The Madministratum

As part of a series of post looking at some of the interesting links between 40k and other Games Workshop settings (most notably Warhammer Fantasy (WHFB)/AoS), let’s turn our attention to a largely forgotten but fascinating short story: ‘The Ultimate Ritual’, by Neil Jones and William King. This was first published in Inferno issue 16 (December 1999), then republished in the book Lords of Valour in 2001. I am quoting from the latter. The set up is that Professor Gerhardt Kleinhoffer, Lector in Magical Arts at the University of Nuln from the Empire in the Warhammer Fantasy World, has been convinced by his favoured student, Lothar von Diehl, to use some esoteric sorcery to gain knowledge. Which involves summoning a daemon… The two of them follow instructions laid out in The Book of Changes, written in Classical Old Worlder by the long-dead Bretonnian poet and mystic, Giles de Courcy. You can probably guess which of the four major Chaos gods this book relates to…  Kleinhoffer has som...

In discussions about the links between 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (and latterly AoS) a lot of false claims get endlesslessly recycled. One set of such erroneous claim I have seen be repeated a lot (over many, many years, and still frequently today) are that: 40k and Fantasy were never actually linked, beyond perhaps mere easter eggs and jokey references which didn't really mean there was a link. That it was only ever a fan theory that the Warhammer World (the setting of Fantasy) was located within the 40k galaxy. That it was only ever implied/suggested that the Warhammer World was located in the 40k galaxy. So, let's clear up the issue with some relevant evidence. 40k was released not long after the release of Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd ed., and the two settings were explicitly stated to be linked in a note from Rick Priestley (co-author of WHFB editions 1-3 and sole author of 1st edition of 40k, Rogue Trader ) in GW's flagship magazine White Dwarf (key part in bold): Alt...

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...