Panel 14 Archives – Warhammer Conference

The Archaeology of Damnation: Twice-Bound Primarchs and the Collapse of Intelligibility

“We were deceived. All of us.” – Horus Lupercal This accusation, echoed throughout the Horus Heresy, signals more than betrayal or disillusionment; it reveals a structural contradiction embedded within the pre-Heresy Imperium. The Great Crusade imposed absolute commitment upon its Primarchs and Legions—unrelenting violence, unwavering endurance, and total sacrifice—yet denied the emotional, interpretive, and symbolic …

What Truly Matters, and Why: Honor and the Structure of Meaning-Making in Warhammer 40,000

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 …

The God-Emperor and a Meditation on Religion

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. …

Fulgrim vs Ferrus Manus (c) Games Workshop

Missile-Launcher vs Holo-Werfer: The Problem of the German Translation of Space Crusade

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 linguistic landscape in the early Imperium of Man – Low Gothic at the time of the Great Crusade and theoretical accounts of language change

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 …

Purpose between Humanity and Artificiality – Perspectives on the Life of a Space Marine the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium

The paper explores the complex existential situation of an Astartes Space Marine between humanity and artificiality and the implications of the peculiar type of purpose they follow from an existentialist and technical-philosophical perspective. Astartes are superhuman soldiers, trialed, enhanced, and trained to defend the Imperium of Man from the xenos, the heretic, the daemon. Unlike …

Avatars of Grimdark: the Imperium of Man and the T’au Empire in the Warhammer 40’000 setting

The Warhammer 40´000 setting is characterised by its proverbial “grim darkness”. Its take on the far future is a highly dystopian one. The most important polity in the setting, the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man, is described as the worst possible regime. It is a militaristic, xenophobic, highly repressive dictatorship. By contrast, the T’au Empire is …