But these are not the only players or pieces left on an altered board: There are others that bear mentioning…

The Chaos Gods, though greatly diminished, cling on at the periphery of human society and in those few alien species that chose to worship them. Amongst those human civilisations still to be brought to compliance at the ever-decreasing periphery of human space, there are still any number that may harbour hidden cults dedicated to the dying pantheon, and their threat is not to be underestimated.

The Perpetuals, those who share the Emperor’s burden of immortality, are a fractured skein of humanity. Whilst others have tried to remain hidden as history runs its course, some served the Cabal in their attempt to thwart the Primordial Annihilator, but without that common enemy, now question their allegiance to alien ends. On Terra, neither the Emperor nor the Sigillite forgot they were not alone in their eternal vigil, and with the stability of the Council of Terra all-but-guaranteeing secure governance of the Empire, the latter has turned his attention to hunting down those of his ilk.

The Cabal, though initially elated by the fall of the Chaos Gods and the breaking of the power the Primordial Annihilator had invested in humanity, now face the grim reality of the Emperor’s ascendance and the success of the Great Crusade in pacifying a galaxy of diverse and disparate races, the last holdouts of which must now unite or die in the face of human conquest. And were the Emperor to realise his goal of an Imperial Webway, their fate would be all but sealed. Whilst Eldrad Ulthran seeks to keep the Imperials at bay in the Immaterium, others seek to unify the rest of the galaxy against the human threat.

But the Emperor is not one to place all his hopes in one gambit: In a far-flung corner of the galaxy, the discovery of the Pharos device on Sotha has opened up another pathway to total galactic dominance. Quietly, and in absolute secrecy, work has begun to harness the power of the beacon as either an efficient replacement to the mighty Astronomican or an alternative to the Imperial Webway itself, giving the Emperor a possible means to escape the eternal vigil that he fears awaits him.