This is awesome.
It would be cool to see what books talk about each world when you click on them. Also to be able to search for books and see what worlds are talked about in them.
johnzim
There’s something visceral about seeing the places in 3D and their relation to one another. How many books and codices have I read with just random slapped down markers on the galaxy? There’s so much that can be done to extend this project from the lore - logistical movements and timeline accounts of various crusades and invasions. Great project! Thanks for linking it
big_babol
Love it! References to the books would be awesome, since they basically hold the Warhammer 40k "history"
0cf8612b2e1e
I thought WH40k had an explicit “timekeeping is untrustworthy” kind of rule to avoid anything like a canonical timeline.
the_af
I think the parent commenter means the description could include where the planets and major events are sourced from, not necessarily a coherent timeline.
ale42
The Latin seems quite wrong... e.g. "segmentum pacificus" should actually be "segmentum pacificum" [1] to keep genders correct. Was it the same in the books (which I don't know)?
Good point, I just used the first hit on kagi to source the claim but you are right.
MichaelDickens
What's wrong with Fandom?
co_ent
They have the SEO juice to push out and replace dedicated wikis as the top result, even when there are long-standing dedicated wikis for the game/universe. Fandom wikis then typically have maybe half of the information from the dedicated wiki PLUS a bunch of intrusive ads. There's no instance that I know of where a Fandom wiki popping up for a community was a positive unless they simply didn't have one to start with.
OoooooooO
You also can't really get the info out if the community decides to change wikis.
CodesInChaos
Are the obstacles technical or legal? I vaguely recall most wikis on wikia being CC-BY-SA, but it's been a while.
ajross
Which is to say, the original authors didn't care and were just writing latinesque gibberish that sounded cool.
One of the critically important things to remember about 40k lore is that the game was originally a joke. Their "real" game was Warhammer (the game to be later called "Warhammer Fantasy"). Originally it was just "Let's put space opera tropes onto a game board and have them fight D&D monsters". Then they shoe-horned the chaos stuff in, then had a (presumably drunken) exercise in lore writing where they "invented" "Grimdark" by essentially turning the Despair knob up to 11.
And then it turned out to be popular, and it was time to start trying to write real stories on top of the mess. And... people loved it. Including a lot of people for whom the comically ridiculous Grimdark stuff turned into a kind of authoritarian wish fulfillment, which wasn't great. But you have to remember it was all a joke to begin with.
throaway198521
It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society.
The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops.
That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial Navy is the British Navy and the Space Marines (who in the older versions were just common criminals, not super-soldiers), are the British Naval Marines.
One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.
Plus, all the rampant materialism, corruption, stratification, militarism, promoted and encouraged by the Imperium. All straight out of 1980's society.
ajross
> It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society.
Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment.
[1] Which again, didn't actually include a lot of the later lore. Like, the emperor in the 1e rules was entombed but strongly implied to be actively leading the empire. Likewise the original conception seems a lot closer to dystopian sci fi than "1980's society" to me.
throaway198521
It's dystopian sci-fi based on England though. The later lore is irrelevant, that's when it started turning into crap, especially around the later 2000s.
Here's the original from 1987's Rogue Trader:
""It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."
Definitely a Jesus figure. And a pretty subtly done one.
ajross
Yeah, oversold to me, sorry. Just to start with: "definitely" and "subtly done" are at odds with each other. You can't be both. Klaatu is "definitely" a Jesus analog. The Emperor... meh. It's strained, precisely because GW never really went there: fine, he's Jesus, but then what represents the Gospels? The Old Testamanet? The Emperor is only "Jesus" insofar as that's how "Jesus" looks to a 20th century disaffected nerdy atheist. Well... OK I guess?
Also... the 19th century British Empire is... kinda not at all viewed as a theocratic totalitarian autocracy consumed by cult-like worship of a dead god. Like, at all? It was a bourgeois, wealth-focused and extremely secular colonizer power driven by very worldly desires and a vaguely racist idea of How Things Should Be. And there's a lot of valuable source material for fiction there![1] And... GW didn't really do any of it, and almost none of that until much later.
[1] c.f. like 80% of Cyberpunk
throaway198521
Saying somethings subtly done but "definitely," identified as a certain character is in no way a contradiction lol. It just means its subtly done.
40k is not a satire of "Jesus," its a satire of Jesus-obsessed materialist Britain. How can you say that 19th century Britain wasn't obsessed with worshipping a dead god? They worshipped Jesus, put him into every part of everyday life, said that if you didnt worship him you'd end up in hell being tortured forever, etc etc...
There doesn't need to be an entire 1:1 translation of the Bible into 40k for it to be a satire. A carrion-God Emperor of (white) Mankind who is "apparently" watching out for all of us, at all times, and gives us manifest destiny to rule all other races? That's the modern political Euro conception of Jesus, ensconced the same way into an Imperial state.
The British Empire was extremely secular? You might want to brush up on your history. The COE (Britain's State religion) was not friendly to other religions inside the Empire. Especially at home. The British Empire was a devout place. You couldn't own property as a non-Anglican Christian until 1846! And they said their Jesus-God was responsible for everything, everywhere, at all times.
Outside of Egypt and Ethiopia, Christianity exists in Africa why exactly? India they found it was too difficult to break their faith, so it wasn't worth the bother when they could extract resources anyways. But Africa is heavily Christian for no reason other than British missions.
Bourgeois & wealth-focused is exactly how the Imperium is set up. They don't care about anything other than control and wealth being sent back to Terra. That's part of the satire too.
ajross
> How can you say that 19th century Britain wasn't obsessed with worshipping a dead god?
I think the burden of proof goes the other way? Obviously there were christians in England. But the British Empire really just was not a "Christian Empire" in any way that works in fiction. All the archetypes are secular! Tweedy bemonacled professors, Victorian romantics sharing cucumber sandwiches with their love triangles, gritty-but-cultured naval officers sipping tea and exploiting natives, Sherlock Holmes, for Christ's sake! (pun intended).
Like, this is a very deep well of narrative source material and like none of it is explicitly religious in even the most minimal way. Like, where outside of 40k is anyone trying to construct an explicitly "British" cult warrior along the lines of a Space Marine[1]? I just don't see it. And if this is the only example, maybe it's just a bad example.
Basically: the idea that 40k is based around British ennui about its imperial history is mostly a meme. It just fails as analysis in my eyes. 40k is about drunk nerds laughing too hard about weird stuff, and the analysis was a retcon picked up by atheists like us to flog our own particular culture wars.
[1] And to the extent you can find better analogs, they're to American grunts in the 20th century and certainly not redcoats!
throaway198521
All those "archetypes" were explicitly Christian, including Holmes, who frequently refers to Providence (not talking about the BBC reboot here). Are you American by chance? Im not an atheist.
Victorian Britain was heavily Christian, you are missing many archetypes such as the archbishop, vicar, the missionary, the good wife...Victorian Britain was an extremely Christian place.
Why do you bring up redcoats? Those were the land soldiers.
I guess you aren't aware that British Imperial Marines wore blue uniforms? And the Imperium's marines serve in its Navy. British Imperial Marines were a ROUGH lot, and some of their finest soldiers.
ajross
I think we need to agree to disagree here. The kinds of things you view as evidence for literary analysis just aren't what I'm looking at, and frankly to me they look like coincidence and prestigitation. Holmes using christian-derived rhetorical idioms is, needless to say, not evidence that Conan Doyle was describing a religious cult! Basically everyone (except you, I guess) views Holmes as an almost perfect expression of the Victorian secular rennaisance man archetype. I mean, duh.
And FWIW, "redcoats" were a pun on the fact that I'd introduced americans into the argument (to spell it out, since that's seeming more necessary at this point: redcoats are the bad guys in american revolutionary mythology). But that said, if your argument for the British Empire being a christian totalitarian cult hangs on the fact that the infantry and marines wore different uniforms...
We're done, basically. You're wrong, but I won't be able to convince you here.
eli_gottlieb
> One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.
Seriously? Wow. Maybe it's because I'm American, but I can't imagine actually saying that to someone. I'd sorta expect them to throw hands if I talked like that about Jesus.
And I'm an entirely secular, non-Christian atheist living among many other such people!
throaway198521
Well, if a bunch of Christians come to you and say their God is better than yours.
And you look at their "God" and its literally a dead guy on a cross.
You might not be too impressed.
Symbiote
Some friends, and possibly a local metal bar, were referring to Easter as Zombie Jesus Day.
Why would atheists be offended?
AngryData
Although he should really be considered a Lich because he raised himself from the dead, not by some outside force.
OoooooooO
You can't hurt fantasy stories and their fantasy characters.
saithound
> Maybe it's because I'm American, but I can't imagine actually saying that to someone. I'd sorta expect them to throw hands if I talked like that about Jesus.
I mean, that's exactly what a "slur" is. They are not coined with the recipient's comfort in mind, and saying them can sometimes provoke exactly the sort of fight you imagine.
But yes, violent consequences ought to be particularly unsurprising to an American, since the US is, by Western standards, an exceptionally violent country. [1]
Something's off with the performance when routes are enabled.
Disabling them instantly makes everything super snappy.
sklargh
Simply came here to note that this was fun and that Event Horizon is clearly WH40K deep canon.
CuriouslyC
This has a lot of similarities to a world map interface I've been tinkering with for a game I've been working on, thanks for the additional inspiration.
oreally
Damn. Props to them, looks great. Always experienced 40k through books and games, there's so much difference when it's a universe.
OG_BME
How come the worlds from Eisenhorn: Xenos are not on there?
I searched for "Hubris" (the ice world) and nothing came up
Disclaimer: 40k noob
tovve
The text overviews for the planets really scream that they're generated by Abominable Intelligence, but I love the map itself.
wsowens
I've always been intrigued by Warhammer 40k but never really knew how to get into it. What's the best way?
jmarchello
The barrier of entry is admittedly high for playing the game, but it's tons of fun. You have to pick an army, start collecting models (which aren't cheap), then you have to build them and at least sort of paint them. Honestly the best way is just go on to a local store on they 40k open play night (most have one weekly) and ask around. Folks are extremely kind and generous and will often loan you some models to play against them and try out the game. Some stores even have loaner armies in stock for this purpose.
The "pay to win" feeling is really just in the competitive scene. You can choose to chase the ever-changing meta or just enjoy playing more narrative games.
ps. you can learn the basic mechanics of the game pretty quickly by watching "Battle reports" on youtube. Search for 11th edition specifically as it just came out in June and the rules changed a good bit.
darrylb42
Are they doing an edition a every couple of years now? I think I have the 4th edition rules, but haven't painted or played in like 12 years. I do have some of my nicely painted models on display in a cabinet. I mostly stopped buying models when GamesWorkshop stopping letting the UK stores sell online as their models were really cheap compared to what they sold them for in Canada.
jmarchello
Yes, every 2 years I believe is he official cadence now.
Mindwipe
Every three years, even GW haven't got quite as bad as every two yet.
wellthisisgreat
> start collecting models
I don’t know anything about it, but I imagine there’s an STL file about any W40K figurine out there by now. And, probably, even more fan-made variations.
With hi-res resin 3D printers costing about as much as a W40K starter set, how can Wizards’ biz model hold?
Once you paint the figurine there’s no way to tell if it came from a store or from an at-home 3D printer.
I imagine Wizards may ban such things from official events and tournaments (if those are even a thing).
But do W40K hobbyists frown upon 3D printed figurines?
Really curious how the socio-economic dynamics of this are playing out. Figurine-based games seem to the the one area where consumer 3D printers can produce a 1-1 replacement.
jmarchello
For casual play you can absolutely use 3d printed models, and the STLs are out there in spades. Heck, you can use cardboard or rocks. But yes, for tournaments the rules are stricter. Big tournaments are the most strict. My local store allows 3d printed models but has a max % that can be printed vs authentic.
otter-in-a-suit
I recommend the Eisenhorn books if you want to get into the lore. It's a good story and covers a lot of ground without expecting a ton of prior knowledge.
mr_toad
If you’re not prepared for the financial and time investment of the table top game there are a quite a few video games set in that universe.
specproc
There are multiple legs to The Hobby (tm), the painting and modelling, the game, and the lore.
For me, painting is the fun bit. I find the game broken and totally driven by marketing. Horrible pay-to-win stuff.
Gaming you need people, you gotta get down a shop and say hi. I prefer independents, as they sell other games, but what's available depends on where you are. Even without shops, finding a group isn't that hard, there's an organised one in my very small town. Facebook etc. can help.
For painting, it's easy, just find models you like the look of, the official site can suggest paints, and have a crack. Your first ones won't be great, but it's the progress that's fun. There's an absurd amount of YouTube content. My crew like Cult of Paint.
Lore, I know least about, I find the books unreadable, but the Black Library is vast. The Horus Heresy is the canonical backbone.
A friend actually writes some short stuff on the fantasy side, do him a favour and grab a collection with Jake Ozga.
Good luck.
Mindwipe
GW actually launched an official starter website recently.
Looks cool. Some of the paths get prematuraly clipped when they're still partially on the screen.
gbromios
funny how disorienting it is to see the galaxy from this orientation after playing so much elite dangerous
bbor
Great start, awesome idea! Definitely need all the Xenos maps from all the various codexes (Lexicanum usually clarifies which codex has the most recent map for each, IME). The crown jewel, ofc, is to see the Tyranid fleets hitting the galaxy from two sides and then below, then zooming out to reveal the oncoming mass, still flying through the void towards us from Andromeda... Terrifying!
UI wise, there's definitely a sense of latency when just moving my mouse around. Obviously 3D (three.js?) has FPS limits, but this should be preventable. Also, a lot of the text overlaps on my random (medium sized) browser window.
EDIT: Also you gotta take the stars outta the intergalactic void! Would be much cooler to see the occasional super distance galaxy, anyway ;)
eli_gottlieb
Every time I see it again I'm shocked at how close the Eye of Terror is to Terra in realspace distance.
the_af
What, no Scarus Sector? No Gudrun, no Thracian Primaris! Eisenhorn and Ravenor wiped off the galactic map!?
Just kidding. This is pretty cool! I assume it's a WIP, too.
dash2
Inquisitors have been ordered to find and terminate the machine which generated this slop. For The Emperor!
tapland
The performance is absolutely atrocious with default settings, but it's a nice project.
IndySun
>The performance is absolutely atrocious with default settings...
[1] see Latin dictionary: https://www.online-latin-dictionary.com/latin-dictionary-fle... and https://www.online-latin-dictionary.com/latin-dictionary-fle...
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic
One of the critically important things to remember about 40k lore is that the game was originally a joke. Their "real" game was Warhammer (the game to be later called "Warhammer Fantasy"). Originally it was just "Let's put space opera tropes onto a game board and have them fight D&D monsters". Then they shoe-horned the chaos stuff in, then had a (presumably drunken) exercise in lore writing where they "invented" "Grimdark" by essentially turning the Despair knob up to 11.
And then it turned out to be popular, and it was time to start trying to write real stories on top of the mess. And... people loved it. Including a lot of people for whom the comically ridiculous Grimdark stuff turned into a kind of authoritarian wish fulfillment, which wasn't great. But you have to remember it was all a joke to begin with.
The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops.
That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial Navy is the British Navy and the Space Marines (who in the older versions were just common criminals, not super-soldiers), are the British Naval Marines.
One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.
Plus, all the rampant materialism, corruption, stratification, militarism, promoted and encouraged by the Imperium. All straight out of 1980's society.
Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment.
[1] Which again, didn't actually include a lot of the later lore. Like, the emperor in the 1e rules was entombed but strongly implied to be actively leading the empire. Likewise the original conception seems a lot closer to dystopian sci fi than "1980's society" to me.
Here's the original from 1987's Rogue Trader:
""It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."
Definitely a Jesus figure. And a pretty subtly done one.
Also... the 19th century British Empire is... kinda not at all viewed as a theocratic totalitarian autocracy consumed by cult-like worship of a dead god. Like, at all? It was a bourgeois, wealth-focused and extremely secular colonizer power driven by very worldly desires and a vaguely racist idea of How Things Should Be. And there's a lot of valuable source material for fiction there![1] And... GW didn't really do any of it, and almost none of that until much later.
[1] c.f. like 80% of Cyberpunk
40k is not a satire of "Jesus," its a satire of Jesus-obsessed materialist Britain. How can you say that 19th century Britain wasn't obsessed with worshipping a dead god? They worshipped Jesus, put him into every part of everyday life, said that if you didnt worship him you'd end up in hell being tortured forever, etc etc...
There doesn't need to be an entire 1:1 translation of the Bible into 40k for it to be a satire. A carrion-God Emperor of (white) Mankind who is "apparently" watching out for all of us, at all times, and gives us manifest destiny to rule all other races? That's the modern political Euro conception of Jesus, ensconced the same way into an Imperial state.
The British Empire was extremely secular? You might want to brush up on your history. The COE (Britain's State religion) was not friendly to other religions inside the Empire. Especially at home. The British Empire was a devout place. You couldn't own property as a non-Anglican Christian until 1846! And they said their Jesus-God was responsible for everything, everywhere, at all times.
Outside of Egypt and Ethiopia, Christianity exists in Africa why exactly? India they found it was too difficult to break their faith, so it wasn't worth the bother when they could extract resources anyways. But Africa is heavily Christian for no reason other than British missions.
Bourgeois & wealth-focused is exactly how the Imperium is set up. They don't care about anything other than control and wealth being sent back to Terra. That's part of the satire too.
I think the burden of proof goes the other way? Obviously there were christians in England. But the British Empire really just was not a "Christian Empire" in any way that works in fiction. All the archetypes are secular! Tweedy bemonacled professors, Victorian romantics sharing cucumber sandwiches with their love triangles, gritty-but-cultured naval officers sipping tea and exploiting natives, Sherlock Holmes, for Christ's sake! (pun intended).
Like, this is a very deep well of narrative source material and like none of it is explicitly religious in even the most minimal way. Like, where outside of 40k is anyone trying to construct an explicitly "British" cult warrior along the lines of a Space Marine[1]? I just don't see it. And if this is the only example, maybe it's just a bad example.
Basically: the idea that 40k is based around British ennui about its imperial history is mostly a meme. It just fails as analysis in my eyes. 40k is about drunk nerds laughing too hard about weird stuff, and the analysis was a retcon picked up by atheists like us to flog our own particular culture wars.
[1] And to the extent you can find better analogs, they're to American grunts in the 20th century and certainly not redcoats!
Victorian Britain was heavily Christian, you are missing many archetypes such as the archbishop, vicar, the missionary, the good wife...Victorian Britain was an extremely Christian place.
Why do you bring up redcoats? Those were the land soldiers. I guess you aren't aware that British Imperial Marines wore blue uniforms? And the Imperium's marines serve in its Navy. British Imperial Marines were a ROUGH lot, and some of their finest soldiers.
And FWIW, "redcoats" were a pun on the fact that I'd introduced americans into the argument (to spell it out, since that's seeming more necessary at this point: redcoats are the bad guys in american revolutionary mythology). But that said, if your argument for the British Empire being a christian totalitarian cult hangs on the fact that the infantry and marines wore different uniforms...
We're done, basically. You're wrong, but I won't be able to convince you here.
Seriously? Wow. Maybe it's because I'm American, but I can't imagine actually saying that to someone. I'd sorta expect them to throw hands if I talked like that about Jesus.
And I'm an entirely secular, non-Christian atheist living among many other such people!
And you look at their "God" and its literally a dead guy on a cross.
You might not be too impressed.
Why would atheists be offended?
I mean, that's exactly what a "slur" is. They are not coined with the recipient's comfort in mind, and saying them can sometimes provoke exactly the sort of fight you imagine.
But yes, violent consequences ought to be particularly unsurprising to an American, since the US is, by Western standards, an exceptionally violent country. [1]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9535176/ (table 2)
I searched for "Hubris" (the ice world) and nothing came up
Disclaimer: 40k noob
The "pay to win" feeling is really just in the competitive scene. You can choose to chase the ever-changing meta or just enjoy playing more narrative games.
ps. you can learn the basic mechanics of the game pretty quickly by watching "Battle reports" on youtube. Search for 11th edition specifically as it just came out in June and the rules changed a good bit.
I don’t know anything about it, but I imagine there’s an STL file about any W40K figurine out there by now. And, probably, even more fan-made variations.
With hi-res resin 3D printers costing about as much as a W40K starter set, how can Wizards’ biz model hold?
Once you paint the figurine there’s no way to tell if it came from a store or from an at-home 3D printer.
I imagine Wizards may ban such things from official events and tournaments (if those are even a thing).
But do W40K hobbyists frown upon 3D printed figurines?
Really curious how the socio-economic dynamics of this are playing out. Figurine-based games seem to the the one area where consumer 3D printers can produce a 1-1 replacement.
For me, painting is the fun bit. I find the game broken and totally driven by marketing. Horrible pay-to-win stuff.
Gaming you need people, you gotta get down a shop and say hi. I prefer independents, as they sell other games, but what's available depends on where you are. Even without shops, finding a group isn't that hard, there's an organised one in my very small town. Facebook etc. can help.
For painting, it's easy, just find models you like the look of, the official site can suggest paints, and have a crack. Your first ones won't be great, but it's the progress that's fun. There's an absurd amount of YouTube content. My crew like Cult of Paint.
Lore, I know least about, I find the books unreadable, but the Black Library is vast. The Horus Heresy is the canonical backbone.
A friend actually writes some short stuff on the fantasy side, do him a favour and grab a collection with Jake Ozga.
Good luck.
https://academy.warhammer.com/en-gb
If you just want to learn the plot/lore/story they sell this - https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/combat-patrol-companion... which is a starter book about the setting, rather than a novel as such.
UI wise, there's definitely a sense of latency when just moving my mouse around. Obviously 3D (three.js?) has FPS limits, but this should be preventable. Also, a lot of the text overlaps on my random (medium sized) browser window.
EDIT: Also you gotta take the stars outta the intergalactic void! Would be much cooler to see the occasional super distance galaxy, anyway ;)
Just kidding. This is pretty cool! I assume it's a WIP, too.
Re, Performance, Why do you say that?