Editing Exterminatus (section)

==Non-Imperium Exterminatus==
Several factions outside the Imperium do things similar to the Imperial Exterminatus (adding any examples from the lore would be greatly appreciated). However, most of them don't use these methods often. Some examples:

===Craftworld Eldar===
The [[Eldar|Craftworld Eldar]] have some respect for life (and not nearly as many weapons of mass destruction as they had before the [[Fall of the Eldar|Fall]]) so they don't do it often. Didn't stop them from purging all life in the Octarius system to clean up [[Kryptman|Kryptman's]] mess, though (in that case the Dark Eldar provided the WMD). The most well-known Eldar engines of planetary destruction are called [[Blackstone Fortress|Blackstone Fortresses]], which are ancient weapons they designed to fight the [[C'tan]]. To put it simply, think of a floating citadel with a distort weapon (like the ones the [[Wraithguard]] have) the size of an Emperor-class battleship. During the Gothic Wars, three Blackstone Fortresses combined their power to cause a star to go supernova, destroying an entire solar system.

In Apocalypse War Zone: Valedor, the Craftworld Eldar from [[Iyanden]] procured another type of ancient WMD, the Fireheart: a complex nodal resonator capable of causing a planet's molten core to enter violent death throes and send lakes of lava to the surface (or just explode two-stage torpedo style, the tie-in novel plays the fireworks up to a big degree). The [[Dark Eldar]] originally had this, but they gave it away because they didn't have the psychic power to activate the weapon. The Fireheart was used successfully on Valedor and prevented Hive Fleets [[Hive Fleet Kraken|Kraken]] and [[Hive Fleet Behemoth|Behemoth]] from joining forces. If they had, the [[Tyranids]] would have had all of the genetic data of the Orks and the Eldar, enabling them to fashion unthinkable monstrosities.

Before the fall (and possibly still kicking around somewhere) they had devices that fired entire suns or black holes at their enemies.

===Dark Eldar===
The [[Dark Eldar]] as a whole lack a good stockpile of planet-killing weaponry and prefer to keep planets intact for slaves, although they are still capable of exterminating the populace of entire planets if they wanted to. One method is pillaging the shit out of it. It has been proven time and time again that an entire major kabal or dozens of separate, smaller kabals, is more than capable of kidnapping an entire planet of its populace, faster than that local PDF trooper can finish his scream of agony. Granted, being taken captive isn't part of a traditional Exterminatus' MO, but if you know the fate of a hapless mortal in Commorragh; [[Fist of the North Star|they are already dead]] (at best).

There has also been one instance of an entire Hive World being poisoned by the Dark Eldar, as well as an incident in which they smashed a Space Hulk at a Webway sub-realm and so the warp drives would detonate to release hordes of daemons (though that's not exactly a 'repeatable' means of planet killing). There's also counting the DE's ability to steal entire suns; allowing them to turn entire habitable planets into ice worlds if need be. Like the Craftworld Eldar, they also possess a psychic doomsday device called The Fireheart to implode a planet's core.

The Kabal of the Dying Sun actually does have a stockpile of WMDs - some of which are powerful enough to destroy stars - and [[Asdrubael Vect|Vect]] keeps black holes in his back pocket to control people. The former is kept in check by several things; they don't know how all of them work, many are psychically activated (psychic powers being forbidden in Commorragh on direct orders from Vect), the other Kabals would almost certainly go after the stockpile if it became known, and it's usually more lucrative for them to conduct raids. For Vect, portable black holes are a special occasion weapon. Like party favours, except with event horizons.

The Dark Eldar can also just have other races kill planets for them. [[Just as Planned|Through manipulation from the sides; they could convince (and managed to do so at one point) the Imperium to declare Exterminatus on a planet.]] And of course as part of an ancient race that was waging war from before the rise of man they can just assemble a nuclear weapon if they need a really big - if crude - bomb. [[Grimdark|But again, they like their victims alive.]]

===Necrons===
The [[Necrons]] have lost many WMDs, but may have several more just waiting to be awakened. ([[Not as Planned|Maybe the Necrons are more trigger-happy with Exterminatus than the Imperium, but they're better at ensuring there're no witnesses]]?).

One of their most notorious Exterminatus-tier machines was the [[The World Engine|World Engine]], which was a planet-sized vessel equipped with the largest [[Gauss|gauss weapon]] known to man. It looked like the combination of a Death Star, Unicron and a Forerunner Shield-World all rolled into one. A [[Rape|flying rape-machine of ungodly proportions]], it took a coalition of several Space Marine chapters and the entire Imperial fleet of the Vidar Subsector to destroy it. For some reason, it had shields that could withstand the [[Awesome|bombardment of an ''entire navy'',]] yet it was [[What|vulnerable]] to a ship [[Meme|impacting at sufficient velocity.]] (Then again, most space shields are designed to stop large projectiles weighing several dozen tonnes fired at high velocity, not kilometers-long Battle Barges weighing hundreds of thousands of tonnes or more [[Angry Marines|being forced up their ass]] at comparatively slow velocity).

The [[Maynarkh Dynasty]] deploys a peculiar device that causes supercharged solar flares that incinerate the daylight-facing sides of ALL planets in a system. Unfortunately for the population on the side of the planet facing away from the sun, incinerating half a planet's surface would also incinerate its atmosphere, stripping the whole planet bare of its life giving biosphere, or whatever gases it had trapped. Even more unfortunately, Maynarkh Necrons are even more interested in making a planetfall and skinning them alive.

Also, the Tomb World of Thanatos has a giant hologram map of the galaxy known as the '''Celestial Orrery''', and if [[What|you were to destroy a star on it, the real life counterpart would go supernova]]. While this makes the Necrons seem like [[Matt Ward|the most powerful faction in the entire galaxy by far]] who could [[Bullshit|instantly kill everyone else in the galaxy without any risk]], the lore also states that a star detonated this way could set off a catastrophic and unpredictable chain-reaction of dying stars which in turn could destroy the whole galaxy. It could also destroy the Necrons of Thanatos, which would destroy the Celestial Orrery and guarantee the death of the entire galaxy, something even the Necrons are not willing to risk.

(In a similar vein to the above, if the Necrons ''really'' wanted to destroy a world, they could just unleash a particularly powerful Transcendent C'tan shard on it without a Tesseract Vault. Though it would most likely escape and be nearly impossible to return to Necron control, it would achieve the same effects.)

The Necrons can also employ an [[Abattoir]] when directly terraforming a planet. They are large, [[monolith]]-like devices except that they physically carry what they're transporting, are the size of a small city, and are covered in tentacles that disintegrate organic material while harvesting its anguish. Also, given that their standard guns can disintegrate adamantium, and they don't mind waiting a few million years to achieve their goals, an enterprising (or bored) Lord could just order his legions to start shooting rocks, making for a thorough but hilariously slow Exterminatus.

In "Twice-dead King" novels one of their capital ships has a star, [[Wat|too large to be held together by its own gravity]], stashed inside a sub-dimensional pocket, which both hides its gravity and stabilizes its existense. If need arises, the pocket can be opened, releasing a blast powerful enough to ''melt a continent''. The funny thing is that said weapon was initially designed to be used against enemies' fleets, not planets.

===Tyranids===
[[Meme|No, Tyranids, you are the Exterminatus.]]

A [[Tyranids|Tyranid]] fleet's primary objective is to devour entire planets and systems for biomass. After they're done, the world they invaded is left a lifeless rock, utterly devoid of life.

The Tyranids also travel through sublight via gravity manipulations, and these can rip apart asteroids, voidships, space stations and small moons entirely and cause a massive series of earthquakes on anything bigger before the 'nids make planetfall.

In one special case however. It is proven that even Tyranids can accidentally cause an Exterminatus that doesn't involved being devoured. In the Doom of Hesp where an escalating Chemical/Biological war between the Death Guard and the Tyranids using Venomthropes and Toxicrenes led to the planet being so toxic that the biomass on the planet was inedible and the bioship got destroyed by fellow hiveships when it tried to devour the biomass to replenish itself, out of the Hive Mind's fear that the poisoned biomass would impair the fleet.

===Orks===
In theory, the [[Ork]]s could develop an Ork-sterminatus-sized weapon (as much by accident and luck as by design); they grab an asteroid, put engines and weapons and armor on it, fill it with Orks, and then ram it full speed into a planet. It wouldn't matter if it turned out to function as a giant transport or just a suicide missile; it generates tremendous amounts of [[lulz]] and serves its purpose of making a big boom, which is all the Orks are concerned with. This haphazard design and construction process would limit the amount of these contraptions the Orks could build (if any).

In general, however, Orks want to avoid wiping out everything on the planet from orbit, as it would leave them with nothing to fight on the ground. Although a Big Mek in need of roks once smashed a moon into a planet and took his pick from the best bits.

The [[War of the Beast]] proves that this wasn't the furthest extent either. The Orks under the Beast's control were weaponizing entire moons and used their gravitational fields to rip apart planets.

===Tau Empire===
While the [[Tau]] almost certainly have the technological capability to destroy entire planets (if the fucking Orks can figure it out without having to build back up to Krork, then the Tau probably at least gave it some thought), there are a number of philosophical, political, and strategic reasons that they would avoid doing this in all but the most extreme circumstances.

For one, the Tau Empire is in the process of expanding, and it isn't exactly conducive to your expansion efforts to blow up perfectly colonizable worlds; thus the Tau would likely see Imperial Exterminatus orders as an egregious waste of resources. Also, the Tau are arguably [[Grimdark|the only race in the 40k universe]] who operate by something parodying a moral compass that is beyond survive at any cost, so the idea of obliterating a planet and its inhabitants is likely appalling to their [[Noblebright|naive wittle sensibilities]].

On the other hand, the Tau have officially declared some races (Orks, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, and Necrons) "lost causes" to be destroyed wherever encountered, so one could plausibly imagine a situation hopeless enough that they would sacrifice a planet to be rid of them. Still, they would probably try to at least leave the world itself salvageable and only exterminate the infesting species. This might not be a concern on a lifeless rock that happened to be a Necron tomb world, however. There are stories of populations being sterilized or generally dispatched, which is about as mean as the Tau get; one such case was the Poctroon, who were the first sapient species they ever encountered. Their planet was ripe for colonization, and when the Tau arrived, the Poctroon all died of a 'mysterious' contagion, though the Tau obviously have admitted no diabolical fuckery.

As their expansion accelerated deeper into Imperial space, the Tau started to deploy more and more experimental technologies to both battlefields and production lines, some of which weren't properly tested. As a result, quite a few moons, planets and even stars have been accidentally destroyed by various mishaps. While such destruction sometimes happened to be advantageous to Tau forces (for example, by shattering Imperial defences with massive tidal waves and earthquakes after the destruction of a planet's moon), they have shown no attempts to weaponize it.

The Tau also have orbital high-yield nuclear warhead options, but they generally use them to generate EMP pulses to blackout a wide area. They can also use these warheads to scatter toxic radiation over an area instead, though, burning through flesh and killing those below.

The Tau are also one of the few factions in 40k who still possess functioning terraforming technology (the Eldar lost theirs during the [[Fall of the Eldar|Fall]], Tyranid "terraforming" is more just them going about eating everything, and Necron terraforming is an Exterminatus on its own), so they can restore exterminated planets to habitability again, provided they haven't been utterly destroyed Deathstar-style. So yes, [[Meme| in the Tau Empire, Exterminatus get purged by YOU!]]

One of the notable examples would be [[Commander Or'es'Ka]] from [[Dawn of War|Dawn of War Soulstorm]], where he had this huge ass gun called "Ar'Ka Cannon" installed on the moon of Kaurava II. The cannon can fire anywhere in the Kaurava system (including the moon where the cannon is), obliterating any enemies before the main force moves in. The said [[ork|BIGGIZT GUNZ]] is also the most Eco-friendly WMD ever built in the grimdark future, as it is capable of damaging only advanced life forms while incapable of harming plants and buildings.

===Forces of Chaos===
Being former servants of the Imperium, fleets of [[Chaos Space Marines]] often still possess the good old Imperial Exterminatus weapons, like virus bombs for the old legions, cyclonic torpedoes for more recently turned traitors, or Just Shoot The Shit Out Of It for any warband with ships in their fleet big enough to carry the guns. Occasionally they will [[Looted|pillage]] Imperial Exteminatus weapons, or else invent some of their own with technology, sorcery, daemonic shit or some combination of the three. [[Honsou|Some]] Chaos guys tend to be quite inventive in finding ways to kill planets.

During one of his Black Crusades, [[Abaddon]] managed to steal or destroy all of the Blackstone Fortresses that the Imperium had in their possession. Naturally, they work just as well for Chaos as they did for the Eldar (and far better than they ever did for the Imperium). He also commissioned [[Planet Killer|an incredibly huge destroyer of a spaceship]], the front half of which is basically a battery of miles-long energy cannons. This "Armageddon Gun" can split a planet in half with one shot.

Then there is World Eaters, who live up to their name when they are united. 50,000 of these motherfuckers slaughtered 70 Sectors in Angron's Dominion of Fire campaign. [[Derp| Then all the planets they conquered were retaken. It seems like they forgot to salt the earth.]] To be fair though, Imperium needed four Chapters, two Titan Legions and more than thirty Guard Regiments (''However, WAAAGH Skargor took on fifty Guard regiments and SIX spess mehreen chapters. Perhaps World Eaters lack the power of [[dakka]].''). Back in Great Crusade, these butchers manually killed everything on the planets they went to conquer. Most of the time, it took them one day. This gave birth to another problem: There were no subjects on these planets to rule over. So the Emprah had to sent fleets to colonize planets left over by World Eaters, which was a pain in the arse for him.

Uniquely amongst 40k factions, the armies of Chaos can make planets effectively Exterminatus-proof by turning them into [[Daemon World|Daemon Worlds]], where the laws of physics are fucked up so hard by the power of the [[Warp]] that all weapons just cease to function on and around it, or even achieve the opposite effect by nourishing the daemon patron of the world and making him even stronger (don't even think about virus bombing a [[Nurgle]] Daemon World). Though admittedly, from literally any point of view besides that of Chaos, Exterminatus is a preferable option to Daemon World transformation, as it would just kill you, rather than damning you to the eternity of torment.

Of course, there's also the act of summoning [[Aetaos'Rau'Keres]]. Keres will turn any planet he's summoned on into a lifeless husk. He doesn't care what side you are on or even if you're the cult that summoned him; he will murder ''everyone'' unlucky enough to be on the planet he's currently on. Such is his methods that he's the closest thing the Chaos Daemons have to a true (i.e.: not reliant on material tools) planetary Exterminatus.

===[[Jokaero]]===
In theory, the Jokaero would be entirely capable of inventing any number of weird means of Exterminatus on the fly, assuming they're even cognitively capable of the abstract thinking involved in deciding to destroy the planet itself instead of just the zillions of gribblies in your immediate proximity, which they probably aren't.