Power,Withdrawn

KhorneThe Blood God — never present

The largest of the four by most accounts, and the one with the least to show for it, because he does not attend. Khorne is fed by violence wherever it happens and grows on it regardless of who wins, which makes him unusually hard to fight: victory over his followers is an offering. Off the scale because a thing that has never taken the field cannot be ranked against things that have.

• Codex: Chaos Space Marines · stated

  Sustained by bloodshed and battle regardless of which side commits it.

TzeentchThe Changer of Ways — never present

Schemes as a metabolism. The convention is that any plan against Tzeentch is a plan he wrote, which is unfalsifiable and is exactly why he is not ranked — an entity that cannot lose by definition is a narrative device rather than a combatant. The one concrete thing on his record is the Rubric, and he had a mortal cast it.

• A Thousand Sons · 2010 · shown

  The Thousand Sons' fate is bound to his patronage and to Ahriman's Rubric.

NurgleThe Plague Lord — never present

Despair and disease, and the one the books write with something close to affection. What he does at scale is depopulate: a Nurgle incursion is counted in worlds rather than casualties, and the Plague Wars cost the newly-restored Imperium more than any battle in the same period.

• Dark Imperium · 2017 · shown

  The Plague Wars are fought against Mortarion's Death Guard as his instrument in realspace.

SlaaneshBorn on a galactic body count

The only one of the four with a birthday, and the birth is the largest single act of destruction anywhere on this page. Slaanesh came into being out of Aeldari excess and the arrival killed most of a galaxy-spanning civilisation in a moment, tore the Eye of Terror open where their empire had been, and left the survivors running from a god that owns their souls by default. It is off the scale for the same reason as the others — it has never once taken the field in realspace — and it is the strongest argument that the scale is the wrong tool.

• Codex: Craftworlds · stated

  Born of Aeldari excess; the birth annihilates their empire and creates the Eye of Terror.

The Emperor of MankindRanked before the Throne — heresy

• The Emperor before the Siegethe state everything here is argued from
• The Master of Mankindinterred on the Golden Throne, sustaining the Astronomican and little else

He made twenty demigods to specification, held a psychic beacon open across a galaxy so ships could navigate at all, and beat Horus at the moment Horus had everything four gods could give him. The Throne is the asterisk and not the rank: for ten thousand years he has been a dying body maintained by machinery, and the Imperium's entire theology is an argument about what the man on it used to be able to do.

• The Master of Mankind · 2016 · shown

  The Golden Throne sustains the Astronomican and the webway project at enormous cost to him.

• Horus Rising · 2006 · stated

  Established as the creator of the Primarchs and the architect of the Great Crusade.

Horus AscendantEverything four gods could fit in one body — heresy

• Warmaster Horusthe Great Crusade's most capable commander, before Davin
• Horus Ascendantafter the four powers invest in him directly

The only entity in the setting that all four powers agreed to back at once, and briefly the strongest thing in the galaxy on that basis. He killed Sanguinius, broke through the Emperor's guard aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and left the Emperor in the state the Imperium has been managing ever since. Second because it did not hold: the same duel ended with his soul annihilated rather than merely his body.

• False Gods · 2006 · shown

  Turned on Davin and given power by the four Ruinous Powers together.

• The End and the Death: Volume II · 2023 · shown

  Kills Sanguinius aboard the Vengeful Spirit and mortally wounds the Emperor.

• The End and the Death: Volume III · 2024 · shown

  Destroyed utterly by the Emperor, soul included, so that nothing can return.

The NightbringerMephet'ran's kin — a C'tan

• The Nightbringer wholebefore biotransference and the shattering
• A shardthe only state anything in M41 has actually met

A star-eater that fed on the life of living things across the galaxy, and whose lasting achievement is psychological: the setting holds that the fear of death present in nearly every species was imprinted by it. What keeps it at three rather than one is the ending. The Necrons shattered every C'tan into shards, and every appearance since has been a fragment on a leash.

• Codex: Necrons · stated

  A C'tan said to have imprinted the fear of death across the galaxy's species.

• Codex: Necrons · stated

  The C'tan were shattered into shards by the Necrons and bound.

The Void DragonUnder Mars, allegedly — a C'tan

The one whose feats are entirely other people's nerves. The setting strongly implies a C'tan is imprisoned beneath Mars and that the Mechanicum has been worshipping it without quite knowing, which would make the Imperium's entire technological base a religion built over a sleeping predator. Contested and ranked here on that implication, which is thinner evidence than anything above it.

• Mechanicum · 2008 · stated

  The Emperor's imprisonment of the Dragon beneath Mars, and the Mechanicum's unknowing worship of it.

• Codex: Necrons · stated

  Named among the C'tan, shattered with the rest.

Magnus the RedThe Crimson King — heresy

• Magnus the Redprimarch of the Thousand Sons
• Daemon Primarchafter Prospero, in Tzeentch's service

The strongest psyker the Imperium ever fielded, and the one who proved it by accident. Warning his father cost the Emperor the webway project, let what was in the warp into Terra, and is the direct reason the Golden Throne became a life-support machine. Everything the Emperor is now traces to one message Magnus was told not to send.

• A Thousand Sons · 2010 · shown

  Breaches the Emperor's webway defences delivering a warning, wrecking the project.

• The Master of Mankind · 2016 · shown

  The webway breach is what commits the Emperor permanently to the Throne.

The Silent KingSzarekh — the one who sold the species

He traded his entire species' bodies to the C'tan for immortality, got what he asked for, and then understood what he had done — and the second act is why he ranks here. Having handed the C'tan a galaxy, he shattered them, which makes him the only entity on this page to have beaten something in the tier above it and then walked away from the throne rather than keep it.

• Codex: Necrons · stated

  Ordered biotransference, then led the revolt that shattered the C'tan into shards.

AngronThe Butcher's Nails — heresy

• Angronprimarch of the World Eaters, with the Nails already killing him
• Daemon Primarch of Khornethe state he was elevated into on Nuceria

A primarch operated by a torture device nailed into his skull. What makes him rank rather than merely appear is that the Nails cost him almost everything a primarch is for — strategy, patience, the ability to stop — and he is still one of the most dangerous things in the galaxy with only the last of those left.

• Betrayer · 2013 · shown

  The Butcher's Nails are destroying him, and his elevation on Nuceria is what stops it.

FulgrimThe Phoenician — heresy

• Fulgrimprimarch of the Emperor's Children
• Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh

The primarch who killed another primarch and did not get to enjoy it. He took Ferrus Manus's head at Isstvan V, the first time one primarch killed another, and the novels are explicit that the thing holding the sword was no longer entirely him.

• Fulgrim · 2007 · shown

  Beheads Ferrus Manus at Isstvan V while under the blade's influence.

MortarionThe Death Lord — heresy

• Mortarionprimarch of the Death Guard
• Daemon Primarch of Nurgle

He spent his mortal life resenting anything he could not out-endure, and ended up the property of the one god who makes endurance the whole point. In the present he runs the Plague Wars against Guilliman's Imperium, which is the largest sustained offensive any of the returned primarchs has had to answer.

• Dark Imperium · 2017 · shown

  Leads the Death Guard against Ultramar in the Plague Wars.

Roboute GuillimanThe Imperium's only administrator — present

• Roboute Guillimanprimarch of the Ultramarines
• Lord Commander of the Imperiumreturned in M42, in the Armour of Fate

Ranked for what he holds together rather than what he kills. Mortally wounded by Fulgrim and kept in stasis for ten thousand years, he came back to an Imperium that had turned his father into a god and had to decide what to do about it. The distinction the books keep making is that he is the only primarch whose most dangerous act was a reorganisation.

• Dark Imperium · 2017 · shown

  Returned from stasis to command the Imperium and prosecute the Plague Wars.

• Know No Fear · 2012 · shown

  Holds Ultramar together through the Word Bearers' surprise attack at Calth.

Lion El'JonsonBack, and nobody asked — present

• Lion El'Jonsonprimarch of the Dark Angels
• The returned LionM42, out of the Rock and back into a galaxy split in two

Missing for ten thousand years and returned into a setting that had built an entire chapter's secret around his absence. Contested because the return is recent and most of what supports his placement is Heresy-era: he was one of the most capable primarchs then, and the present has not yet had time to test the claim.

• The Lion: Son of the Forest · 2023 · shown

  Returns in M42 after ten thousand years unaccounted for.

Kairos FateweaverTwo heads, both lying — present

A Lord of Change with one head that sees everything that has happened and one that sees everything that will, and enough damage between them that neither can be trusted. It is the highest-ranked greater daemon here because prophecy in this setting is a weapon rather than a genre convention, and it is the one entity holding both ends of it.

• Codex: Chaos Daemons · stated

  Greatest of Tzeentch's Lords of Change; one head sees the past, the other the future.

Abaddon the DespoilerWarmaster, thirteen times — present

Twelve Black Crusades that the Imperium wrote up as failures, and then a thirteenth that broke Cadia and tore the galaxy in half along the Great Rift. The reading the setting now invites is that the first twelve were not failures at all but preparation, which is the rare case of a villain's record being revised upward by events.

• Codex: Chaos Space Marines · stated

  Leads the 13th Black Crusade, destroying Cadia and opening the Great Rift.

Ghazghkull Mag Uruk ThrakaThe prophet — present

Two wars for Armageddon, one of them fought to a standstill against the full weight of the Imperium, and a stated willingness to leave rather than finish because the fighting was the point. He is the only entry here whose strategic goal is more war, which makes every victory over him a partial one.

• Codex: Orks · stated

  Leads the Second and Third Wars for Armageddon against the Imperium.

Eldrad UlthranTold you so — present

The most accomplished farseer the craftworlds have, and the record is a list of warnings nobody acted on. Ranked on the one that landed: he read the Heresy coming and went to Fulgrim with it, who was already lost to Slaanesh and beyond persuading — and the forty years since have treated that as the founding example of Aeldari foresight being useless in human hands.

• Codex: Craftworlds · stated

  Ulthwé's foremost farseer, whose warnings to the Imperium are repeatedly disregarded.

Saint CelestineKeeps coming back — present

She has died in front of witnesses more than once and returned each time, and the Imperium has decided this is sanctity rather than a phenomenon requiring explanation. Contested because the mechanism is deliberately never given: the setting will not say whether it is the Emperor, the warp, or the difference between them.

• Codex: Adepta Sororitas · stated

  Repeatedly slain and returned, treated by the Ecclesiarchy as a living saint.

Trazyn the InfiniteThe collector — present

He steals people. Trazyn's method is to take living specimens out of history and store them in stasis in a gallery, which means his real capability is not combat but the fact that losing to him is not death and is arguably worse. He also cannot be killed conventionally — he simply transfers into another body in the collection.

• Codex: Necrons · stated

  Maintains a stasis collection of specimens taken from across history; survives destruction by body-transfer.

Commissar YarrickA man with a claw — present

A baseline human, bionic eye and looted klaw aside, who held Hades Hive against Ghazghkull and became the thing the Orks themselves are superstitious about — they came to believe he could not be killed, which in a species whose belief has physical consequences is not a small detail. The highest-ranked baseline human on this page, and it is not close.

• Codex: Astra Militarum · stated

  Defends Hades Hive during the Second War for Armageddon; Orks come to regard him as unkillable.

Commander DanteFifteen hundred years old — present

The oldest living Space Marine, which in a role with that life expectancy is the feat by itself. He has commanded the Blood Angels for over a thousand years without succumbing to the two genetic conditions that take almost every other member of his chapter.

• Codex: Blood Angels · stated

  The oldest living loyalist Space Marine outside Dreadnought interment; Chapter Master for over a millennium.

MephistonLord of Death — present

He went into the Black Rage, which is terminal, and came out the other side as something the Blood Angels have never been able to classify. Last of the argued entries because the achievement is internal — he survived his own genetics — and this page ranks what was done to the world above what was done to oneself.

• Codex: Blood Angels · stated

  Emerged from the Black Rage transformed rather than destroyed, becoming the Chief Librarian.