The Madministratum

Well, it might not be a joke, but it was obviously meant to be a humorous reference. And it is very old and by now very obscure lore. But it is worth knowing about! I am posting this because it is really interesting and fun, and because it is likely something most people aren’t aware of. It is also one of a number of tidbits I will be posting on interesting links between the various Games Workshop settings in the run up to a more comprehensive overview of the history of links between them I will post later on. I already covered the Liber Chaotica books here:  https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2025/06/liber-chaotica-and-its-links-between.html And, very relevant to this post, that time a Genestealer ended up in a game of Blood Bowl (well, Dungeon Bowl, actually) here: https://madministratum.blogspot.com/2025/06/two-blood-bowl-players-find-themselves.html To understand how a Space Marine, an Astropath and Indiana Jones walked into a Warp storm, we have to enter the Warp ourselves an...

Context: In the Blood Bowl reality, a match of Dungeon Bowl between the Bright Crusaders and the Champions of Death has an interesting twist: both teams don't actually know where the opponents' end zone is, and they are being transported from their own endzones into the heart of the dungeon by the spells cast by wizards from the Colleges of Magic (drawing on the Winds of Magic from the Realm of Chaos, i.e. the Warp). As might be expected, things don't go according to plan, and magical shenanigans ensue - including the appearance in the Blood Bowl match of a mysterious "player" with four arms... which befuddles the Blood Bowl commentators Jim and Bob: There was a teleport pad just ahead. The Crusader was making for it with blinding speed. No you don’t, Ramtut thought, and made a desperate leap to tackle. The teleport pad seemed to explode. The conclave invoked by the College of Magic would eventually pronounce that the overload was inevitable. The skeletons poured ...

A perennial question and heated debate within the Warhammer fandom is whether 40k and Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WHFB)/Age of Sigmar are or have ever been linked, or whether they are wholly separate settings. I am planning to make a much more extensive series of posts offering a deep, deep dive into this topic which sketches out the situation from the launch of 40k up to the present, to help provide some elucidation. But, in the meantime, given I have been amassing relevant material, I thought I might as well share a few particularly interesting bits of lore related to this topic. I’m starting with one many people may have heard about, but have no had the chance to see the relevant passages for themselves. 2003-04 saw the publication of a fascinating and in-depth series of books exploring Chaos, titled Liber Chaotica . This was presented from an in-universe perspective, which I generally love with Warhammer and 40k lore, as it allows for interesting storytelling and it often produces ma...

Daedalon is a moon which serves as a cemetary for the Gilead System, which now lies in Imperium Nihilus. Continuing a tour of the worlds and moons of the Gilead System (having already covered communities on the agriworld of Ostia, the shrineworld of Holy Enoch and the Forgeworld of Avarchus), let's take a look at Daedalon and see what we can learn about moon itself, what this suggests about the nature of the Imperium more broadly, and the impact of the Great Rift (with some key passages highlighted in bold). Let's start with a general overview: The surface of Daedalon, the Gilead System’s cemetery, is almost entirely covered in graves, tombs, and skyscraper-tall mausoleums. The revered bones of the System’s most celebrated heroes and saints are interred on holy Enoch, while the remaining trillions are sent to Daedalon to be processed. Daedalon’s skylines are a constant reminder of the moon’s designated purpose. Noble families build ever taller and more complex burial housings i...

Continuing a series of posts on how the opening of the Great Rift has affected the Gilead system, which has ended up in Imperium Nihilus, let's turn our attention to the state of Holy Enoch, a shrine world: Holy Enoch Picture an emerald whose lustre has faded. A world of vast oceans and narrow desert land masses entirely covered in temples and shantytowns, with whole mountain ranges carved into the likenesses of heroes and saints. The 4th sphere spinning about Gilead’s sullen star. Holy Enoch: a shrine world, one teeming with life… too much life. Enoch was once a pilgrimage destination that oversaw the passage of billions of off-worlders every decade. At any given time, millions of wayfarers travelled between Enoch’s many holy sites from the shoals of Inish to the Temple of the Emperor’s Archangel, Tygranas Dalir. When the Great Rift opened, millions of pilgrims were suddenly trapped on the surface, even as millions more were stuck in their transport vessels in the midst of either ...

This post explores some which lore which provides an interesting insight into how the emergence of the Great Rift has placed massive strain on the Imperium's resources and logisitics, via the case study of a Servitor factory - the Pakthertius Manufactorum - on the Forgeworld of Avacharus in the Gilead System, with has found itself in Imperium Nihilus. The context: Once, the Pakthertius Manufactorum provided a vital output of quality Servitors, augmetically enhanced mind-wiped humans prized for crucial labour and myriad other uses in the Gilead System. But now the manufactorum has fallen silent. There is no sign of life from the outside, and heavily armed Servitors prevent all but the most determined from entering. ... Just like the rest of Humanity, the Pakthertius Manufactorum suffered greatly in the wake of the Great Rift. Cut off from the rest of the Imperium, and facing wars on all fronts, the manufactorum was met with increased demands for its primary export — Servitors. But a...