The world's first academic conference dedicated to all things Warhammer
Drawing on existentialist theory and ethics (Sartre 2004, Beauvoir 2015) and theories on emotional responses to fiction (Hatley 2017, Hamby/Jones 2022), the paper explores the concept of honor (Sessions 2010, Olsthoorn 2016) as depicted in Warhammer 40k lore and argues that 40k’s appeal as a Grimdark setting derives from the assuredness with which it asserts …
This paper examines the transformation of the Emperor of Mankind in Warhammer 40,000 from architect of the anti-religious Imperial Truth into the supreme object of the Imperium’s compulsory devotion. Rather than treating this reversal as mere irony, it reads the God-Emperor as a fictional test case for theories of secularization, cognitive naturalness, and political theology. …
A surface-level reading of the Adeptus Mechanicus presents a grimdark vision: the transhumanist project has failed. The aspiration to elevate humanity beyond its bodily condition and discard everything that does not conform to pure reason appears fundamentally at odds with the techno-theocratic structure of the Cult Mechanicus.
The worlds of Warhammer are populated by a plethora of strange creatures. In Warhammer Fantasy, one encounters many famous figures of medieval imagery; dragons, unicorns, griffins, and many more. Other beings come more or less directly from Greek mythology, such as pegasi, minotaurs or hydras. And many real-world animals are given the typical Warhammer over-the-top …
Gender representation in Warhammer fiction has been controversially discussed for decades. The issue has also featured prominently in scientific work, as well as in previous iterations of the Warhammer conference (e.g. Anjou, 2024; Keenan, 2025; Meriläinen, 2024; Naylor, 2025). A key conclusion from this previous work is that, particularly in earlier Warhammer fiction, female characters …
Since 2010, youth services in England have sustained real-terms funding cuts of approximately 73%, with more than 760 youth centres and 4,500 youth work posts lost (YMCA, 2023). This paper asks what fills the gap and proposes that Games Workshop’s Warhammer stores represent one largely unexamined answer. Games Workshop has actively entered youth development space …
The recruitment, enhancement, and training of the Adeptus Astartes is legendarily brutal, with massive levels of attrition in everything from the trials aspirants undergo to be accepted into the Space Marines to the failure rate of the organs transplanted into those very same recruits. This arduous, arguably wasteful process is, in many cases, not performed …
In 1987, Games Workshop needed a backstory to sell miniature wargames. By 2024, that commercial necessity had produced one of the most institutionally coherent fictional polities in science fiction. This paper asks why the Imperium of Man often feels more ‘realistic’ than many science-fiction polities despite deliberate grimdark exaggeration.
The language of Warhammer 40,000 is not merely an addition that exemplifies an imperial culture based on authority, militarism, and metaphysical threat through lexis. It is deeply connected to the universe and transcends the media it originates from.This talk analyses how the franchise’s grimdark language style emerges from recurring lexical patterns: pseudo-archaic diction, military terminology, …
Birds have long spoken to people’s imaginations, whether through their ability to fly, their relatively alien faces lacking familiar mammalian expressions, or perhaps their pervasive sounds that have for a long time coloured people’s lives. It is only natural that birds are a common presence in folklore and mythology. In my previous research on the …
“In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war”. This underlying premise to the entirety of the Warhammer 40’000 universe begs a fundamental question: how are the resources for this never-ending conflict produced and distributed? Of course, each species and organization has found its unique solution to this challenge: some operate a …
The Warhammer 40,000 (W40K) universe is a grimdark dystopian projection of science fantasy. In this far future, humanity is in a state of perpetual war against external threats, but also in an internal political struggle between two diametrically opposed factions structured around the axis of authoritarianism/self-organization. W40K is also a community-based game. Players are presented …
In 1990, the board game Space Crusade was published by MB in collaboration with Games Workshop. It is the science fiction spin-off of the much more popular game HeroQuest (1989). Although still significantly underdeveloped, the game’s narrative borrowings from Warhammer 40,000 are clearly recognizable. For example, there are already Marines, Chaos (Marines), Orks, and Genestealers. …
The pre-imperial human settlers who colonized the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology initially spoke a variety of Low Gothic. During the Age of Strife, however, their colonies were cut off from Old Earth for millennia. As a result, the standard version of Low Gothic spoken on Old Earth/Holy Terra and the many local …
Warhammer manifests in various forms, such as tabletop wargames, books, and video games. At its core, however, Warhammer is a range of miniatures. Miniatures are Games Workshop’s primary source of income, and all other manifestations of Warhammer stem from these miniatures. The essence of Warhammer is thus fundamentally visual. In this visual universe, colours play …