The Institutions
Organizations
The orders, institutions, and brotherhoods that shape Warhammer 40,000 — the hidden powers, the priesthoods, and the vast machineries of state that hold the setting together.
Law EnforcementThe Adeptus Arbites
The iron enforcers of Imperial Law, whose black-armoured Judges answer only to Terra and crush dissent before it can ripen into rebellion.
TelepathicaThe Adeptus Astra Telepathica
The order that harnesses the Imperium's sanctioned psykers, forging astropaths whose telepathy carries messages across the black abyss of space.
Navigational orderThe Adeptus Astronomica
The order that tends the Astronomican, the Emperor's psychic beacon whose light alone lets the Imperium's fleets navigate the treacherous warp.
Machine CultThe Adeptus Mechanicus
The tech-priesthood of Mars, keepers of humanity's ancient technology who worship the Machine God and hoard the sacred knowledge of ages past.
State ChurchThe Adeptus Ministorum
The formal ministry of the Imperial Creed, the bureaucratic and priestly body through which the state church governs the faith of Mankind.
Priesthood of TerraThe Adeptus Terra
The gathered priesthood of Terra, the great confederation of Imperial departments that governs Mankind's domain from the Throneworld itself.
Imperial BureaucracyThe Administratum
The colossal bureaucracy that administers the Imperium, its clerks and scribes burying a million worlds beneath tithes, records, and endless edicts.
Xenos CivilisationThe Aeldari Craftworlds
The scattered fleet of colossal world-ships on which the surviving Aeldari fled their dying empire, each a drifting nation striving to outrun extinction.
Cartographic orderThe Astra Cartographica
The keepers of the Imperium's star-charts, whose savants map a galaxy so vast and shifting that no single mind can hold its whole.
Psychic BeaconThe Astronomican Choir
The vast choir of astropaths who pour their souls into the Emperor's psychic beacon, lighting the way for every ship that crosses the warp.
Chaos HostThe Black Legion Warband Network
The banded warbands of Abaddon the Despoiler, a shifting confederation of Heretic Astartes marshalled from the Eye of Terror to wage the Long War.
Imperial AdeptaThe Choirs of Nuntio
The astropathic choirs that hurl thought across the void, sanctioned psykers who cry the Imperium's messages through the screaming warp.
Military organizationThe Commissariat
The Imperium's iron enforcers of loyalty, whose black-coated commissars steel wavering armies with inspiration, terror, and the swift bolt-round of execution.
Xenos CourtThe Court of the Archon
The venomous hierarchy of a Drukhari kabal, ruled by an Archon whose courtiers scheme, feast on suffering, and raid the webway for slaves.
Machine CultThe Dark Mechanicum
The heretek forge-priesthood of the Ruinous Powers, whose daemon-forges and blasphemous rites arm the Traitor Legions with engines of living metal.
Logistics CorpsThe Departmento Munitorum
The logistical engine of the Imperial war machine, mustering the tithes of men and materiel that feed the Astra Militarum's endless wars.
State ChurchThe Ecclesiarchy
The vast state church of the Imperium, preaching the divinity of the God-Emperor to a million worlds and binding humanity in fervent faith.
Militant orderThe Frateris Templar
The old militia of the faithful, a fanatical crusading host of the Ecclesiarchy raised from the pious masses to wage holy war in the God-Emperor's name.
Xenos CultThe Genestealer Cult Broodmind
The shared hive-consciousness of a genestealer cult, radiating from Patriarch to convert as a hidden insurrection prepares a world for devouring.
Ruling CouncilThe High Lords of Terra
The dozen most powerful servants of the Imperium, who rule in the silent Emperor's name and decide the fate of a million worlds from Terra.
Military organizationThe Imperial Navy
The Imperium's colossal war-fleet, whose leviathan warships hold the void, ferry armies between the stars, and drown worlds in orbital fire.
Secret OrderThe Inquisition
The Imperium's most feared and secretive order, its agents answerable to none but the Emperor and empowered to purge any threat to Mankind's survival.
Mechanicus orderThe Legio Cybernetica
An ancient order of the Machine God that fields war-cohorts of robotic automata, soulless engines of destruction bound to the will of their tech-priest masters.
Navigator HousesThe Navis Nobilite
The ancient dynasties of mutant Navigators whose third eye pierces the warp, guiding the Imperium's ships across the churning sea of souls.
Xenos AuthorityThe Necron Triarch
The ancient ruling authority of the Necron dynasties, the triumvirate through which the Silent King once bound every noble to a single deathless law.
Temple of AssassinsThe Officio Assassinorum
The Imperium's sanctioned guild of killers, whose temple-trained agents remove those whose single death can turn the course of galactic history.
Medical CorpsThe Officio Medicae
The Imperial medical corps that tends the wounded of a million battlefields, salving flesh the war machine still deems worth the saving.
Inquisitorial OrdoThe Ordo Hereticus
The witch-hunters of the Inquisition, guarding the Imperium against heresy, mutation, and the corruption that festers within its own institutions.
Inquisitorial OrdoThe Ordo Malleus
The daemon-hunters of the Inquisition, sworn to face the horrors of the warp and cast the Neverborn back into the hell that birthed them.
Inquisitorial OrdoThe Ordo Xenos
The alien-hunters of the Inquisition, watching the Imperium's borders for xenos threats and studying the enemy the better to destroy it.
Xenos MovementThe Ork Waaagh!
The gathering green tide, part crusade and part psychic storm, in which countless Ork mobs fuse behind one Warboss and roll unstoppably toward war.
Chartist ExplorersThe Rogue Traders
The privateer dynasties of the void, granted a Warrant of Trade to sail beyond Imperial space and claim new worlds in the Emperor's name.
Officer AcademyThe Schola Progenium
The austere academies that raise the orphaned children of fallen Imperial servants into commissars, storm troopers, and zealous officers of the Throne.
Ruling CouncilThe Senatorum Imperialis
The supreme governing council of the Imperium, the great assembly of its mightiest lords from which the twelve High Lords of Terra are drawn.
Militant orderThe Shield-Companies
The far-ranging warhosts of the Adeptus Custodes, golden warriors who forsake their eternal watch on Terra to carry the Emperor's judgement to the galaxy.
Chaos CabalThe Word Bearers Dark Council
The theocratic high synod of Lorgar's legion, a conclave of Dark Apostles that dictates the endless crusade to drown the galaxy in worship of Chaos.