Great Rift

The Great Rift, also known as Cicatrix Maledictum (which more or less means the Cursed Scar), Gork's Grin, Mouth's Ruin, the Dathedian... is a massive chain of Warp-storms that has tore realspace in half after the destruction of Cadia and its pylons by the Chaos Warmaster Abaddon the Despoiler. In its current state, it has divided the galaxy into two halves, plus a couple of independent warpstorms in certain areas. This has obviously meant bad news to every major faction in the galaxy other than Chaos (and maybe orks, because now there are more spiky gits to krump), and has specially affected the Imperium of Man, dividing it's territory into two halves almost isolated from each other: the part where the Astronomicam still shines normally, and the part where its light can barely reach. This half of the Imperium usually gets the name Imperium Nihilus, both because it's been darkened by the Great Rift and because it's becoming an increasingly bad place to live in, due to Warp shenannigans and xeno attacks.

So what exactly started it all?

During the last couple of centuries, the tides of the Warp had been more and more erratic and violent, making space travel more and more dangerous. It's been widely believed that Abaddon the Despoiler's dark crusades had the secret objective to destroy a series of ancient structures that kept the Warp from overflowing into the materium. During the 13th Black Crusade and its final assault on Cadia, Chaos forces managed to destroy the last big series of pylons, the ones that prevented the growth of the Eye of Terror. The destruction of those last pylons alongside the rest of the planet started a chain reaction that formed multiple warpstorms througout the galaxy. Abaddon's original plan was, in theory, cause a warpstorm big enough in Holy Terra's direction to either destroy the planet and the Emperor of Mankind or to invade with all the forces Chaos could muster, assuring the destruction of the Imperium. However, these massive warpstorms started joining with each other, and instead of growing into the direction of the Segmentum Solar, it went into the Maelstorm, moving into a straight line and dividing the galaxy neatly in two.

What does this mean for the galaxy

It means bad news. Horrifically, apocaliptically bad news.

Imagine the danger that the Eye of Terror represented to the galaxy back when it was just a single region in realspace. Now imagine that same danger multiplied by a hundred and spread around most of the galaxy. The Eye of Terror spread the madness and dangers of the Warp into realspace at twice the rate, and affects a much, much bigger area than before. Hundreds, if not thousands of systems were inmediately succed into its warpstorms, with all the horrific consecuences that that implies. Not to mention all the space-time distorsions effects that an event like this could mean, with some planets frozen in time while other lived full milleniums in the blink of an eye, some planets changing place and appearing out of nowhere, or just dissapearing...

Each faction, however, has reacted to it differently.

-Chaos is obviously the one proffiting from this, although after the birth of the Great Rift, Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade started to crumble, due to the desire to pillage and burn for their own gain, instead of following an organized plan. Millions of chaos pirates assault every planet they can, while the Chaos Gods try to occuppy more territory than their rivals. -The Imperium of Man almost losses half of its territory, only managing to get in contact with the Imperium Nihilus by two warp corridors, constantly attacked by daemons. The Indomitus Crusade was launched during the aftermath of the Great Rift's birth, trying to push back the Chaos hordes pouring from it. -The orks are having a zogging good time, smashing, crumping and chopping all of the spiky gits and other fun things coming from the Rift. So nothing has changed for them. -The Eldar are trying to find a way to repair realspace, the dangers of the Immaterium being a very real threat to them. Travelling through some sections of the Webway has become impossible, and some even fear the Cicatrix Maledictum could even end up breaking it.As such, there has been a massive collaboration between the different Aeldari groups in an efford to contain the warprift (even the Dark Eldar, who no doubt proffited from all those undefended human planets before the daemons arrived), with the ultimate effect on this being the birth of the Ynnari and its "aliance" with the Imperium of Man. -Necrons are more or less unnaffected by the Warp, having no soul and such, but some Necron Lords have become interested in stopping the Rift's growth. Some Necron Lord's empires have been expanded during this, too. -The Tau, trying to take advantage of the situation, launched a full expansion sphere to prey upon the undefended planets they could. And inmediately lost it, probably butting into some daemonic horde that destroyed it completely. Not really learning from its mistake, they immediately threw another expansion fleet, which will probably meet a similar fate. The fact that the Tau still don't fully understand what Chaos is means bad news for the short term safety of their empire. -The Tyranids have been hit hard by this. The warpstorm blocks most psychic light in the galaxy, so they have lost track of thousands of potential meals, and some are travelling blind. A couple of splinter fleets have probably been lost into the Warp by the sudden warpstorm. Hive Fleet Leviathan managed to reach Baal, but not before khornate forces also launched an attack on the system. After fighting daemons, the Blood Angels and Guilliman's reinforcements, Hive Fleet Leviathan has been destroyed, splintered and driven back. This, combined by the fact the nids lost against Ghazshkull in Ocarius, means that, as of now, there is no major Hive Fleet threatening the galaxy, only relatively harmless (by tyranid standards at least) splinter fleets.

So basically everyone but Chaos has been fucked in one way or another.