I got into Warhammer through the lore, and started reading with Horus Heresy novels. Those books hooked me. The tragedy of brother fighting brother, the sheer scale of betrayal, and the raw, mythic weight of it all. I didn’t start by reading about Space Marines as demigods defending a corpse-emperor—I started by watching them tear everything apart, driven by conviction, pride, or just blind rage.
And ever since finishing The Siege of Terra, I’ve had one big question: What happens next?
We know where the setting ends up, of course. The 41st Millennium is all grim darkness and eternal war. But the transition—from the ashes of the Heresy to the crumbling nightmare of the Imperium we know today—has always been this murky, fascinating gap. And now, finally, Black Library is filling it in with The Scouring.
I can’t overstate how excited I am. This isn’t just an epilogue. It’s a whole new saga.
This is where we see Guilliman trying to wrestle control of the Imperium back from the edge, not with a sword, but with logistics and law. It’s where the Legions—the same ones that broke the galaxy—have to be told they’re no longer welcome to march as gods. That they have to become something less. That’s not going to sit well with a lot of them.
And on the Traitor side… what happens when the war is lost, your primarch is dead or fled, and your god doesn’t answer anymore? Watching the Traitor Legions spiral into whatever form they’ll eventually take—mad warbands, daemon princes, pathetic shadows of themselves—has so much narrative potential. There’s going to be a lot of pain, vengeance, and identity crisis.
And then there’s humanity. The regular people. The ones who saw the Emperor’s dream die in real time, who now have to figure out how to live in the broken empire left behind. It’s easy to forget how much this entire setting hinges on them—on people just trying to hold it together while giants stomp over everything they care about.
From what’s been revealed, we’re getting a fresh cast: Iron Warrior Ortag Theokon, Word Bearer Adraharsis, and Ultramarines Chief Librarian Prayto. New voices, new battles, new power plays. If the Heresy was a god-war, The Scouring feels like its reckoning.
And for someone like me—who fell in love with this universe through the story first—it’s a chance to keep going. To follow the consequences. To see the characters and factions we’ve spent so many years reading about pushed into uncomfortable, desperate directions. This is the fallout. The reckoning. The real beginning of the Imperium as we know it.
Ashes of the Imperium can’t come soon enough.
