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 Enforcement
The 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.
- Telepathica
The 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 order
The 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 Cult
The 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 Church
The 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 Terra
The Adeptus Terra
The gathered priesthood of Terra, the great confederation of Imperial departments that governs Mankind's domain from the Throneworld itself.
- Imperial Bureaucracy
The Administratum
The colossal bureaucracy that administers the Imperium, its clerks and scribes burying a million worlds beneath tithes, records, and endless edicts.
- Xenos Civilisation
The 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 order
The 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 Beacon
The 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 Host
The 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 Adepta
The 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 organization
The 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 Court
The 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 Cult
The 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 Corps
The 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 Church
The 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 order
The 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 Cult
The 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 Council
The 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 organization
The 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 Order
The 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 order
The 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 Houses
The 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 Authority
The 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 Assassins
The 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 Corps
The 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 Ordo
The Ordo Hereticus
The witch-hunters of the Inquisition, guarding the Imperium against heresy, mutation, and the corruption that festers within its own institutions.
- Inquisitorial Ordo
The 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 Ordo
The 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 Movement
The 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 Explorers
The 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 Academy
The 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 Council
The 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 order
The 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 Cabal
The 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.