic was derived. Represented in the fiction by Old English, it is a holdover from an earlier era of civilization. Found on backwards worlds and sometimes among the most extremely erudite of the Emperor's followers, this archaic tongue has been all but erased by its advanced, refined successor High Gothic.

Lingua Technis
Lingua Technis is an obscure language used by the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is currently only used by the Adeptus Mechanicus for scientific work, but it was the norm among the worlds of the Imperium during the Dark Age of Technology. It was derived from English, European, and Pacific languages spoken during the Dark Age of Technology. In the novel Dark Adeptus (Counter, 2006), the language is however described as a series of zeros and ones with a metallic edge to it, and is primarily used to command servitors. This gives it a close resemblance to binary coding, and as such it has become the "programming language" of the Imperium. It is used within the logic engines and machine spirits of the Imperium's technology as the higher processing language, and as such is used for inter-communication between machines, and machines and tech-adept.

Some writings in the Black Library also suggest that there are multiple dialects of Lingua Technis or other machine languages in use by the Adeptus Mechanicus. For example, in Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy, savant Uber Aemos attempts to decipher an Adeptus Mechanicus transmission dump and speculates upon it being a member of the Mechanilingua family of languages or 'one of the Servitorware' scripts.

Influences
The dystopian Imperium has been compared with other fictional empires. Its rigid social system is somewhat similar to the strictly feudal Empire found in Frank Herbert's Dune. It also closely resembles Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire in the Foundation series, with millions of star systems only loosely connected with the governing center, where technology is becoming a myth rather than a science, with extreme persecution of those questioning the morality or validity of the endless conflicts and divine rule of the Emperor (the Imperium's roots in Asimov's work are also referenced in both the name and history of the planet Seldon's Folly in the Edge of the Abyss supplement of the Rogue Trader role-playing game).

Another correlation commonly made with Dune are the Navigators which are distinctly similar to the Guild Navigators from Frank Herbert's work.

The Emperor of Mankind and his life-sustaining Golden Throne resemble the King-Emperor Huon of Granbretan and his protective Throne Globe from Michael Moorcock's Dorian Hawkmoon novels.

A number of institutions and policies of the Imperium reflect the influence of seminal British SF comic 2000 AD; the "Arbitrators" of the Adeptus Arbites, as heavily armed law enforcers, have a similar role to the Judges in Judge Dredd (and indeed resemble them in some artwork), whilst the nature of the Imperium as a theocratic, human-centered society, revering Earth and despising aliens and those who traffic with them and kept in line by a secretive and paranoid Inquisition, is highly reminiscent of the empire of Termight (or "Mighty Terra") in Nemesis the Warlock. Games Workshop and 2000 AD have, in fact, had a long association, with 2000 AD writers John Wagner, Alan Grant, Gordon Rennie and especially Dan Abnett writing fiction for Games Workshop and the Black Library over the years.