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"Peace? There cannot be peace in these times."

Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Chronicle

A historitor-investigatus of the Logos Historica Verita seeks to piece together the true and objective history of Mankind.

This article briefly summarises the known historical events of the Milky Way Galaxy from the ancient history of the galaxy before the birth of Humanity up through the 41st Millennium in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Throughout, comparative references to present dates will be made with respect to the original Imperial Calendar used before the birth of the Great Rift.

This is the time period in which the perspectives of the Imperium of Man and the Aeldari are particularly relevant and it represents the present time. All dates are given in the format 999.M41, which should be read as the year 40,999 A.D. in the ancient Gregorian Calendar.

Knowledge of the long ages of Human history has been wreathed in shadow, buried beneath the aeons or simply lost over the expanse of time. Some historitors continue to seek knowledge, but their work can be compared to holding a candle against the dark abyss. The historitors of the Adeptus Administratum seek, gather and dutifully collect the history of each planet within the Imperium.

Once, perhaps, this was done with purpose. Now, however, it is most often an indiscriminate compilation of data, a process where scribes unthinkingly copy content onto scrolls, preserving complete records in constant fear of missing a single inconsequential letter.

The ability, or even desire, to translate what these facts mean in any larger sense is almost entirely absent, found only in a few individuals who are eyed suspiciously, or perhaps punished for their enthusiasm.

The largest and most complete collection of such records exists beneath the surface of Terra, where the colossal under-halls stretch out of sight -- endless vistas of datascrolls tower upwards like mountains.

With flickering candlelight provided by floating Servo-skulls, processions of curators, scriveners, and ciphers wind through the valleys, attempting to illuminate that which was. Over the years, old truths have been lost to the "adjustments" and redactions made by revisionists of the Adeptus Ministorum, the Inquisition and even the High Lords of Terra themselves.

Chronostrife

Historitor

A historitor engaged in the work of chronicling the deeds of the Imperium's heroes with his auto-quill.

The Chronostrife is a bitter, ongoing internal conflict within the Inquisition's Ordo Chronos over the Imperium of Man's standard dating system that occurred during the Era Indomitus. Sometime after his resurrection in the 13th Black Crusade, Roboute Guilliman, the lord commander of the Imperium, Imperial Regent and primarch of the Ultramarines, was intent on making a full and accurate accounting of the Imperium's fragmentary and often contradictory history, the truth of which would inevitably help Humanity's advancement out of the darkness that had befallen it in the millennia after the Horus Heresy.

For this task, Guilliman created the small Imperial organisation known as the Logos Historica Verita, formed from individuals of an inquisitive and liberal nature. After training them personally in objective methods of data collection, the primarch assigned them the daunting task of discovering, collating and cataloging thousands of standard years of Human history that had been lost or was woefully inaccurate due to superstition, suppression or purposeful obfuscation by the High Lords of Terra.

But the monumental task Guilliman had set before them was made all the more daunting when the primarch discovered that even the Emperor's calendar had not survived the millennia intact. During the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the standard Imperial Dating System had provided some idea of the order of events over time, but like everything else the Emperor had created, the calendar had become degraded by both dogmatic adherence and thoughtless revisionism. Various rival dating systems had evolved from the Imperial Standard, making a true chronicle of the Human-settled galaxy almost impossible to construct.

As the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade drew to a close sometime around what had originally been believed to be 012.M42, Guilliman calculated the current year by the five main factional variants of the Imperial Calendar to be anywhere between the early 41st Millennium A.D. and an entire millennium later, and that was leaving out the numerous lesser, more heretical interpretations.

Guilliman had been hoping to find a solution to the Imperium's tortured dating system; he had instead found there was none. It was something else that would ultimately require his personal attention to repair. As a result, all dates mentioned below in the millennia after the Horus Heresy should be considered only approximations, and for many, the 41st Millennium has not yet come to a close.

Pre-Human History

Birth of the Star Gods

The birth of the entities later known as the Star Gods occurred at the same time as the moment of Creation itself, as they formed from the vast, insensate energies first unleashed by that churning mass of cataclysmic force. In that anarchic interweaving of matter and energy, the sea of stars began to swirl into existence and for an eon the universe was nothing more than hot hydrogen gas and light elemental dust ruled over by the gravitic force of billions of newborn suns.

Long before the first planets had formed and cooled, the very first truly self-aware beings emerged into the universe, their thoughts encased within the lines of force produced by the plasma and electromagnetic flares of the stars themselves. In later times, these entities would become known as the C'tan, but early in their existence they were nothing like the malevolent beings they would eventually become. They were little more than monstrous energy parasites that suckled upon the solar energies of the stars that had brought them into existence, shortening the lives of otherwise main-sequence stars by millions of standard years.

In time, these star vampires learned to move along the lines of the universe's electromagnetic flux, leaving their birthplaces to drift through the cosmic ether to new stellar feeding grounds and begin their cycle of stellar destruction once more. Beings of pure energy, they paid no mind to the hunks of solid matter they passed in the vacuum of space, the blazing geothermal fires and weak geomagnetic fields of these nascent planets insufficient to be worth feeding even their ravenous hunger.

Old Ones

Just as the stars gave birth to their children so the planets of the newborn Milky Way Galaxy eventually gave birth to lifeforms composed of matter which began the long evolutionary climb to self-awareness. The first intelligent beings of the galaxy known to have developed a civilisation technologically advanced enough to cross the stars was a reptilian species of beings later called the "Old Ones" by the Aeldari, who knew them best of all their creations.

The Old Ones possessed a slow, cold-blooded, but still deep wisdom, having long studied the stars and raised astronomy and physics to such a level that their science and technology appear now to Humanity like an arcane art. Their understanding of the workings of the universe were such that they could manipulate alternate dimensions and undertake great works of psychic engineering.

The Old Ones were potent psykers who routinely used the powers of the Warp for a wide variety of technological applications. This included the construction of a system of instantaneous faster-than-light portals through Warpspace. These portals connected all of the Old Ones' colony worlds, allowing them to cross the vast gulfs of space with only a single step through the myriad Warp Gates they built to connect the worlds of the galaxy. This was a vast interdimensional network much like the Webway of today which is its direct descendant, though on a much larger and more advanced scale.

Through this network the Old Ones spread their spawn to many places in the galaxy, but they also knew that all life was precious. Where they passed, they seeded new intelligent species and reshaped thousands of worlds to make them their own according to their predetermined environmental and geographic criteria. It is believed by some in the Adeptus Mechanicus that even Terra felt the Old Ones' touch long before Humanity's rise to self-awareness, though this notion is considered heretical at best by the Ecclesiarchy, as the Imperial Creed teaches that Mankind was made in the image of the God-Emperor before His spirit was incarnated in physical flesh millennia ago.

The Old Ones' civilisation reached its height in excess of 60 million standard years ago. The Old Ones were responsible for the creation or genetic advancement of most of the currently active intelligent species of the galaxy, including the Aeldari, the Krork (the Orks' precursors), the Slann and the Jokaero, though it is unknown if they played any direct role in the evolution of Humanity.

The Necrontyr and the Wars of Secession

The humanoid species that would become the Necrons began their existence under a fearsome, scourging star in the far reaches of the galaxy known as the Halo Stars region, billions of standard years before Humanity evolved on Terra. Assailed at every moment by solar winds and intense radiation storms, the flesh and blood species known as the Necrontyr became a morbid people whose precarious life spans were riven by constant loss. What little information the Imperium of Man has recovered on the Necrontyr tells that their lives were short and uncertain, their bodies blighted and consumed at an early age by the terrible cancers and other illnesses linked to the high levels of ionising radiation given off by their sun.

Necrontyr cities were built in anticipation of their inhabitants' early demise, as the living were only brief residents scratching their daily livelihoods in the shadow of the vast sepulchres and tombs of their ancestors. Likewise, their ruling dynasties were founded on the anticipation of an early death, and the living were thought of as no more than temporary residents hurrying through the more permanent and lasting structures raised to honour the dead. On the Necrontyr homeworld, the greatest monuments were always built for the dead, never the living.

Driven by necessity, the Necrontyr escaped their crucible-prison and struck out for the stars, hopeful of carving out an empire in which they could realise their species' freedom from the lethal energies of their birth star. Using stasis crypts and slow-moving, antimatter-powered torch-ships that were clad in the living metal known as necrodermis to resist the millennia-long journeys through the void, the Necrontyr began to colonise distant worlds.

Little by little, the Necrontyr dynasties spread ever further, until much of the ancient galaxy answered to their rule. From the earliest days, the rulers of individual Necrontyr dynasties were themselves governed by the Triarch, a council composed of three Necron dynasty monarchs known as phaerons. The head of the Triarch was known as the Silent King, for he addressed his subjects only through the other two phaerons who ruled alongside him. Nominally a hereditary position, the uncertain life spans of the Necrontyr ensured that the title of Silent King nonetheless passed from one royal dynasty to another many times. The final days of the Necrontyr Empire occurred in the reign of Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings.

Sometime during their slow interstellar expansion, the Necrontyr encountered an ancient species far older than any other in existence in the known galaxy. These beings were the Old Ones, and they were absolute masters of forms of energy the Necrontyr could not even conceive of, yet alone wield. The Old Ones had long ago conquered the secrets of immortality, yet they refused to share the gift of eternal life with the Necrontyr, who yet bore the genetic curse of the bitter star they had been born under.

The colonisation of much of the galaxy by the reptilian mystics had been immeasurably swifter and more expansive than that of the Necrontyr because of their Warp Gates and mastery of the Immaterium. That, and the Old Ones' incredibly long, if not downright immortal lifespans, kindled a burning, jealous rage in the Necrontyr, which ate at their culture spiritually as much as physical cancers consumed their bodies. The Necrontyr were astonished to learn that another intelligent species enjoyed such long lives while their own were cut so brutally short.

But as time wore on, further strife came to the Necrontyr. Each dynasty sought to claim its own destiny and soon the great houses were engaged in all-out conflicts known as the "Wars of Secession." Had circumstances remained as they were for but a generation more, it is possible that the Necrontyr would have wiped themselves out, as so many species had before them and shall do in the future. As their territory grew ever wider and more diverse, the unity that had made them strong was eroded, and bitter wars were waged as entire realms fought to win independence.

Ultimately, the Triach realised that the only hope of unity for their people lay in conflict with an external enemy, but there were few who could prove a credible threat to the technologically advanced Necrontyr. Only the Old Ones were a prospective foe powerful enough to bind the feuding Necrontyr dynasties to a common cause. Such a war was simplicity itself to justify, for the Necrontyr had ever rankled at the Old Ones' refusal to share the secrets of eternal life.

So it was that Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings, in a typically bitter act of jealousy and resentment for the Necrontyr race, declared war on the Old Ones. At the same time, he offered amnesty to any secessionist Necrontyr dynasties who willingly returned to the fold of the Triarch. Thus lured by the spoils of victory and the promise of immortality, the separatist Necrontyr realms abandoned their Wars of Secession and what was later known as the "War in Heaven" began. A conflict unlike any fought before erupted across the stars, yet while the Silent King and the Triarch had succeeded in uniting their hateful people, it was a war the Necrontyr could not win. Not on their own.

The War in Heaven

The Necrons Paul Dainton

The mechanical horror of the Necrons.

The terrible wars between the Old Ones and the Necrontyr that followed, known later in Aeldari myth as the "War in Heaven," would fill a library in their own right, but the Necrontyr could never win. Their superior technology was consistently outmanoeuvred by the Old Ones thanks to their mastery of the Webway portals and Warp Gates. The Necrontyr were pushed back until they were little more than an irritation to the Old Ones' dominance of the galaxy, a quiescent threat clinging to their irradiated world among the Halo Stars, exiled and forgotten. The Necrontyr's fury was cooled by their long millennia of imprisonment on their homeworld, slowly transforming into an utter hatred towards all other forms of intelligent life and an implacable determination to avenge themselves upon their seemingly invincible enemies.

But in the face of defeat, the always fragile unity of the Necrontyr began to fracture once more. No longer did the prospect of a common enemy have any hold over the disparate dynasties. Scores of generations had now lived and died in the service of an unwinnable war, and many Necrontyr dynasties would have gladly sued for peace with the Old Ones if the ruling Triarch had permitted it.

Thus began the second iteration of the Wars of Secession, more widespread and ruinous than any that had come before. So fractured had the Necrontyr dynasties become by then that, had the Old Ones been so inclined, they could have wiped out their foes with ease. Faced with the total collapse of their rule, the Triarch searched desperately for a means of restoring order. In this, their prayers were answered, though the price for their species would be incalculably high.

It was during the reign of the Silent King Szarekh that the godlike energy beings known as the C'tan first blighted the Necrontyr. It is impossible to say for certain how the Necrontyr first made contact with the C'tan, though many misleading, contradictory and one-sided accounts of these events exist. The dusty archives of the Tomb World of Solemnace claim it was but an accident, a chance discovery made by a stellar probe during the investigation of a dying star. The Book of Mournful Night, held under close guard in the Aeldari Black Library's innermost sanctum, tells rather that the raw hatred that the Necrontyr held as a species for the Old Ones sang out across space, acting as a beacon that the C'tan could not ignore.

Another account claims that from the earliest days of their civilisation, Necrontyr scientists had been deeply engaged in stellar studies to try to understand and protect themselves from their own sun's baleful energies. After long, bitter centuries of searching for some power to unleash upon the Old Ones, the Necrontyr researchers used stellar probes to discover unusual electrodynamic anomalies in the oldest, dying stars of the galaxy. In the complex skeins of the energetic plasma of these suns, the Necrontyr found an intelligence that was more ancient than that of any of the corporeal species in Creation, including the Old Ones, entities of pure energy that had spawned during the birth of the stars eons before.

These entities had little conception of what the rest of the universe entailed when the Necrontyr first found them, feeding upon the solar flares and magnetic storms of these bloated red giants. Here was the weapon the Necrontyr had long sought to bring about the downfall of the Old Ones, beings they believed were the progeny of the death-god they had long worshipped. Howsoever first contact occurred, the shadow of the C'tan fell over the oldest Necrontyr dynasties first.

The power of these star-born creatures was incredible, the raw energy of the stars made animate, and the Necrontyr called them the C'tan or "Star Gods" in their own tongue. The C'tan were dispersed across areas larger than whole planets, their consciousnesses too vast for humanoids to comprehend. How the Necrontyr ever managed to communicate with them is unknown to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Understanding that such diffuse minds could never perceive the material universe without manifesting themselves in a material form, some Necrontyr actively sought the C'tan's favour and oversaw the forging of physical shells for the C'tan to occupy, cast from the living metal called necrodermis that they had once used for their colony torch-ships.

Fragmentary Aeldari legends tell of translucent streamers of electromagnetic force shifting across space as the star vampires coiled into their new bodies in the physical realm across an incorporeal bridge of starlight. Thus clad, the C'tan took the physical shapes of the Necrontyr's half-forgotten gods, hiding their own true desires beneath cloaks of obsequious subservience.

Incomprehensible forces were compressed into the living metal of the necrodermis bodies which the Necrontyr had forged as the full power of the C'tan at last found form. As the C'tan focused their consciousnesses and became ever more aware of their new mode of existence, they came to appreciate the pleasures available to beings of matter and the other realities of corporeal life. The deliciously focused trickles of electromagnetic energy given off by the physical bodies of the Necrontyr all about them awakened a new hunger in the C'tan very unlike the one they had once sated using the nourishing but essentially tasteless energies of the stars.

So it was that one of the C'tan came before the Silent King Szarekh, acting as forerunner to the coming of his brothers. Amongst his own kind, this C'tan was known as Mephet'ran, the "Deceiver," for he was willfully treacherous. Yet the Silent King did not know this C'tan's true nature, and instead granted the creature an audience. The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account.

In return for this aid, the Deceiver assured, he and his brothers would deliver everything that the Necrontyr craved. Unity could be theirs once again, and the immortality that they had sought for so long would finally be within their grasp. No price would there be for these great gifts, the Deceiver insisted, for they were but boons to be bestowed upon valued allies.

Thus did the Deceiver speak, and who can say how much of his tale was truth? It is doubtful whether even the Deceiver knew, for trickery had become so much a part of his existence that even the C'tan could no longer divine its root. Yet his words held sway over Szarekh who, like his ancestors before him, despaired of the divisions that were once again tearing his people apart. For long solar months he debated the matter with the other two phaerons of the Triarch and the nobles of his Royal Court.

Through it all, the only dissenting voice was that of Orikan, the court astrologer of the Triarch, who foretold that the alliance between the Necrontyr and the C'tan would bring about a renaissance of glory, but destroy forever the soul of the Necrontyr people. Yet desire and ambition swiftly overrode caution, and Orikan's prophecy was dismissed. A Necrontyr year after the Deceiver had presented his proposition, the Triarch agreed to the alliance, and so forever doomed their species.

For their part, the Necrontyr soon fell into awe of their discoveries and the C'tan moved to take control over their benefactors. The powers of the C'tan manifested in the physical world were indeed almost god-like and it was not long before the C'tan were being worshiped as the Star Gods the Necrontyr had named them.

Perhaps they had been tainted by the material universe they had become a part of, or perhaps this had always been their nature even when they were bound to the suns they fed upon, but the C'tan proved to be as cruel and capricious as the stars from which they had been born. They soon revelled in the religious worship of the Necrontyr and feasted upon the electromagnetic life energies of countless mortal slaves.

Biotransference and the Rise of the Necrons

"When the Silent King saw what had been done, he knew at last the true nature of the C'tan, and of the doom they had wrought in his name."

—Excerpt from the Book of Mournful Night
Emerald advance by majesticchicken

The Necron forces on the march during the ancient War in Heaven after biotransference.

Armed with weapons of god-like power and starships that could cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye through the use of quantum phase technology, the Necrontyr stood ready to begin their war against the Old Ones anew. But the C'tan had another gift for their mortal subjects. They offered the Necrontyr a path to immortality and the physical stability their species had always craved. Their diseased flesh would be replaced with the living metal of necrodermis that made up their Star Gods' own physical forms. Their discarded organic husks would be consumed and their cold, metal forms would then be free to pursue their great vengeance against the Old Ones and the rest of a hateful universe, freed forever from the weaknesses of their hated flesh.

With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take for the Necrontyr, and the great biotransference process began. Vast bio-foundries were constructed, and into these the Silent King's peoples marched according to the terms of the pact he had made with the C'tan. What blasphemous procedures the Necrontyr were subjected to within the raging bio-furnaces cannot be known, but certainly, each was stripped of flesh and of soul, their body replaced by a shell of living metal necrodermis much like the C'tan themselves animated by what remained of their guttering self.

Above each furnace swooped and dove the ethereal true-forms of the C'tan as they glutted themselves on the spiritual and electromagnetic detritus of an entire species. It was only when the Silent King himself emerged from the biotransference process and looked upon what had become of his people that he saw the awful truth of the pact he had made. Though immortality and nigh-godlike strength and vigour were his, it had come at the cost of his soul, the aetheric remains of which had already been sucked down the gullet of a circling C'tan.

As Szarekh watched the C'tan feast on the life essence of his people, he realised the terrible depth of his mistake. In many ways he felt better than he had in Necrontyr decades, the countless aches and uncertainties of organic life now behind him. His new machine body was far mightier than the frail form he had tolerated for so long, and his thoughts were swifter and clearer than they had ever been.

Yet there was a terrible emptiness gnawing at his mind, an inexpressible hollowness of spirit that defied rational explanation. In that moment, he knew with cold certainty that the price of physical immortality had been the loss of his soul. With great sorrow the Silent King beheld the fate he had brought upon his people: the Necrontyr were now but a memory, and the soulless, undying Necrons had been reborn in their place.

Yet if the price had been steep, biotransference had fulfilled all of the promises that the C'tan had made. Even the lowliest of the Necrontyr was now blessed with immortality -- age and hard ionising radiation could little erode their new mechanical bodies, and only the most terrible of injuries could destroy them utterly.

The biotransference process had embedded engrammatic command protocols in every Necron mind, granting Szarekh the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. At first, the Silent King embraced this unanimity, for it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos and fractiousness that had consumed the Necrontyr Empire in recent years. The entire species was now his to command, and so it fell upon the Necrons to honour their side of their terrible bargain. However, as time wore on Szarekh grew weary of his burden but dared not sever the command protocols, lest his subjects turn on him seeking vengeance for the terrible curse he had visited upon them.

Biotransference had left behind only the ghostly echoes of the Necrontyr's consciousnesses. Only a few of the most strong-willed Necrontyr among the nobility and the military retained their intellect and self-awareness and even they were but shadows of their former selves. They had been purged of so much of what had made them unique individuals. But unlike the Silent King, most of the Necrons at first cared not at all for their loss; all that mattered to them was that they would live forever without disease or death as their Star Gods had promised.

Renewed and empowered as never before by their devouring of the souls of an entire species, the C'tan were now unstoppable, and with the undying legions of the Necrons marching in their wake, the Old Ones were doomed. Only one thing truly remained of the old Necrontyr -- their burning hatred for all the other living, intelligent species of the universe.

Legions of the undying living metal warriors set out into the galaxy in their Tomb Ships and the stars burned in their wake. The Old Ones' mastery of the Warp was now countered by the C'tan's supremacy over the physical universe and the ancient enemies of the Necrons suffered greatly in the interstellar slaughter that followed.

Necrons Ascendant

With the C'tan and the Necrons fighting as one, the Old Ones were now doomed to defeat. Glutted on the life force of the Necrontyr, the empowered C'tan were able to unleash forces beyond comprehension. Planets were razed, suns extinguished and whole star systems devoured by black holes called into being by the reality-warping powers of the Star Gods. Necron legions finally breached the Webway and assailed the Old Ones in every corner of the galaxy. They brought under siege the fortresses of the Old Ones' many allies amongst the younger intelligent species of the galaxy, harvesting the life force of the defenders to feed their voracious C'tan masters.

In the closing years of the War in Heaven, one of the primary factors that led to the Necrons' ascendancy was their ability to finally gain access to the Old Ones' Webway. The C'tan known as Nyadra'zath, the Burning One, had long desired to carry his eldritch fires into that space beyond space, and so showed the Necrons how to breach its extradimensional boundaries. Through a series of living stone portals known as the Dolmen Gates, the Necrons were finally able to turn the Old Ones' greatest weapon against them, vastly accelerating the ultimate end of the War in Heaven.

The portals offered by the Dolmen Gates are neither so stable, nor so controllable as the naturally occurring entrances to the Webway scattered across the galaxy. Indeed, in some curious fashion, the Webway can detect when its environs have been breached by a Dolmen Gate and its arcane mechanisms swiftly attempt to seal off the infected spur from the rest of the Labyrinth Dimension until the danger to its integrity has passed. Thus, Necrons entering the Webway must reach their intended destination through its shifting extradimensional corridors quickly, lest the network itself bring about their destruction.

Of course, in the present age, aeons have passed since the Necrons used the Dolmen Gates to assault their archenemies. The Old Ones are gone, and the Webway itself has become a tangled and broken labyrinth. Many Dolmen Gates were lost or abandoned during the time of the Necrons' Great Sleep, and many more were destroyed by the Aeldari, the Old Ones' successors as the guardians of the Webway. Those that remain grant access to but a small portion of the immense maze that is the Webway, much of that voluntarily sealed off by the Aeldari to prevent further contamination.

Yet the Webway is immeasurably vast, and even these sundered skeins allow the Necrons a mode of travel that far outpaces those of the younger races. It is well that this is so. As a species bereft of psykers as a result of the loss of their souls during the biotransference process, the Necrons are also incapable of Warp travel, and without access to the Webway, they would be forced to rely once more on slow-voyaging stasis-ships, dooming them to interstellar isolation.

In the wake of these victories, the C'tan and their undying Necron servants now dominated the galaxy. The last planetary bastions of the Old Ones were besieged and the intelligent species they had once nurtured became cattle for the obscene hunger of the C'tan. To the younger intelligent species of the galaxy, the Necrons and their Star Gods were cruel masters, callously harvesting their populations at will to feed the C'tan's ceaseless hunger for life energies. The C'tan were figures of terror who demanded mortals' adoration and fear in equal measure.

For unknown reasons, but probably because their individual hungers for mortal life energies knew no bounds, the C'tan ultimately began to fight amongst themselves for both sport and out of spite. Among the Aeldari, an ancient myth holds that their Laughing God tricked the C'tan known as "the Outsider" into turning on its brothers and beginning their long war for ascendancy.

In the course of the C'tan's struggle against one another, whole planets were razed, stars were extinguished and entire solar systems were devoured by unleashed black holes. New cities were built by the efforts of millions and then smashed down once more. As the "red harvests" of the C'tan and their Necron servants grew thin, C'tan eventually devoured C'tan, until only a few were left in the universe and they competed amongst themselves for a long age.

Eventually, even the Old Ones, who had once been defined by their patience and unstoppable will, became desperate in the face of the Necron assault. They used their great scientific skills to genetically engineer intelligent beings with an even stronger psychic link to the Warp, hoping to create servants with the capability of channeling psychic power to defend themselves.

They nurtured many potential warrior species, among which are believed to be the earliest members of the Aeldari species and many other xenos races, including the Rashan, the K'nib, the Krork and many others. Terran millennia passed as the Old Ones' creations and experiments finally bore fruit even as the C'tan and their Necron servants continued to extinguish life across the galaxy.

The Tide Turns

The Old Ones' psychically-empowered servant species spread across the galaxy, battling the advanced Necron technology with the psychic power of their Warp-spawned "magic." Facing this new onslaught, the C'tan's empire was shattered, as the psychic forces of the Immaterium were anathema to soulless entities whose existence was wholly contained within purely physical patterns of electromagnetic force. For all the destruction they could unleash, they were unable to stop the Old Ones and the younger races' relentless advance across the stars.

The remaining C'tan, unified by this great threat for the first time in millions of Terran years, sought a way to defeat the soul-fuelled energies of the younger species. They initiated a great warding, a plan to forever defeat the psychic sorceries of the Old Ones by sealing off the material universe from the Warp, a plan whose first fruits could once be found on the Imperial Fortress World of Cadia in the form of the great pylons that littered the surface of that world in intricate networks and create the area of space-time stability near the Eye of Terror known as the Cadian Gate.

With their god-like powers, it was only a matter of time until the C'tan succeeded. But before their great work was complete, the seeds of destruction the Old Ones had planted millennia before brought about an unforeseen cataclysm. The growing pains and collective psychic flaws of the younger species threw the untapped, psychically-reactive energies of the Immaterium into disorder.

War, pain and destruction were mirrored in the bottomless depth of the Sea of Souls that was the Warp. The maelstrom of souls unleashed into the Immaterium by the carnage of the War in Heaven coalesced in the previously formless energies of the Warp. Older entities that had existed within the Immaterium transformed into terrifying psychic predators, tearing at the souls of vulnerable psykers as their own environment was torn apart and reforged into the Realm of Chaos.

Enslaver Plague

The denizens of the Warp, stirred into a frenzy by the conflict in the Materium, clustered voraciously at the cracks between the Immaterium and the material universe, seeking new ways to enter the physical realm. The Old Ones brought forth new genetically-engineered warrior species to defend their last strongholds, including the technology-mimicking Jokaero and the formidable, green-skinned Krork who were the ancestors of the present day Orks, but it was already too late. The Old Ones' intergalactic Webway network was breached from the Immaterium and lost to them, several of their Warp Gates were destroyed by their own hands to prevent the entities of the Warp from spreading to uncorrupted worlds and the Old Ones' greatest works and places of power were overrun by the horrors their own creations had unleashed.

The most terrifying of these horrors were the Enslavers, Warp entities whose ability to dominate the minds of the younger species and create their own portals into the material realm using mutated, possessed psykers brought them forth in ever greater numbers. For the Old Ones, this was the final disaster as the Enslavers took control of their servants. The Pandora's Box unleashed by the creation of the younger species finally scattered the last of the Old Ones and broke their power over the galaxy once and for all. Life had stood at the edge of an apocalypse during the War in Heaven between the Old Ones and the C'tan. Now as the Enslavers breached the Immaterium in epidemic proportions, the survivors looked doomed.

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp-spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. Whether the species went extinct or simply fled the galaxy to seek a new haven elsewhere is unknown.

Silent King's Betrayal

Throughout the final stages of the War in Heaven, Szarekh bided his time, waiting for the moment in which the C'tan would prove most vulnerable.

Though the entire Necron species was now his to command, the Silent King could not hope to oppose the C'tan at the height of their power, and even if he did and met with success, the Necrons would then have to finish the War in Heaven against the Old Ones and their increasingly potent allied species alone. No, the Old Ones had to be completely and utterly defeated before the C'tan could be brought to account for the horror they had wrought among the Necrontyr.

And so, when the C'tan finally won their great war, their triumph was short-lived. With one hated enemy finally defeated, and the other spent from hard-fought victory, the Silent King at last led the Necrons in revolt. In their arrogance, the C'tan did not realise their danger until it was too late.

The Necrons focused the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons, god-killing hypercannons devised by the finest Crypteks in the galaxy, too mighty for even the Star Gods to endure. Not even the great overlords of the Necron crownworlds well remember the battles against the Star Gods, for causality itself was damaged by the forces unleashed to dismember the C'tan, and the Silent King was wont to remove the knowledge of the dreadful weapons employed from his warriors after the fact in fear of what might later be done with them.

Alas, the C'tan were immortal star-spawn, part of the fundamental fabric of reality and therefore nigh-impossible to destroy. So was each C'tan instead sundered into thousands of smaller and less powerful energetic fragments each with the personality of the whole entity, yet this outcome was sufficient to the Silent King's goals.

Indeed, he had known the C'tan's ultimate destruction to be impossible and had drawn his plans accordingly; each newborn "C'tan Shard" was bound within a multidimensional Tesseract Labyrinth, as tramelled and secured as a legendary Terran djinn trapped in a bottle. Though the cost of victory was high -- millions of Necrons had been destroyed as a consequence of their rebellion, including all of the members of the Triarch save the Silent King himself -- the Necrons were once more in command of their own destiny.

Great Sleep

The Necrons had been vindicated in their pursuit only of science and control over the material realm and certainly took pleasure in seeing the Old Ones' civilisation collapse as a result of their over-indulgence of psychic power and the end of the C'tan's domination over their species. Yet even with the defeat of the Old Ones and the C'tan alike, the Silent King saw that the time of the Necrons in the galaxy was over -- for the moment, at least. They would allow the Enslavers to take what was left of the intelligent life in the galaxy and let it become an interstellar wasteland; the psyker swarm would then die away and in time the galaxy would evolve new lifeforms who would be less sophisticated and easier to dominate.

In addition, the Necrons understood that the mantle of galactic dominion was soon to pass to the Aeldari, one of the psychically-potent species that had fought alongside the Old Ones throughout the War in Heaven and had thus come to hate the Necrons and all their works with the burning passion that is the defining characteristic of that species. The Aeldari had survived where the Old Ones had not and the Necrons, weakened by their expenditure of lives and resources in overthrowing the rule of the C'tan, could not stand against them.

Yet the Silent King knew that the time of the Aeldari would eventually pass, as it must pass for all those beings still cloaked in flesh. It would take millions of Terran years for the Aeldari's power to fade, but what mattered is that the Necrons would be there to take advantage of it.

So it was that the Silent King ordered the remaining Necron cities to be transformed into great tomb complexes threaded with stasis-crypts. Let the Aeldari shape the galaxy for a time -- they were but ephemeral, whilst the Necrons were undying and eternal. The Silent King's final command to his people was that they must sleep for the equivalent of 60 million standard years but awake ready to rebuild all that they had lost, to restore the Necron dynasties to their former glory.

This was the Silent King's final order, and as the last Tomb World sealed its subterranean vaults, Szarekh destroyed the engrammatic command protocols by which he had controlled his people for so long, for he had failed them utterly. Without a backward glance, Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings of the Triarch, took ship into the starless void of intergalactic space, there to find whatever measure of solace or penance he could.

Meanwhile, aeons passed and the Necrons slept on, their machine slaves and constructs guarding them while they slept on Tomb Worlds that had been purged of all life to keep the Enslavers from their door. This plan worked with an amazing degree of success until the Necrons were awakened by the forces of the Imperium of Man in the 41st Millennium to plague the galaxy once more. They discovered a new and unexpected age of interstellar civilisation and war much like the one they had left behind 60 million standard years before.

The galaxy is blossoming with life once more but is still overrun with latent psykers and worshippers of the infernal Chaos Warp energies first unleashed during the War in Heaven. It will take time and a great many machinations for the Necron dynasties to regain their rightful place as the rulers of the galaxy; the agents of Chaos must be overthrown; the dangerous Aeldari, inheritors of the Old Ones' mantle, eliminated; Humanity subjugated and the great work cutting off the material universe from the Warp completed before a new age of Necron dominion can truly begin.

But the Necrons are ageless and undying, their technology still unmatched by any of the younger starfaring species. And time is always on their side...

Rise of Humanity

Age of Terra and the Stellar Exodus (M1-M15)

Vitruvian-Man

The Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 500.M2

For millions of standard years after the Necrons and their captive C'tan Shards went into hibernation on their Tomb Worlds, the devastated populations of the intelligent species of the galaxy slowly recovered from the C'tan's "red harvests." In time, the Aeldari emerged as the most dominant civilisation in the galaxy, with the core of their star-spanning empire located in the region of the galaxy that would later become the Warp rift called the Eye of Terror .

But on the planet called Earth and later Terra by its inhabitants, an intelligent, mammalian humanoid species known as Humanity was rising to prominence over 40,000 standard years ago. During the Age of Terra, or the Age of Progress as it is sometimes called by Imperial historitors, the Human race advanced beyond its ancient pre-industrial past to obtain spacefaring capability and began to slowly settle the terraformable worlds in its own solar system and in the star systems near its homeworld using massive sublight starships.

The so-called "Stellar Exodus" which occurred during the Age of Terra is a poorly-understood period of Human history which is generally accepted to cover the majority of Mankind's initial forays into interstellar space and the genesis of most of the oldest Human extrasolar colonies, beginning at some unknown point in the mid-to-late 3rd Millennium.

This period is generally understood to lead into the so-called "Dark Age of Technology" sometime around the 15th Millennium A.D. During much of the Stellar Exodus, Humanity lacked any knowledge of the existence of the Immaterium or Warp-Drive and so was forced to travel between the stars in great, sublight generation voidships or using cryogenic hibernation.

Age of Technology (M15-M25)

AgeofTech1

The Age of Technology saw the development of the first Human, Warp-capable interstellar spacecraft.

Much of the era of Human history known to Imperial historitors as the Age of Technology or the "Dark Age of Technology" that lasted approximately between the 15th Millennium and the 25th Millennium A.D. is mysterious. It was in this time that the psychic mutants called Navigators were first born or created through genetic engineering, and combined with the invention of the Warp-Drive, allowed Humanity to travel between worlds faster than the speed of light by using the dangerous hyperdimensional, psychically-reactive medium of the Immaterium or "Warp."

Long before the rise of the Emperor and the birth of the Imperium, during the Age of Technology Humanity reached out to the stars, eager to occupy new worlds and expand its burgeoning interstellar empire. Vast colonisation starships carried eager Human settlers, along with all the resources they might require, and landed on far-flung, often isolated worlds.

The first Knight Worlds were founded at the very start of the Age of Technology, before the discovery of the Warp-Drive in the 18th Millennium, when scouts from Old Earth travelled far through the galaxy seeking planets to use as agricultural worlds to provide food for Mankind's burgeoning population, or as mining colonies to provide the materials needed to fuel their expansion across the stars. Indeed, these so-called "Knight Worlds" had already been established for thousands of standard years when the Imperium was first founded in the 30th Millennium.

When those first Human scout ships discovered a suitable planet for colonisation, gigantic, sublight voidcraft were dispatched to settle them. These ships were part of Terra's "Long March" fleets, named after the duration of their voyage and their destination among the stars. The name was apt; each of the Long March colony ships carried thousands of settlers on a solar decades-long journey to a far distant planet. Upon arrival, the colony ship would land and be immediately cannibalised by the colonists to provide the raw materials needed for their first settlements; there was no hope of return to Mankind's distant homeworld.

The struggle for survival on many of these worlds was grim. On some, the settlers found themselves the prey of vicious predators or were attacked by native alien species, which saw the Human settlers as invaders. On other worlds, extreme weather conditions or an unbreathable atmosphere made travel outside of domed habitat-zones next to impossible.

However, problems like these had been anticipated, and in order to deal with them, the settlers were supplied with artificially intelligent Standard Template Construct (STC) databases and fabrication facilities that allowed them to build powered suits of exoarmour. The pilots of these bipedal walking machines were protected by a hard shell of plasteel and armed with an array of military-grade heavy weapons.

The suits proved invaluable: few, if any, natural predators or hostile alien warriors could stand against them, and they could travel through even the most dangerous environment with ease. The towering armoured figures soon became a common sight on the Human Long March colonies, where they were known as "Knights" by the settlers, after the legendary armoured warriors and protectors of ancient Terran history.

IKTerrynPaladin02

An Imperial Knight Paladin of House Terryn

Compelled by the mind-altering effects instilled by the Thrones Mechanicum (a mind impulse control platform that allows a pilot to mentally interface with their Knight battlesuit), over the course of a few generations, these elite warriors gradually developed a society that evolved into the later knightly houses. The plasteel plates of the original exo-skeleton suits were slowly replaced with more ornate armour made from adamantium, providing better protection as well as a panoply befitting the wearer's prestige and rank in their society.

The more mundane duties that the Knights had once taken part in on the colony worlds -– logging with their mighty Reaper Chainswords, for example, or blasting apart rock ore with their rapid-fire Battle Cannons -– were delegated to those of lesser ranks, allowing the Knights to focus on the arts of war and governorship.

Dwelling in tall strongholds, these "Nobles" and "Scions" strove to protect the lives of their subjects (as they now saw the settlers they protected) and to bring order to the primeval maelstrom on the planets that were their homes. The knightly houses proved to be highly successful at both of these things, and soon became a vital part of Human society during the Age of Technology.

The existence of rapid interstellar travel eventually provided by the invention of the Warp-Drive allowed Human colony worlds to interact on a normal timescale for the first time and interstellar commerce and communication became possible, allowing like-minded Human worlds to join into political and economic combines for their mutual benefit.

Eventually, at some point during this era, all of Humanity was united beneath some form of interstellar government. What is also known (largely from the works of Keeper Cripias) is that a group known as the "Men of Gold" relied on the works of the "Men of Stone" in order to create a fantastically prosperous interstellar society, but one devoid (by later Imperial standards) of spirituality or piety, focused instead only upon the advancement of science and technology.

The Stone Men are known to have created a third group, the "Men of Iron," postulated to be some form of artificially self-aware robots or thinking machines, in order to assist them in their labours and carry out military duties. The Iron Men became uncontrolled and rebelled against their Human creators, and a cataclysmic conflict broke out, resulting in a partial Malthusian catastrophe across much of the Human-settled galaxy in which there were no longer enough resources to support the vast populations of Mankind. From this time onwards, it became an article of faith in Human societies that the creation of thinking machines and all artificial general intelligence should be forbidden.

Even worse, following the destruction caused by the war against the Men of Iron, Human psykers began to appear in large numbers across many Human colony worlds, one of the harbingers of the final decline of the Aeldari Empire which controlled even more of the galaxy than Mankind did in these years. The result was Humanity's first introduction to the "Daemonic" entities that dwelled within the Warp and the ultimate collapse of Human interstellar civilisation during what became known as the Age of Strife. On Terra itself, this period would be remembered by a different name -- "Old Night."

Age of Strife ("Old Night") (M25-M30)

During the Age of Technology Humanity had reached its scientific and technological peak, enjoying a golden age of prosperity and advancement. The "Standard Template Construct," or STC, an artificially intelligent computer database of schematics for all known advanced Human technologies, had been perfected by Human scientists and engineers and allowed an unprecedented expansion of Humanity throughout the galaxy.

As already noted, one of the reasons Humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy was the development of the artificially-intelligent constructs now only known in Imperial legend as the "Men of Iron." These powerful and fully intelligent combat robots won many wars for Humanity, but for some reason turned against their masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology in the great conflict called the "Cybernetic Revolt." This war was eventually won by Humanity, but at a great cost and only through the intervention of other factions. The damage of this conflict proved catastrophic and shattered much of Humanity's power. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of Mankind's misfortunes as the Age of Technology came to its end.

As Humanity became widely dispersed across the galaxy during the Age of Technology, the ancient Aeldari Empire began its decline; the great success of the advanced Aeldari species had led to decadence and hedonism on a grand scale in their empire's final millennia. Within the immaterial, psychic universe of the Warp, the spiritual corruption of the Aeldari civilisation was reflected in the forming of a new potent, psychic gestalt entity or "Chaos God," Slaanesh, which in turn caused massive disturbances in the Warp; parts of the galaxy became isolated by these "Warp storms," making Warp travel and astrotelepathic interstellar communication increasingly impossible as the years passed, cutting off many Human colony worlds from one another, including those of the Sol System.

Towards the end of the Age of Technology psykers first appeared among Humanity. While persecuted on many backwards, regressive Human worlds as witches, in enlightened and progressive societies these psykers were at first protected and accepted. Yet the initial intolerance for the emergence of psykers among Humanity would later seem prescient, as many Human worlds fell to the dominance of Daemons and other Warp creatures using possessed, weak-willed psykers as gateways into the physical world. Only worlds which had rigorously suppressed psykers survived the Age of Strife.

The Age of Strife followed the Age of Technology, as the interstellar Human civilisation collapsed in widespread insanity, Daemonic possession, anarchy and inter-Human civil war. Terrible weapons of the golden age of technology were unleashed, devastating many Human colonies and turning once-verdant worlds such as Baal Secundus into irradiated desert planets. Many isolated and vulnerable Human-colonised worlds also became prey to hostile alien species, such as the Orks.

In a relatively short span of time, the once galaxy-spanning Human civilisation was brought to its knees, and was forced to endure nearly five Terran millennia of anarchy, terror, war, genocide and slavery. Other than tales of great suffering, little information concerning these long years survived this dark time to be known to the men and women of the Imperium.

Fall of the Aeldari (M25-M30)

Ancient Eldar

Ancient Aeldari lead their people aboard the craftworlds to salvation before the Fall of the Aeldari.

Before the Fall of their potent interstellar empire, the Aeldari were a technologically and psychically-advanced humanoid species, generally considered the most powerful intelligent species in the entire galaxy. Their technology had advanced so far that little or no labour was required by individual Aeldari to provide the daily necessities of life. As a result of the sheer boredom and ennui that resulted, at some point during the 25th Millennium A.D. by the Terran calendar, groups of Aeldari began forming what were known as "Pleasure Cults" dedicated to the pursuit of every pleasure and sensation that life had to offer their kind.

Despite the prediction of the reclusive Aeldari Seers that warned of impending doom if the Aeldari did not change their hedonistic ways, government within the Aeldari Empire soon collapsed and the moral degeneration of their homeworlds and various colony worlds continued unimpeded. As the pursuit of ever more extreme experiences reached its height, death reigned in the streets of Aeldari cities, hunter and hunted each being part of a twisted ritual of destruction that consumed millions in orgies of savage bloodlust and excess.

Some Aeldari were able to see that their now-corrupt society was destroying itself, and fled in disgust; these refugees would settle in the distant, rural colonies of their empire, and would later be known as the Exodites or take to the massive, continent-sized Aeldari craftworlds and sail amidst the stars as merchants and explorers, far from the scenes of hedonistic excess that were destroying the heart of the Aeldari Empire in the galactic northwest.

Upon death, the souls of all deceased, self-aware beings traverse the bounds of the physical realm and go to rest within the hyperdimensional realm of psychically-reactive energy that undergirds all of reality known as the Immaterium or Warp. As more and more corrupt Aeldari died, their souls began to coalesce into a larger entity within the Warp, a living representation of the hedonistic corruption that had defined their lives. This growing presence in the Warp caused massive Warp storms to aggregate across the galaxy, eventually making interstellar travel and communications impossible for the colonies of Humanity, bringing on Mankind's Age of Strife.

This gestalt collection of corrupt Aeldari souls gained self-awareness sometime in the late 30th Millennium, creating the powerful new Warp entity known as the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure, named "She Who Thirsts" by the Aeldari. When Slaanesh came to be, an ethereal explosion occurred that spanned the extent of Warpspace within the Milky Way Galaxy, with the epicentre being located within the Aeldari core homeworlds of the galactic northwest. All Aeldari caught in the immense psychic blast were instantly killed, their souls consumed by Slaanesh, and the surrounding region of space was transformed into a massive, permanent Warp rift later known as the "Eye of Terror" to Humanity. The core Aeldari homeworlds were transformed into the ruined hellscapes today known as "Crone Worlds."

Eye of Terror

The Eye of Terror, once the heart of the Aeldari Empire in the Segmentum Obscurus, seen from several thousand light years away.

Most of the remaining Aeldari gods who themselves existed as entities within the Warp were destroyed by Slaanesh after its cataclysmic birth. Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Aeldari god of war, attempted to combat the new Chaos God, but Khaine's form was shattered and exiled to the mortal realm where it came to rest in the Infinity Circuits of the Asuryani craftworlds but could be embodied in the form of animated constructs called "Avatars", which rested in the hearts of the various craftworlds during times of grave peril.

The only other Aeldari gods to survive the Fall were the trickster god Cegorach (also called the "Laughing God"), who hid himself within the Webway, and Isha, who was ripped from the jaws of Slaanesh by the Chaos God Nurgle, who now keeps her as a slave within its hideous garden home within the Realm of Chaos.

The Fall utterly destroyed the once vast interstellar Aeldari Empire, leaving scattered bands of Aeldari fighting for survival. Before the Fall, vast voidcraft called craftworlds were constructed, enabling those wishing to escape the degeneration of the Aeldari homeworlds to flee, along with samples of their lost worlds' flora and fauna. When the Fall occurred, the various craftworlds rode out the ethereal shockwave in the Warp, some being destroyed in the process.

The Exodite worlds, far from the epicentre of the terrible catastrophe, were largely untouched by the birth-scream of Slaanesh. In order to prevent the events of the Fall from ever recurring, the Aeldari of the craftworlds, who now called themselves the "Asuryani" but were long known as the "Eldar" to outsiders, devised the Asuryani Path system, by which every Craftworld Aeldari would follow a strict, almost fanatical life path pursuing a specific activity, such as crafting or war, for a portion of their long lifespans, before switching to another Path when the previous one grew stale. In this way, the Asuryani hoped to control the extreme emotional and psychic sensitivity that had left them open to corruption by Chaos in the first place.

However, some corrupted Aeldari did survive the birth of Slaanesh by taking refuge within the Webway itself. The Webway had long been home to a nearly infinite cavalcade of hyperdimensional sub-realms that were protected from Slaanesh's predations by the psychic wards erected within the Labyrinth Dimension to keep the dangers of the Warp at bay. These sadistic beings became known as the Drukhari or "Dark Eldar" to outsiders, the inhabitants of the vast Dark City within the Webway called Commorragh. The Drukhari later preyed on Humans and Asuryani alike to find souls whose torment and anguish they could psychically devour to keep their own tainted souls from being consumed by Slaanesh.

Great Crusade (ca. 798.M30-005.M31)

For a more complete record, please see Great Crusade Chronology.


Emperor Great Crusade

The Emperor of Mankind led the Space Marine Legions personally during the Great Crusade in the 30th Millennium.

The Great Crusade of the Emperor of Mankind began as the Age of Strife came to an end for Humanity. The Warp storms isolating the Human colony worlds for 5,000 Terran years had finally disappeared with the birth of Slaanesh and the Fall of the Aeldari in the 30th Millennium.

The man known only as the Emperor, a Perpetual and the greatest psyker in Human history, had emerged mysteriously from the darkness of Old Night as the greatest warlord of the Human homeworld. The Emperor, with the aid of His friend and ally Malcador the Sigillite, had united Terra under His rule during the Unification Wars which had ended in 712.M30 in the final decades of the Age of Strife. He intended to use His genetically-enhanced Space Marines and the Imperial Army to now reunite all of Humanity under His enlightened rule and the rationalist philosophy of the Imperial Truth.

Making a pact known as the Treaty of Mars with the Cult Mechanicus of the Machine God on Mars in 739.M30, the Emperor promised to allow the Tech-priests to continue to practice their faith and maintain the political autonomy of their Mechanicum government if they provided Him with the starships and other advanced technology He needed to reunite the Human-settled galaxy.

The Emperor was a man of enormous skill in the practice of science and the development of new technology, and so in Him many members of the ancient Mechanicum saw the coming of the Omnissiah -- the physical avatar of the Machine God -- that had been prophesied by their faith. In the treaty they signed with the Emperor, the Mechanicum of Mars pledged their support to the creation of a new Imperium of Man in which they would serve as the Imperium's primary purveyors of science and technology in return for first access to any ancient technology, or "archeotech," discovered beyond the bounds of the Sol System.

With the signing of the Treaty of Mars, the symbol of the Imperium changed from the raptor's head and lightning bolt icon used by the Emperor during the Unification Wars on Terra to the double-headed eagle known as the Aquila, to symbolise the union of the empires of Earth and Mars. With the forge factories and industrial output of Mars, the Emperor was able to refit His armies, and more importantly, He now had the use of the Mechanicum's Titan Legions and Knights, giant robotic war machines with the potential to dominate the battlefield.

At first, the newborn Imperium's expansion into interstellar space was slow, since the Imperial Army was still small, and more importantly the Emperor's 20 Space Marine Legions were inhibited by the absence of their primarchs, the genetically-engineered transhuman military commanders the Emperor had created during the Unification Wars to lead His eventual reconquest of the galaxy at the head of the Legiones Astartes, but who had been lost to the Warp before the end of the Unification Wars due to the machinations of the Chaos Gods.

This lack made the time for the creation of a new Space Marine from a normal adolescent Human male much longer. However, this difficulty was to end, as on Cthonia, a planet in a star system not far from Terra, the Emperor for the first time was reunited in 801.M30 with one of His missing primarchs, Horus. Having been discovered at an early age, the Emperor took Horus under His wing and taught him all He knew. Horus and the Emperor had a truly unique bond, that of father and son, and many times they saved each others' lives. But after almost 20 standard years, the Emperor discovered another of the Space Marine primarchs, Leman Russ, on the icy world of Fenris in 819.M30. Although Horus was pleased at the discovery of one of his brothers, he secretly hoped to always remain the Emperor's favourite son.

In time, all the primarchs were found on the worlds they had been sent to by the will of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and each was placed in command of their respective Space Marine Legions. The Legions as a result were massively expanded with new recruits drawn from their primarchs' adopted homeworlds, and new Space Marines could now be produced within only a single Terran year. But this acceleration and the genecraft techniques employed to bring it about produced fundamental defects within the psyche of each Space Marine created from certain primarchs' genetic heritages through this process. These defects were later to prove fatal to many of the Emperor's dreams for Humanity.

The Great Crusade lasted for 200 standard years, into the early years of the 31st Millennium, and brought many long-lost star systems into the fold of the newborn Imperium of Man. Under the command of the War Council of the Emperor and His rediscovered primarchs, vast expeditionary fleets comprised of the Imperial Army and the twenty Space Marine Legions fought back aliens, feral Human tribes, petty Human dictators and the Warp-tainted forces that had gained control of large portions of Human-settled space during the Age of Strife.

Once a Human-settled world had been pacified, it was brought into "Imperial Compliance" by a new Imperial planetary governor chosen by the Emperor. Part of this process included the rooting out of any superstitious or religious beliefs of the population with a respect solely for reason and the measured advancement of science and technology, an atheistic belief system known as the "Imperial Truth."

The world was then often occupied by a unit or units of the Imperial Army that were left behind to complete the integration of the planet into the Imperium while the expeditionary fleet, led by the Astartes, moved on to its next target. As the primarchs took control of the Space Marine Legions that had been crafted from their gene-seed, the Great Crusade separated, moving in many directions and reaching far across the galaxy.

After the Imperial Crusade on the world of Ullanor concluded in 000.M30 upon bringing that planet into Imperial Compliance after the defeat of a great force of Orks, the Emperor claimed it as the greatest victory of the Imperium to date, and that Horus should be given all credit. Hailing Horus and his Luna Wolves Legion (later renamed the Sons of Horus), the Emperor stated that He would have to leave the expeditionary fleets behind and return to Terra to begin the next, secret phase of His plan to ensure Humanity's domination of the galaxy.

In His place, the Emperor announced that Horus would be declared Warmaster of the Imperium, the de facto commander of all the Emperor's armies on the Great Crusade. Although Horus was troubled that the Emperor should leave him and his brother primarchs to carry on alone for some unknown reason, with Horus as their new commander, the Imperium's armies and Space Marines continued to expand ever outwards, rediscovering lost Human worlds and bringing them into the enlightened Imperium's fold. This expansion lasted for five more standard years until the outbreak of the terrible Imperial civil war known as the Horus Heresy in 005.M31.

Horus Heresy (ca. 005-014.M31)

For a more complete record, please see Horus Heresy Chronology.


Galaxy in Flames PREVIEW

The Horus Heresy begins on the surface of Isstvan III with the Warmaster Horus' betrayal of the Loyalists in his own Space Marine Legion.

But the seeds of destruction for the Emperor's great dream had already been planted. One of the primarchs, Lorgar Aurelian of the Word Bearers Legion, had secretly turned to the service of the Dark Gods of the Warp approximately one hundred and sixty standard years into the Great Crusade. Seeking the true source of divinity in the universe after the Emperor had brutally reprimanded Lorgar and his Legion at the "perfect city" of Monarchia on the world of Khur for spreading the falsehood that the Emperor was the one, true god of Humanity, the primarch began a great pilgrmage across the galaxy.

Lorgar's quest eventually led the Word Bearers into the heart of the great, permanent Warp rift in the Segmentum Obscurus later named the Eye of Terror. There, Lorgar made contact with entities who he believed truly were divinities worthy of his worship -- the Chaos Gods. Devoting himself to their vision of seeing the Warp and realspace intertwined into a single reality and the benefits he believed this would bring to Humanity, the primarch spent the next four solar decades preparing to convert his brothers and their Legions to the service of Chaos.

To this end, Lorgar arranged for the Warmaster Horus to visit the barbarous world of Davin not long after the end of the Ullanor Crusade. There, he arranged for the Warmaster to be mortally wounded by a weapon tainted by the dark touch of the Chaos God Nurgle, the Plaguefather. Even a primarch's superhuman constitution proved incapable of defeating the Warp-tained pathogen created by the Plague God, and so to save his life Horus' own Astartes handed him over to a cabal of Davinite Chaos Cultists known as the Temple of the Serpent Lodge.

There, in a foul, sorcerous ritual that had been prepared by Lorgar and was overseen by the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus, Horus' spirit was cast into the Warp, where the Chaos Gods promised to save his life if he would choose to become their servant and overthrow the rule of the Emperor of Mankind. Manipulating Horus' insecurities concerning the Emperor's affection for him and his unquenchable desire for recognition, power and glory, the Ruinous Powers succeeded in turning Horus against the Master of Mankind through a combination of lies and half-truths. With his agreement to their bargain, Horus' soul was returned to his body in the Davinite temple and he awoke fully healed, though he now walked the path of damnation.

Over the next few standard years, Horus began to surreptitiously move all the pieces of the Imperial military he commanded into place to launch a grand rebellion against the Emperor's authority that was intended to result in Horus claiming the Throneworld of Terra and the mantle of Humanity's new emperor. The Warmaster, always with the aid of Lorgar and his Daemonic allies, managed to suborn the loyalties of eight of his brother primarchs.

He did this by exploiting their own insecurities concerning the Emperor's treatment of them and the jealous rivalries that many of the primarchs had developed over the course of the Great Crusade with their fellows. Horus' promises of greater political autonomy and the removal of restrictions on the acquisition of certain technologies forbidden by the Emperor also won the allegiance of Kelbor-Hal, the fabricator-general of Mars and leader of the ancient Mechanicum.

By 005.M31, the treason of Horus, known in later centuries as the "Horus Heresy," spread to embrace approximately half of the Imperium's military forces, including small Planetary Defence Forces, many regiments of the Imperial Army, the 9 Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions and nearly half of the ancient Mechanicum's potent Taghmata forces, Titan Legions and Knight houses, forming the core of Mechanicum adepts who chose to serve the Ruinous Powers and were later called the "Dark Mechanicum", though they referred to themselves as the "True Mechanicum."

The Horus Heresy truly began at the world of Isstvan III, where Horus used the outbreak of a Chaos-fuelled rebellion against Imperial rule as a pretext to send all of the Loyalist Astartes -- those Space Marines who Horus and his allied primarchs knew would never turn against the Emperor -- to the surface. Once the Loyalists of four of the Space Marine Legions allied to Horus were planetside and engaged in combat, the orbiting Imperial fleet unleashed a devastating bombardment of virus bombs upon them, seeking to kill all of the Loyalists as well as the entire planetary population in what is remembered as the "Isstvan III Atrocity."

But Horus miscalculated, for several of the Loyalists learned of the plot beforehand and were able to warn their battle-brothers on the surface of Isstvan III before the deadly barrage began. Thousands of Loyalist Astartes survived, forcing Horus and the Traitors to launch a solar-weeks-long campaign of grinding urban combat against their former allies as atmospheric occlusion caused by the virus-bombing prevented a simple orbital bombardment of their positions. At the same time, another group of Loyalists aboard the Death Guard Legion frigate Eisenstein managed to flee into the Warp with news of the Warmaster's betrayal, intending to let the Emperor know of the treachery of His favorite son.

After Horus finished off the Loyalists on Isstvan III with an orbital bombardment once the skies over the target area had cleared enough to allow a precise orbital assault, he moved his forces to the neighbouring world of Isstvan V to await the Imperial retribution he knew would come. The Loyalists rightly believed they outnumbered Horus' four Space Marine Legions and so when the Emperor, represented in the matter by Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion and the Praetorian of Terra, sent a force of seven Legions against him at Isstvan V, the Loyalists thought the Warmaster's rebellion would prove short-lived.

But they had deeply underestimated the man the Emperor had chosen to take His place at the head of the Imperium's military machine. Of the seven Legiones Astartes sent against him at Isstvan V in ca. 006.M31, Horus had already secretly gained the allegiance of four, who abruptly turned on the three Loyalist Legions and destroyed them almost to an Astartes. In a single stroke, at the so-called "Drop Site Massacre" of Isstvan V, Horus had nearly doubled his forces and weakened those of the Loyalists to the point that he could now begin a drive on Terra itself.

The terrible civil war that ensued as Horus drove towards the heart of the Imperium lasted for a further 7 standard years, killed trillions of men and women across the galaxy and culminated in 014.M31 in a massive assault upon the Imperial Palace during the climactic Siege of Terra. After 55 solar days of fighting, the war was ended by the Emperor and Horus duelling in single combat aboard Horus' flagship, the Gloriana-class Battleship Vengeful Spirit, in orbit of Terra, before further Loyalist reinforcements could reach the Throneworld and throw the Traitor forces back from their prize.

Although mortally wounded during the final battle with His once-favoured son, who had become immensely powerful and swollen with the energies of the Warp as a result of the united favour of the Chaos Gods, the Emperor was able to strike down Horus using the full gathered might of His unrivaled psychic powers. Despite His great sorrow and reluctance, the Emperor obliterated Horus' soul from the Warp, preventing him from being resurrected to serve the Ruinous Powers once more.

Without their leader, the unity of the forces of Chaos soon crumbled and as Loyalist reinforcements led by Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines arrived in the Sol System, the Traitor Legions and their Dark Mechanicum and mortal allies retreated to the massive Warp rift in the Segmentum Obscurus known as the Eye of Terror.

At His own direction, the crippled body of the Emperor was installed into the cybernetic life support mechanisms of the psychic amplifier known as the Golden Throne. This allowed His mind to have an anchor in realspace from which He could battle the influence of the Chaos Gods in the Warp and continue to direct the energies of the Astronomican, the psychic beacon that was the lifeblood of the Imperium's communications, commerce and interstellar travel.

In a postscript to the terrible traumas of the Heresy, a battle between Loyalists and Traitors fought on the planet of Sotha, home to the ancient Necron Warp beacon known as the Pharos, drew the attentions of the hive fleets of the Tyranids to the galaxy. It was in this ancient time that their vast biomechanical fleets first began to move across the extragalactic void towards the Milky Way Galaxy, drawn ever on by the shining psychic beacon of the Astronomican.

Great Scouring (ca. 014-Unknown Date.M31)

The "Great Scouring," or simply "The Scouring," was the Imperium of Man's great counter-offensive against the Traitor Legions. It began immediately after the end of the Horus Heresy following the death of the Warmaster Horus and the failure of his assault upon the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra in 014.M31. Over the course of many solar decades, it finally succeeded in driving the forces of Chaos from their conquered territories within Imperial space into finding a refuge in the permanent Warp storm known as the Eye of Terror.

Before actually being confined for all time within the life support mechanisms of the Golden Throne, the Emperor had pronounced judgment on the Traitors: He declared them Excommunicate Traitoris, and determined that they were to be driven into the hellish Eye of Terror for all eternity. All records and memory of the Traitor Legions were to be later expunged from the Imperial archives.

Worlds such as Isstvan V and the former Legion homeworlds of the Traitor Legions would be scoured clean of all life because of the corruption of their people by Chaos. The Traitor Legions' associated troops from the Dark Mechanicum, the Titan Legions, Chaos Knight houses or the regiments and starships of the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy that had turned to Chaos were to be destroyed or driven into the Eye. It would be as if the Traitor Legions and their allies had never existed to sully the Imperium with their betrayal.

After the death of Horus, those Traitors who had not been slain outright during the Siege of Terra fled before the vengeful wrath of the Loyalist forces led by Primarch Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines Legion, who also took on the burdens of leadership of the Imperium as the Imperial Regent and lord commander of the Imperium in the Emperor's absence. Many Traitors made good their escape into unexplored space or disappeared into the Eye of Terror or other, lesser-known Warp rifts such as the Maelstrom.

Fighting continued for many standard years after the Heresy had ended with Horus' death before the Traitor forces were wholly destroyed or exiled into the Eye of Terror. Many Chaos-corrupted star systems were cleansed and placed under the watch of the newborn Inquisition. The Emperor's dream of a new age of enlightenment, a time when Mankind was freed from superstition and ignorance, would turn into something far different. The Great Scouring would be followed by the ten-millennia-long era known as the Age of the Imperium.

Second Founding (ca. 021.M31)

In the midst of the campaigns of the Great Scouring, the Second Founding occurred. The remaining 9 Loyalist Space Marine Legions were disbanded, their transhuman warriors transferred into the far smaller 1,000-Astartes organisations known as Chapters, in accordance with the newly-established dictates of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes. The Codex provided a highly-detailed manual and instruction guide for the raising, training, organisation and military tactics of a Space Marine Chapter.

The purpose of this reorganisation was to prevent any one leader like Horus from ever again making use of the power of an entire Space Marine Legion against the Emperor's realm. At the same time, because of their smaller size, the Space Marines were transformed from the Imperium's primary frontline military forces into a dedicated planetary assault and rapid reaction force.

A portion of the Space Marines, now collectively known as the Adeptus Astartes, maintained their parent Legions' original names, badges and colours whilst the remaining Chapters took on new names and heraldry and eventually developed independent Chapter cultures, traditions and beliefs. The majority of these Second Founding Chapters still proudly serve the Imperium today.

Age of the Imperium (M31 - Present)

The Age of the Imperium is the time period that began with the end of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium, and is typically referred to in the present tense. The approximate time period begins in 014.M31, and continues forward to the present, with the last year represented in Imperial records before the opening of the Great Rift and the start of the Era Indomitus being 999.M41.

The Age of the Imperium is generally conveyed as spanning from the end of the Horus Heresy to the narrative present -- a period of approximately ten thousand Terran years.

Time of Rebirth (ca. M31 - ca. M32)

During the Time of Rebirth the Imperium of Man slowly recovered from the destruction and loss of the Horus Heresy. The myriad wars of the Great Scouring were fought in the years immediately after the end of the Horus Heresy and the death of the traitorous Warmaster Horus.

For a time after the end of the wars of the Scouring and the retreat of the Traitors into the Eye of Terror, the Imperium knew peace from the corrupted followers of the Chaos Gods. At the same time, many alien species that had been fought during the Great Crusade reappeared in Human space to take advantage of the disruptions caused by the Horus Heresy. They soon plagued the vulnerable worlds of Mankind already prostrate from the destruction wrought by the Heresy.

In order to prevent a single person from controlling as much military power as Horus had mastered and eliminate the risk of another large-scale civil war, numerous reforms were enacted at the hands of Roboute Guilliman in his new capacity as Imperial Regent and lord commander of the Imperium to reshape the Imperium's political and military structure. In this way the men and women of the Imperium could face the new post-Heresy realities of an interstellar government where the Emperor was no longer capable of carrying on the day-to-day tasks of interstellar governance.

The Imperial Army was divided into the land-based forces of the Astra Militarum, and the space-based forces of the Navis Imperialis, each with a separate chain-of-command structure and bureaucracy. As noted above, the remaining nine Loyalist Space Marine Legions adopted the Codex Astartes written by Guilliman and were split into the many smaller Space Marine Chapters of the Second Founding that were comprised of only 1,000 warriors each along with their own supporting spacecraft and planetary fiefdoms.

The era of Imperial peace and reconstruction came to an end when the Orks rampaged across the Imperium on a massive scale from 544-546.M32. The number of Greenskin attacks grew until it became the greatest Ork invasion that the galaxy had ever know, eclipsing even the Ork WAAAGH! defeated by the Emperor and Horus during the Ullanor Crusade in 000.M30, which had earned Horus the title of Warmaster.

Nothing was safe from the Orks' primal desire to conquer the galaxy and their widespread advances were only halted when the Imperium resorted to the use of the most extreme measures, at great cost to the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. This conflict was remembered as the "War of the Beast." The traumas of this time ked to the division of the Inquisition into separate specialties to safeguard Humanity in the future from further xenos assaults.

As such, the Inquisition was reorganised into separate divisions or "ordos," including the Ordo Malleus that was intended to carry on the Inquisition's original mandate to protect the Imperium from the machinations of Chaos and the new Ordo Xenos to defend Humanity against assaults by aliens. The Ordo Xenos was further bolstered by the creation of its Chamber Militant, the Deathwatch, a new Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes comprised of Veteran Space Marines drawn from multiple different Chapters.

The byzantine politics of the Imperium took a calamitous turn in 546.M32 in the wake of the War of the Beast in an event remembered as The Beheading when the High Lords of Terra, the successors of the Imperium's original Council of Terra that had been established after the Heresy to administer the day-to-day affairs of the Imperium in the Emperor's name, were slain to the last individual on the orders of Drakan Vangorich, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum.

A Space Marine retribution force drawn from the Halo Brethren, Imperial Fists and Sable Swords Chapters tracked the Grand Master to an Assassinorum temple on Terra. The commander of the Astartes strike force was assassinated as soon as he made planetfall, but the remaining battle-brothers carried out the attack without him. Inside the temple they were attacked by 100 Eversor Assassins. Only a single Space Marine, Maximus Thane, the lord commander of the Imperium and Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, survived to reach Grand Master Vangorich and end his life with a Bolt Pistol.

The Imperium ultimately descended into anarchy for a standard century until new High Lords were chosen following an intervention on Terra by 50 Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes led by Agnathio, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, who chose twelve new High Lords with his fellow Chapter Masters in a single session of the Senatorum Imperialis.

The Forging (ca. M32 - ca. M35)

The Forging is also sometimes known to Imperial historitors as the Golden Age of the Imperium. During this period the Adeptus Terra brought the most important Human-settled star systems of the galaxy that had not been reached by the Great Crusade under Imperial control and expanded the interstellar borders of the Imperium. Internal stability was gained with the establishment of astropath choirs on countless worlds, with major hubs established on the best-garrisoned Imperial worlds, including Armageddon, Bakka and Macragge. This allowed a reliable network of interstellar, superluminal communication to function using the power of an astropath's astrotelepathy to send and receive messages across light years.

This period also saw a slowing in the gradual decline of the Imperium's technology level from its pre-Heresy height and the growth of the interstellar economy due to the rediscovery of a valuable portion of a Standard Template Construct (STC) database from the Age of Technology in the Cana System as the Imperium expanded. Once more the Imperium repelled the forces of Chaos Renegades, Heretics and aliens alike across the galaxy and reclaimed countless lost and rebellious regions for the Human species.

The Emperor, always an object of veneration and divine worship since the Great Crusade and the days of the cult of the Lectitio Divinitatus, only increased His devoted following of worshippers after being joined to the Golden Throne, which was hailed by His faithful as His "ascension" from the physical to the spiritual plane from whence He would further guide and protect Humanity. Many Imperial cults dedicated to the worship of the Emperor as the one, true god of Humanity arose over the following centuries, the majority of which were ultimately repressed, united with or absorbed into a centralised faith known as the Temple of the Saviour Emperor.

This powerful church gained further momentum among the masses of the Imperial faithful until, in the 32nd Millennium, it was finally granted the status of the official state religion of the Imperium and the title of Adeptus Ministorum, more often called the "Ecclesiarchy" by the people of the Imperium. It was only a few standard centuries later in the mid-32nd Millennium that Ecclesiarch Veneris II received a seat amongst the High Lords of Terra, and after 300 standard years, the seat reserved for the state church's governing ecclesiarch was made permanent within the ranks of the Senatorum Imperialis.

It was in 646.M32 that Agnathio, the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, united over 50 leaders from other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes as noted above and arrived upon Terra. Such a show of power and faith put an end to the squabbling for the contentious seats of the High Lords of Terra that had consumed the differing Imperial factions since The Beheading. In locked council with the mightiest of Humanity's warriors, such matters were quickly sorted out. To this day none know exactly what was done or said, but when the Space Marines departed back to their far-scattered missions, there once again sat twelve High Lords of Terra in the Senatorum Imperialis. If there was further dissension, none dared speak it aloud.

In 888.M32 the Imperium was consumed by the event known as the Astropath Wars. There is no further information on this conflict available in Imperial records.

In 910.M32 the event known as The Firestorm unfolded. There is no further information on this conflict available in Imperial records.

Sometime during the 33rd Millennium, the War of the Confessor unfolded when in a particularly violent display, the Adeptus Ministorum exerted its newfound political strength. Many key Shrine Worlds were added to its holdings during this first of the many Wars of Faith to come.

In 265.M33, Admiral Usurs of the Imperial Navy was cast down by the High Lords of Terra for becoming too ambitious. However, he was still too powerful within the Navis Imperialis to be executed without initiating a costly civil war, so he was instead despatched on an Explorator mission to the intergalactic gulf beyond the rim of the galaxy. For the following solar decade, Usurs' reports reached Terra by astropath, detailing the conquest of new star systems for the Emperor. After two solar decades, these reports finally ceased. Contact was never reestablished by the Imperium with the star systems Usurs mentioned in his reports.

In 313.M33 the Siege of Eternity's Gate unfolded. No further information is available.

In 615.M33 the Blade of Infinity, a pre-Heresy cruiser, emerged from the Warp, its re-entry signature suggesting that it had left realspace over 20,000 standard years before. This period predated even the Warp-Drive's invention in the Age of Technology and suggested a radical time stream disorder. Vox transmissions picked up from the vessel suggested that the Blade of Infinity was trying to communicate some type of warning, but before much could be deciphered, the ancient starship disappeared once again into the Warp. In its wake arrived an invasion fleet of Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions, the Archenemy of the Imperium who wreaked much havoc. The Blade of Infinity reemerged from the Warp several more times in subsequent years, always as a harbinger of further incursions into Imperial space by the forces of Chaos from the Immaterium.

In 831.M33, during what became known as the Year of the Ghosts, the honoured dead rose up in the Segmentum Solar to drive back the terrors of the Warp.

Sometime during the early years of M34 a great threat to the Imperium arose beyond the Ghost Stars. Even today, its true nature remains suppressed or redacted within Imperial records. The ravages are said to cause the extermination of a score of Space Marine Chapters and souls unnumbered. Much of the extant evidence relating to this threat has been censored or purposely destroyed by the Inquisition, but there are contradictory indications which describe the nature of the threat as both a "star-spawned plague" that swept away scores of worlds and to "Nightmare Engines" that slaughtered the populations of whole sectors. This threat is remembered only as the Pale Wasting.

In 401.M34 the terrible crisis known as The Howling unfolded. Black Templar Space Marines ended the Catelexis Heresy by executing the Cacodominus, an alien cybernetic psyker whose formidable powers allowed it to psychically control the populace of thirteen hundred star systems. Unfortunately, the Cacodominus' death scream was amplified by the Warp and burned out the minds of a billion Human astropaths while it also distorted the beacon of the Astronomican. Millions of starships were lost in the resulting upheaval and entire sub-sectors of the Imperium slid once more into barbarism without the dictates of the Adeptus Terra to guide them. It is a terrible price to pay for victory.

Following a fierce Warp storm bursting from the Eye of Terror in 666.M34, the first of many unnatural phenomenon known as "Warp Stars" are sighted. The tendrils of their power pulled any starships or small planets that fell within their reach to a grisly, if spectacular, doom.

In 934.M34 came the Warnings of the Craftworld Ulthwe to the Imperium. No further records are available as to the nature or content of this warning.

Nova Terra Interregnum (ca. Mid M34 - Late M35)

The Nova Terra Interregnum is also known as the Time of the Twin Empires and was a troubled period in Imperial history when the Imperium of Man fractured for a time into warring factions for over 900 standard years during the mid-34th through the late-35th Millennium. During this period the rebellious Ur-Council of Nova Terra dismissed the authority of the High Lords of Terra and claimed separate rule over the Imperium's Segmentum Pacificus.

During the dark days of the Nova Terra Interregnum, division and civil war fractured the Imperium into a number of different warring factions. The Adeptus Mechanicus was also affected during the Interregnum by division and internal warfare brought about by doctrinal differences and competing centres of power. One of the most discordant of these conflicts was the Moirae Schism which occurred sometime in the 35th Millennium, a dogmatic battle between the Martian orthodoxy of the standard Cult Mechanicus and a far more radical creed based upon the prophetic writings of a triad of tech-mystics from the minor Forge World of Moirae.

The Moirae Schism was one of the most divisive and widespread doctrinal conflicts to afflict the Adeptus Mechanicus since the Horus Heresy. Moirae was eventually reduced to a cinder by the fabricator-general of Mars' rectification fleet, but not before heretical writings from that world spread like wildfire throughout the Priesthood of Mars, the Titan Legions and several Space Marine Chapters with close ties to Mars, such as the Iron Hands. Over 2,000 Terran years of bloody strife passed before the baleful doctrine was finally considered purged from the Mechanicus and its allies.

After almost a millennium of low-grade civil war and political maneuvering, the Cataclysm of Souls in 975.M35 reunited the Imperium. In that year, the Ecclesiarchy tried to transform the Imperium into a formal theocracy where political differences would be submerged by usurping the power of the rest of the High Lords of Terra beneath the de facto dictatorship of the ecclesiarch. Their efforts ended only in stirring up massive religious civil wars against the Ur-Council of Nova Terra who were denounced as Heretics who stood in defiance of the will of the God-Emperor when they rejected the Ecclesiarchy's attempts to increase its power over the Imperial state.

This religious rebellion on many worlds of the Segmentum Pacificus ultimately overthrew the Ur-Council and restored the rule of the High Lords over the entirety of the Imperium's territory, though billions died in these religious wars and the power of the Ecclesiarchy was increased throughout the Imperium to a dangerous level as a result.

In 980.M35 the galaxy suffered from the onslaught of the massive Hrud Rising.

In 991.M35, the 21st Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, later known as the Cursed Founding, was raised. This was the largest Founding of Space Marine Chapters since the Second Founding following the Horus Heresy. It took place shortly before the start of the Age of Apostasy.

Upon the world of Inculaba, a secret geno-lab was the site of the secret project known as "Homo Sapiens Novus," where Mechanicus Genetors attempted to perfect and remove the existing, identified deficiencies in flawed Astartes gene-seed, and ultimately begin the production of new and improved primarch-like Space Marines. But their project was doomed to failure as the Genetors proved far less skilled in the genetic sciences than the Emperor of Mankind and His ancient scientists of the Biotechnical Division. Instead, their efforts resulted in the development of seriously flawed gene-seed that was used to craft the organ implants for the new Chapters.

Worse still, some of these Chapters later developed unexpected genetic idiosyncrasies, mutations that strained the tolerance of the Inquisition and threatened the Chapters' survival. The most seriously afflicted Chapters suffered the wrath of the Grey Knights after they were called in by the Inquisition to expunge the threat. Some escaped this fate and fled, eventually turning Traitor and swearing themselves to the service of Chaos.

In 104.M36 the War of Recovery unfolded when patchy reports of technological wonders on the planets of the Mortuam Chain reached Mars. Hoping that it might be possible to recover new STC database fragments believed to exist in the region, the Adeptus Mechanicus launched an expedition which began an escalating war that lasted for over a standard century. Aided by the advanced weaponry they recovered, the forces of the Mechanicus freed the Human colonies of the region from xenos occupation and several first generation copies of STC databases concerning certain technologies were returned in triumph to Mars.

Age of Apostasy (M36)

Foreshadowed by the deep political divisions that had defined the Nova Terra Interregnum, a new age of dissent and power struggles consumed the Imperium in the 36th Millennium. Zeal eclipsed reason, and misrule reigned supreme. The word of the Emperor was subverted wholesale by corrupt ideologues, each struggling to usurp total control of the Emperor's realm for themselves.

This era is known as the Age of Apostasy, a time of brutal Imperial civil war and tyrannical repression, and is considered to be one of the bloodiest eras within the Imperium's history after the Horus Heresy. Around 200.M36, the Age of Apostasy is marked by the start of the Reign of Blood, when the High Lord Goge Vandire, an insane tyrant, became both the ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum and the master of the Adeptus Administratum through bribery, blackmail, coercion and murder.

During Vandire's Reign of Blood, multiple Wars of Faith were fought as Vandire attempted to gain full political control of the Imperium. The Reign of Blood lasted for 70 Terran years before a messenger delivered the news that heralded its end. On the world of Dimmamar, a man named Sebastian Thor and his ancient sect of the Imperial Cult, the Confederation of Light, denounced High Lord Vandire as a traitor to the Emperor.

The Confederation of Light was the rebirth of an ancient sect of the Imperial Cult that had once stood as a rival to the Temple of the Saviour Emperor that became the heart of the Adeptus Ministorum. Its doctrines were more moderate than those of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, and promoted a version of the Imperial faith that sought individual salvation through faith in the God-Emperor and good works in His name rather than the pursuit of political and material power for the church which had come to define the doctrines of the orthodox Ecclesiarchy.

As an accomplished orator, Thor was able to sway billions to his cause, stirring up a galaxy-wide rebellion against Vandire's rule. Eventually Vandire was besieged on Terra by several Space Marine Chapters and Astra Militarum regiments. The Space Marines' fleet unleashed a massive orbital bombardment which caught most of the Traitors in the open. Goge Vandire was assassinated by his own bodyguards, the women warriors known as the Brides of the Emperor, who were convinced by the intervention of the Adeptus Custodes themselves that they had been tricked into betraying the Emperor by Vandire.

In the aftermath of the Reign of Blood, Sebastian Thor became the new ecclesiarch and the Ecclesiarchy was reformed along the lines of the theology of the Confederation of Light. The Imperium's state church now promised to pursue a more spiritual rather than secular agenda and maintain a balanced political course in which it shared power with the Adeptus Terra rather than seeking to dominate all within the Emperor's realm. Some resistance among believers in the old Temple of the Saviour Emperor orthodoxy remained, and these individuals went on to form a hidden resistance to the reformed Imperial Creed known as the "Temple Tendency."

The Brides of the Emperor were transformed into the sisterhood of the Adepta Sororitas, and its Orders Militant, the Sisters of Battle, became the armed forces of the Ecclesiarchy and the Chamber Militant of the Inquisition's new-formed Ordo Hereticus. The Ordo Hereticus was intended to root out the internal enemies of the Imperium, watch over the Ecclesiarchy and prevent the emergence of another Goge Vandire who sought to serve his own selfish ends rather than the will of the Emperor.

The event known as the Plague of Unbelief in 310.M36 is also considered part of the Age of Apostasy of the 36th Millennium, although it occurred several solar decades after High Lord Goge Vandire's death and Sebastian Thor's ascension to the position of ecclesiarch. Many false prophets appeared throughout the anarchic Age of Apostasy, some little more than madmen leading rebel armies, others spiritual demagogues who commanded entire worlds and sector-spanning armies.

The most powerful of these was the Apostate Cardinal of Gathalamor, Bucharis, whose heresies reached such proportions they first provided the name for the Plague of Unbelief, not to be confused with the Curse of Unbelief, a potent arcane disease spread by servants of the Chaos God Nurgle in the 41st Millennium and better known as the Zombie Plague.

The Plague of Unbelief came to an end after the heroic sacrifices of the Imperial saint known as the Great Confessor, Dolan Chirosius, who willingly martyred himself on Gathalamor. Chirosius' example proved so potent a display of faith in the God-Emperor that the entire population of the world rose up and cast down Bucharis, restoring Imperial rule and the orthodox faith of the God-Emperor.

In 754.M36 the Imperium was struck by the Web of Intrigue Disaster. There is no further information in Imperial records concerning this event.

In 989.M36, as the Eye of Terror and other Warp rifts visibly expanded, the Tech-priests servicing the Golden Throne demanded an increase in the number of psykers needed to fuel the Emperor's growing appetite to successfully power the Astronomican. The Black Ships increased in number and the frequency of their voyages to collect their tithes of psykers from across the Imperium. According to some records, from this time onwards four times the number of psykers are sacrificed daily to maintain optimal levels of power to the Golden Throne and the Astrnomican.

Age of Redemption (ca. M37)

The Age of Redemption marked the era when the Imperium recovered from the sins of apostasy in a rain of blood and tears. The Imperial Cult grew in zeal as never before. Heretic pyres burned night and day on a thousand Imperial worlds as the people of the Imperium sought to mortify their sins against the God-Emperor through the scourging of the flesh of others.

Imperial Crusade after Imperial Crusade was launched by the Space Marines and other Imperial military forces to recapture the lost wealth of the Imperium and push back the hordes of the forces of Chaos, Orks and other alien threats to Humanity. This religious fervour eventually peaked in an orgy of fanatical devotion to crusading in the Emperor's name and thousands of worlds were left with inadequate defences as sector fleets of the Navis Imperialis, Adeptus Astartes Chapters and Astra Militarum regiments were drawn into longer and more terrible Redemption Crusades spurred on by this religious fanaticism.

In 010.M37 the Wrath of the Chaos Sun fell upon the Imperium when the red giant star at the heart of the Maxil Beta System exploded in an expanding cloud of Warpflame. The inhabitants of every world for hundreds of light years were either mutated beyond recognition or possessed by the denizens of the Warp. In response, the High Lords of Terra ordered the mobilisation of whatever Imperial forces were close at hand. So it is that the Grey Knights were joined by a dozen other Chapters, countless Astra Militarum regiments and the nascent Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas. The resulting battle did much to heal the remaining wounds in the Imperial body politic that had been opened by Goge Vandire's treachery.

In 020.M37, the High Lords of Terra, in their mercy, began a systematic and deadly purge within the ranks of the Adeptus Terra and on many worlds across the galaxy to ensure that such a corruption of faith as occurred during the Reign of Blood could never happen again. This became known as the Great Cull.

Among the most devastating of the conflicts unleashed during the Age of Redemption were the Abyssal Crusade and the Occlusiad War. The Abyssal Crusade of 321.M37 began when Saint Basilius, a Living Saint of the Ecclesiarchy, found thirty Space Marine Chapters wanting in their devotion to the Emperor. The guilty embarked upon a crusade into the Eye of Terror to earn their salvation and purge those Human-settled worlds stolen from Mankind by the birth of the Dark Prince of Pleasure, Slaanesh.

The Occlusiad War of 555.M37 started when the northwestern fringe of the galaxy was ravaged by the Heretics known as the Apostles of the Blind King, rogue Tech-priests who viewed the existence of Humanity as an utter affront to the Machine God. The Apostles had uncovered wondrous artefacts from the Age of Technology that made possible the transformation of ordinary stars into supernovae. The constellations of the galaxy were changed forever when the Apostles purged the outer Segmentum Obscurus of Human life using these weapons.

War raged for a solar decade until the Navigator Joyre Macran discovered the palace-warship of the Blind King hidden in a fold of the Warp. Escaping with this crucial intelligence, Macran guided the Imperial Navy's Emperor-class Battleship Dominus Astra to the palace's location. The Blind King was killed and the genocide ended when the Dominus Astra's Lance batteries pierced the palace-warship's hull. Without his psychically-prescient leadership the Apostles of the Blind King were swiftly overcome and their weapons hidden away in the deepest vaults of Mars.

In 754.M37, on thousands of planets, menials rebelled against their dreary drudgery with wild-eyed leaders espousing a better way of life -- a galaxy of tolerance. The movement proved especially popular amongst the youth of the Imperium, earning it the title of the "Children's Crusade." Billions of earnest, young pilgrims are lured to seek transport to Holy Terra on pilgrimage; some are waylaid by pirates, but the majority disappear into the Warp. They became known collectively as the Lost Crusade.

In 956.M37 the Heavenfall Massacres unfolded. Little else is known about them in Imperial records.

Emergence of the T'au Empire (M37-M41)

In the late 37th Millennium the humanoid T'au race, located on the arid world of T'au in the Ultima Segmentum, was united under the collectivist ideology of the Greater Good and underwent rapid technological development and a large expansion outwards into interstellar space where they established a new interstellar empire and settled many worlds in the Eastern Fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy.

The Imperium of Man only came into contact with the T'au Empire in 963.M41 when the Ultramarines clashed with a T'au expeditionary fleet for control of the cursed planet of Malbede. As a result of this late first contact, the number of conflicts between the Imperium and the T'au have been relatively minimal compared to the wars fought between Mankind and the other, more numerous and widespread starfaring alien species like the Orks and the Aeldari.

The rapid expansion of the T'au Empire also caused several other intelligent alien species to be incorporated into its ranks, such as the Kroot and the Vespid. Additionally, some Human worlds were seduced by the T'au's offer to serve their Greater Good, rejecting the often harsh rule of the Emperor's servants to join the xenos empire as Human allies known as Gue'vesa. Needless to say, Gue'vesa are viewed as the vilest of Heretics in the Imperium.

The Waning (ca. M38 - ca. 750.M41)

With the Imperium's military forces in every branch utterly exhausted by the Redemption Crusades, star system after star system fell to Ork invasion, Chaos insurgence or sheer rebellion. Anarchy throughout many sectors of the Imperium was rife during a dark period in Imperial history that is now called The Waning.

Ever more star systems were turned over by the Administratum to direct rule by Space Marine Chapters to preserve stability as only the Astartes possessed the inviolable military strength required to restore Imperial control in the more lawless regions of the galaxy.

Having purged more than 400 worlds within the Eye of Terror, the survivors of the Abyssal Crusade returned to Imperial space in 112.M38. Without pausing to claim the honours due for such a successful and protracted Imperial Crusade, Chapter Master Konvak Lann of the Vorpal Swords declares the now ancient Saint Basillius a false idol and adoration of him tantamount to betrayal. In less than a standard year, every known sepulchre and shrine dedicated to the false saint is destroyed. After his execution, his bones, along with countless relics, books of doctrine and thousands of living worshippers, are placed on a derelict bulk-freighter and launched directly into a nearby star.

During the Grim Harvest in 666.M38, a great armada of misshapen space hulks drifts out of the Warp near Terra. Some of the twisted and fused starships can still be identified as transports carrying pilgrims from the Lost Crusade. The Inquisition works feverishly to cover up the fleet's existence and its cargo of mutant and Daemon-possessed abominations.

In 001.M39 the Conflict of Helica unfolded.

In 103.M39 the Mausolean Cataclysm struck the Imperium.

In 131.M39, the Redemption Crusades begin. In each of the segmentae of the Imperium a great hero emerges. Like unto the primarchs of old are these warriors, and the combined efforts of their crusades push back the borders of the Imperium further than they have been for nearly 500 standard years. And then, 50 Terran years later, the five heroes vanish without a trace, spurring Ecclesiarch Inovian III to declare them Imperial saints returned to the Emperor's side.

A Black Crusade is the term used to describe a number of mass incursions by Chaos Space Marines and the other forces of Chaos into Imperial space from the Eye of Terror. The most prominent of these are the Black Crusades led by the Black Legion's Warmaster of Chaos and Horus' successor as the greatest Champion of Chaos Undivided, Abaddon the Despoiler. In 139.M41, the 12th Black Crusade, better known as the Gothic War, was a vast campaign launched by Abaddon that engulfed the Gothic Sector of the Segmentum Obscurus after that sector was cut off from Imperial reinforcements and communications by a series of massive Warp storms produced by the will of the Ruinous Powers.

The Gothic War consisted of hundreds of planetary invasions and naval battles spanning the time period 139.M41 - 160.M41 and only ended when Abaddon and his Chaos Space Marines, Renegade Chapters, Daemonic hosts and rebellious Chaos Cults were forced to retreat into the Immaterium with the arrival of Imperial reinforcements as the Warp storms that had provided cover for their invasion finally dissipated just as mysteriously as they had begun. On the Imperial side, dozens of Space Marine Chapters, nearly 100 Astra Militarum regiments and the better part of three Titan Legions took part in the conflict, along with every naval vessel the Battlefleet Obscurus can muster.

The conflict saw the destruction of several planets and four of the six irreplaceable ancient alien artefacts known as the Blackstone Fortresses as well as the deaths of millions, if not billions, of Imperial citizens. Most significantly, the events of the Gothic War revealed the true nature and purpose of the ancient spaceborne alien artefacts known to the Imperium as the Blackstone Fortresses, which had been created by the Old Ones to be used against the Necrons and were capable of destabilising stars and destroying entire solar systems. Most importantly, Abaddon and the forces of Chaos were able to escape back into the Eye of Terror with two of the Blackstone Fortresses, which would return a thousand standard years later to plague the Imperium at its darkest hour.

This period saw the Macharian Conquests (also called the Macharian Crusade) of 392-399.M41 during which Lord Commander Solar Macharius, the lord of the Segmentum Solar, mustered the greatest Human army the galaxy had seen since the Great Crusade. In only seven standard years, Macharius reconquered a thousand worlds on the western reaches of the Imperium and his glory carried him into the darkest sectors, places where the Emperor's light had never been known. Upon his death, the whole Imperium wept for the lost commander, but Macharius' conquered territories soon collapsed into rivalry and civil war. The Macharian Heresy, as this time is now known, lasted for seventy standard years and was only ended through the combined efforts of one hundred Space Marine Chapters.

In 500.M41, in an event known as the Tears of the Emperor, the Imperium was swept by visions of the Emperor's tears. From backwards, barbaric Feral Worlds to the most densely populated Hive Worlds, a million versions of the same story are told by holy men, street agitators, shamans, priests, and mystics. Primitives point to storm-filled skies, claiming that the drops falling from them are the tears of their mighty god. Upon Ecclesiarchy Cardinal Worlds, arch-deacons to lowly pilgrims claim to have seen statues of the divine Emperor shed tears. Chapter Masters and hive city urchins alike have visions of the Emperor stirring upon His throne, tears running from His empty eye sockets. Although the dreams take myriad forms, all know that the Emperor weeps not for Himself, but for the darkening plight of Humanity.

Great Awakening (M41)

In the 41st Millennium the long-dormant Necrons have finally awoken from their Great Sleep to begin their conquest of the galaxy once more. In many cases, over the millennia their Tomb Worlds had been resettled by the unsuspecting Humans of the Imperium, leading to horrific scenes of devastation as the newly-awakened Necrons cleansed whole planets of their populations of fragile Human souls.

The reason for the Necrons' awakening in the 41st Millennium is still debated amongst the magi of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Possible catalysts include the approach of the Tyranid Hive Mind's Shadow in the Warp or an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet that disturbed one of the Necron Tomb Worlds, though the first major official contact between the Imperium and the Necrons came in 963.M41 during the conflict between the Ultramarines Chapter and the T'au over control of what turned out to be the Tomb World of Malbede.

In that instance, the Ultramarines' Chapter Master Marneus Calgar ordered the use of an Exterminatus against Malbede after allowing the T'au forces to get off-planet to eliminate the much greater Necron threat, but Necrons soon began awakening on their Tomb Worlds all across the galaxy after this event. Regardless of the reason for their awakening, the Necrons proceeded to reap havoc amongst all the peoples of the galaxy.

Necron head

Necrons -- the Undying Legions awake.

None can say for sure how many Tomb Worlds entered the Great Sleep some 60 million standard years ago, but it is certain that a great many did not survive into the 41st Millennium. Technologically advanced though the Necrons were, to attempt a stasis-sleep of such scale was a great risk, even for them. For over 60 million Terran years the Necrons slept, voicelessly waiting for their chance to complete the Silent King's final order: to restore the Necron dynasties to their former glory. As the centuries passed, ever more Tomb Worlds fell prey to malfunction or ill-fortune. For many, the results were minor, such as a disruption to the operation of the Tomb World's chronostat or revivification chambers, causing the inhabitants to awaken later than intended -- but some of the Tomb Worlds suffered more calamitous events.

Cascade failures of stasis-crypts destroyed millions, if not billions, of dormant Necrons. Some Tomb Worlds were destroyed by the retribution of marauding Aeldari, their defence systems overmatched by these ancient enemies of the Necrons. Other Tomb Worlds fell victim to the uncaring natural evolution of the galaxy itself. Tectonically unstable planets crushed Necron strongholds slumbering at their hearts; stars went supernova, consuming orbiting Tomb Worlds in their death throes. And everywhere, inquisitive lifeforms scrabbled and fought over the bones of Necron territories, causing more damage in their unthinking search for knowledge than the vengeful Aeldari ever could.

The Great Awakening has been far from precise, and the Necrons have not arisen as one people but in fitful starts over scattered millennia, like some gestalt sleeper rising from a troubled dream. Errors in circuitry and protocols ensured that a revivification destined to take place in the early years of the 41st Millennium of the original Imperial Calendar actually began far earlier in a few cases, or has yet to occur at all in others.

The very first Tomb Worlds revived to see the Great Crusade of the Emperor of Mankind sweep across the galaxy in the late 30th Millennium. A handful stirred in time to see the Nova Terra Interregnum, when Nova Terra challenged the might of the Golden Throne in the 34th Millennium for 900 standard years, or arose at the hour in which the Apostles of the Blind King waged their terrible wars that began in 550.M37. Some have still never awoken. Even now, in the Era Indomitus, billions of Necrons still slumber in their stasis-tombs, silently awaiting the clarion call of destiny.

It is rare for a Tomb World to awaken to full function swiftly. With but the slightest flaw in the revivification cycle, the engrammatic pathways of a Necron sleeper scatter and degrade. In most cases, these coalesce over time to restore identity and purpose, but it is a process that can take solar decades, or even standard centuries, and cannot be hurried. Sometimes recovery never occurs and the sleeper is doomed forever to a mindless state.

There are thousands of Tomb Worlds scattered throughout the galaxy whose halls are thronged with shambling automatons, Necrons whose minds fled during the long hibernation, and whose bodies have been co-opted by a Tomb World's master autonomic program in an attempt to bring some form of order to their existence. Other Necrons refer to such places as the "Severed Worlds," and they loathe and fear their inhabitants in equal measure. None of this is to say that even an individual lucky enough to achieve a flawless revivification awakens alert and aware.

One of the hidden tyrannies of Necron biotransference was how it entrenched the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, for there were not enough resources to provide all Necrontyr with living metal bodies that possessed the density of engrammatic pathways required to retain the full gamut of personality and self-awareness. Thus, as was ever the case, the very finest necrodermis bodies went to those individuals of the highest rank within Necrontyr society: the phaerons and Overlords, their Crypteks and Nemesors.

For the professional soldiery, the merely adequate was deemed appropriate. As for the common Necrontyr people, they received that which remained: comparatively crude mechanical bodies that were little more than lobotomised prisons for their minds. Numb to all joy and experience, they are bound solely to the will of their betters, their function meaningless without constant direction. Yet even here a tiny spark of self-awareness remains, enough only to torment the afflicted Necron with memories and echoes of the past it once knew. For these tortured creatures, death would be far preferable but, alas, they no longer have the intelligence to realise it or the autonomy to search it out.

A Tomb World is at its most vulnerable during the revivification process. If anything other than miniscule numbers of Necrons are revivified at once, a staggering amount of energy is unleashed, which can be detected within light years and inevitably leads to investigation by ignorant and curious mortal species. Thus, should a Tomb World awaken to find itself lying near (or even beneath!) the territory of a younger starfaring species, the massive energy spike might draw such attention that it is overwhelmed before its warriors are able to respond.

The colossal amounts of energy generated are detectable across great distances, and are an irresistible lure to the inquisitive and acquisitive alike. In these early stages, it is unlikely that the army of a Tomb World proper will have awoken to full function, so defence lies in the hands of the Necrons' robotic servitor constructs -- the Canoptek Spyders, Scarabs and Wraiths.

Initially these defenders will be directed by the Tomb World's autonomic master program, whose complex algorithmic decision matrix allows it to calculate an efficient response to any perceived threat. As the threat level rises, so too does the intensity of the master program's countermeasures, prioritising the activation of the Tomb World's automated defences and the revivification of its armies according to the needs of the situation at hand. If all goes well, the master program's actions will be sufficient to drive out the invader, or at least stall their progress until the first Necron legions have awoken -- at which point the master program surrenders command of the facility to the Tomb World's Necron nobility.

Having been awakened and control turned over to a Necron Overlord, the Tomb World must in time take its place in the domains of the Necron dynasty that created it. While many dynasties have never awakened and, due to a variety of disasters never will, many are slowly piecing together their former domains.

When a large population centre of a younger species of the galaxy has evolved or expanded across the stars close to a Tomb World, the encoded programming delves deep into its data archives and armouries in order to conduct an aggressive defence. Such Tomb Worlds are the ones that have expanded their spheres of influence most rapidly, for its rulers have awakened to find their full military might already mobilised and awaiting their commands. Indeed, the speed with which many Tomb Worlds of the Sautekh Dynasty have recovered lost territory is chiefly attributable to the (ultimately doomed) wave of Ulumeathi colonies established on their coreworlds during the late 39th Millennium.

To external observers, the behaviour of awoken Tomb Worlds must seem esoteric almost to the point of randomness. Some Necron Lords send diplomatic emissaries to other worlds, negotiating for the return of lost territories and technological artefacts, or cast off into the stars, searching for distant Tomb Worlds of their dynasty not yet awoken. Others focus attention inwards, avoiding unnecessary conflict with alien races to pursue internal politics or oversee the rebuilding of their planet to the glory of 60 million standard years past.

The vast majority of Tomb Worlds, however, take a more aggressive tack, launching resource raids, planetary invasions or the full-blown genocidal purges the Necrons' former C'tan masters once called "red harvests." Yet even here, it is impossible to predict the precise form these deeds will take. Sometimes the Necrons attack in the full panopoly and spectacle of honourable war, rigorously applying their ancient codes of battle. At others, every possible underhanded tactic is employed, from piracy and deception, to assassination and subornation. On other occasions, the campaign is less a martial action than a systematic extermination, the swatting of lesser lifeforms as they themselves would swat insects.

All of these acts, diverse though they are in scope and method, are directed towards a single common goal: the restoration of the Necron dynasties to rule over the galaxy. Yet, with the Triarch long gone and huge numbers of Tomb Worlds lying desolate or still dormant, there can be no galaxy-wide coordination, no grand strategy that will bring about Necron ascendancy. Instead, each Tomb World's ruler must fend for themselves, pursuing whatever course they deem most suited to circumstance.

For some, this is the domination of nearby threats and the sowing of terror on alien worlds. For others, it might be the recovery of cultural treasures of the lost Necrontyr Empire, the stockpiling of raw strategic materials for campaigns yet to come, or even the search for an organic species whose bodies might prove to be suitable vessels for Necron minds, thus finally ending the curse of biotransference. Indeed, this last matter -- the apotheosis from undying machine back to living being -- is the key motivating factor for many Necron nobles and royals, for its possibility weighed heavily on the Silent King's mind at the moment of his final command.

All this is further complicated by the fact that the departure of the Silent King and the dissolution of the Necrontyr Empire's Triarch left no clear succession. As a result, the rulers of many Tomb Worlds see an opportunity not only to restore the dynasties of old, but also to improve their standing within the galaxy-wide Necron political hierarchy. The motives of Necron nobles and royals are often muddied by the pursuit of personal power, making accurate divination of an individual's intentions -- and therefore of the campaigns conducted by their undying legions -- nigh impossible.

Only now, as more and more Tomb Worlds awaken, is a pattern becoming visible to those whose mission it is to stand watch upon the trackless reaches of the galaxy and beyond. Piecing together scattered accounts of skull-faced reaper-machines rising from the dust of Dead Worlds the length and breadth of the galaxy, the xenos-scholars of the Inquisition are faced with a stark realisation. What at first appeared to be unrelated alien raids serving no overall purpose were, in fact, the heralds of a disaster of galactic proportions.

Some awakened Necron Overlords are cunning and patient, seeking to muster every resource at their disposal before launching their legions into the void to fulfil the destiny of the lost Necron Empire. Others are bellicose and impatient, launching a string of attacks before those other starfaring species settled in the region discover the Tomb World's awakening. While most are likely to assault nearby worlds occupied by intelligent species, some have been known to offer such worlds an ultimatum -- serve the Necrons, or die.

In this way, one world at a time, alien empires that vanished aeons ago are being rebuilt and long-dormant hierarchies are reasserting themselves once more. At the centre of each of these risen empires is a crownworld, the glorious capital and seat of the phaeron who rules an entire dynasty. Below it are numerous lesser Tomb Worlds and other Necron holdings, though rarely are these anywhere near as extensive as they were in their full glory over 60 million standard years ago.

Time of Ending (ca. 744.M41 - ca. 999.M41)

As the threats to the Imperium grew, Mankind stood on the precipice of utter extinction. The Time of Ending was the era of Humanity's judgment, where faith was tested by fire and all Humankind's courage was pushed to its limits -- and well beyond. Secession, rebellion, Chaos corruption and heresy were rife within every corner of the Imperium. Sensing weakness, alien empires ancient and new to Humanity's experience -- Orks, Aeldari, T'au, Necrons and perhaps worst of all, the Tyranids -- closed in from every side.

Zealots ranted that the xenos were Mankind's punishment, its just consequences for straying from the Emperor's guidance. The rise of mutants and witches was yet another sign of Humanity's sin. Desperate messages from across the galaxy echoed through the Warp. Astropaths worked feverishly to pull the transmissions from the Immaterium and translate them, to sift the meaning from the garble.

And those messages were increasingly dire: planetary governors sent desperate pleas for aid, Astra Militarum officers called for reinforcements, fleet commanders issued ominous warnings of enemy starship movements. The forces of the Imperium fought with the valour of ancient heroes, defending Humanity from within, without and beyond -- but they could not be everywhere at once.

The Space Marines and Astra Militarum were at war as never before, even during the Horus Heresy. The news grew worse daily, the attacks on the Imperium steadily increasing. Most ominous of all, the prescient foretold of great ripples in the Warp, like a swell in the water disturbed by some colossal but unseen menace in the depths below. Fell things were gathering in that dread realm, straining as never before to break the bounds of reality.

It was surely Humanity's darkest hour...

The Imperium as a whole made its first official contact with the T'au during the Damocles Gulf Crusade, also called the Damocles Crusade, which was the first military conflict fought between the Imperium of Man and the rapidly expanding T'au Empire in the Lithesh Sector of the Ultima Segmentum adjacent to the galaxy's Eastern Fringes during the 41st Millennium. The conflict essentially ended in a stalemate, as the Imperium was forced to conclude its military offensive early to deal with the encroaching Tyranid threat while the T'au sought to begin diplomatic negotiations with the Imperium to show Humanity the benefits to be had by accepting the Greater Good.

Members of the T'au Water Caste had established trade agreements with Imperial worlds on the frontier of the T'au Empire, near the Damocles Gulf region of the Ultima Segmentum in the galactic east, and exchanges of goods and technology across the border between the two empires were common. Alarmed by the threat of alien contamination, the Administratum readied a suitable response and almost a standard century later, the Damocles Crusade smashed into T'au space, destroying several outlying settlements and pushing deep into the T'au Empire.

When the Imperial fleet reached the T'au Sept World of Dal'yth Prime, however, the crusade ground to a bloody stalemate as the formidable numbers and high technology of the T'au and their Kroot and Vespid allies thwarted every attempt to capture the world or its star system. Many solar months of terrible fighting ensued with nothing gained on either side. By late 742.M41 the crusade's commanders eventually agreed to requests from the Water Caste for peace talks. The negotiations were successful and the Imperial fleet withdrew from T'au space unmolested, primarily due to the impending approach of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth.

The Time of Ending earned its name in 744.M41 when Taggarath, the Seer of Corrinto, proclaimed the approach of the End Times for Humanity. He prophesied a time of unprecedented upheaval, in which even the light of the Emperor was swallowed in darkness. Taggarath was swiftly executed by the Inquisition for heresy -- and to keep his prophecies unknown by the wider Imperial public -- but the doomsayer's cry is picked up by other psychic sensitives on planets beyond count across the Human-settled galaxy.

In 745.M41 the Tyranids first entered the galaxy and the Tyrannic Wars began. Hive Fleet Behemoth destroyed the Imperial star systems of Tyran (for which the Tyranids are named) and Thandros. Later that same year, Hive Fleet Behemoth descended upon the Realm of Ultramar, the fief of the Ultramarines, laying waste to several worlds and badly damaging the Space Marines' greatest Chapter. The bold deeds done during the Battle of Macragge were one of the most enduring of the many legends of the Ultramarines. The immediate threat presented by Hive Fleet Behemoth was ended under the guns of two entire Imperial Navy battlefleets. Still reeling from the terrible wounds, Imperial Commanders across the Ultima Segmentum looked to their borders with growing unease.

The Blood Star Campaign unfolded in 748.M41, when the star Ares turned blood red. It heralded increased Daemonic activity in the Scarus Sector. Before the brutal campaign ended, it claimed untold lives, including three Adeptus Astartes Chapter Masters and the Fleet Admiral of the Segmentum Obscurus' battlefleet.

In 750.M41 the Great Exodus occurred. A strange, swirling phenomenon in the Argos System was only an astronomical curiosity until the sudden appearance of six Aeldari craftworlds. By the time an Imperial fleet arrived, both the swirling mass and the Craftworld Aeldari were gone, yet in their passing all prime suns within sixty light years were extinguished. The Imperial fleet and innumerable transports attempted to ferry the countless billions of endangered Imperial citizens to neighbouring star systems, in what was the largest exodus and rescue mission ever attempted by the Imperium. It is estimated that nearly 12% of the population and 32% of the heavy industry of the region were safely removed to other worlds. The ring of dead planets and suns in the region is now known as the "Deadhenge," a salvager's paradise and refuge of pirates.

The year 757.M41 saw the first recorded incidence of the dread Zombie Plague erupting on the world of Hydra Minoris. A quarantine was imposed by the Imperial Navy, trapping 23 billion uninfected people alongside a rising tide of the hungry, contagious and mindless undead children of Nurgle.

In 766.M41, many Imperial watch stations and listening posts in the Catachan and Ryza Systems were attacked by Aeldari Corsairs under the command of Yriel. Without their early warning "eyes and ears," this left both star systems vulnerable for solar decades to come.

In 783.M41 Asuryani from the Ulthwe craftworld destroyed an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet above the Dead World of Maedrax, but not before several probes were released. Space Marines from the Blood Angels Chapter were dispatched to investigate the loss of the fleet and instead became embroiled in a battle between the Asuryani and the Necrons who had just recently awakened on Maedrax.

An uprising in the Krandor System in 795.M41 was harshly put down by the 23rd Cadian Regiment. Several of the Chaos Cults involved in the rebellion, notably the followers of the Shining Deity, the Cult of Many Tentacles and the red-robed Brotherhood, had not been seen since the Fourth Quadrant Rebellion. Although both military and civilian losses were high, the Krandor Rebellion's quick subjugation proved vital. The Imperium could ill-afford to lose the resource-rich Krandor System, which held planets strategically vital to the defence of the Segmentum Obscurus.

Throughout the Segmentum Ultima, in 797.M41, countless Ork invasions threatened to mass into a single colossal WAAAGH!. The forces of the Imperium were stretched to their utmost to contain each individual war zone. Notable actions included Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, holding the gate alone for a solar night and a day against the Greenskin hordes during the Siege of Zalathras and the Ultramarines 2nd Company's utter devastation of Warboss Brug's planetary stronghold.

In 801.M41 a brief flicker in the Astronomican threw thousands of Imperial starships off course, dooming them to destruction in the Warp. The incident indicated that the Emperor's strength might be weakening.

The lamentable campaign known as the Siege of Vraks occurred from 813-830.M41. The Apostate Cardinal Xaphan led the Armoury World of Vraks Prime into the service of the Ruinous Powers. As the forces of the Imperium arrived to quell the rebellion, they were immediately met in battle, followed by a rapid escalation of forces on both sides. The seventeen-year-long campaign ended in a full-scale Daemonic incursion on Vraks and, finally, the intervention of the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights. By the end, Vraks was laid waste, its entire population exterminated.

In 822.M41 the Warmaster of Chaos Abaddon the Despoiler raided the Aeldari Maiden World of Ildanira, seeking a long-lost Chaos artefact. He was driven away by the forces of the Alaitoc craftworld. Such an action was minor compared to the many wars consuming the galaxy at this time, but its portents loomed large in hindsight.

By 853.M41, the uprising against Imperial rule on Krandor III, thought to have been successfully suppressed over fifty standard years previously, had once more grown strong. Mutants, psykers and all manner of outcasts had been nurtured in darkness and corruption by the whisper of cowled Chaos Cultists. Even as the surging rebellion took over the planet's surface, hive city by hive city, the orbital sentinel stations and moon-based defence lasers were captured by Chaos Space Marines accompanied by loathsome creatures, neither man nor mutant but wholly Daemonic. Three Space Marine Chapters, led by the stoic Imperial Fists, secured resources, Imperial artefacts and a few Adeptus Administratum officials before an Exterminatus was mercifully delivered to the world. Some 42 Astra Militarum regiments from Krandor III still exist, the only survivors of their lost and benighted world because they had been shipped to distant war zones before the rebellion began.

In 863.M41 the Saint Cyllia Massacre occurred when the Adamant Fury Titan Legion betrayed the Emperor and fell to Chaos. The Traitor Titan Legion turned its guns upon Loyalist regiments of the Saint Cyllian Planetary Defence Forces before making good their escape off-world. The loss of a full Titan Legion sent ripples of concern through the Imperium and great effort was exerted to find and destroy it, particularly by the Adeptus Mechanicus and its Collegia Titanica.

In 876.M41 Chaos came to the world of Van Horne in the event later known as The Bloodtide to the Inquisition. The Bloodthirster Ka'jagga'nath, Lord of the Bloodtide, broke free of its bonds and unleashed a tide of gore that corrupted everything it touched. For eight solar days and nights, the orgies of blood continued, each fresh death luring yet more Chaos Daemons to the mortal world as the barrier between the Materium and the Warp broke down. Only when the Grey Knights' 4th Brotherhood arrived was the Bloodtide abated, and then only at great cost. Ka'jagga'nath was cast back into the Warp following his defeat. The psychic backlash also banished the Bloodtide and the Khornate Daemons it had drawn forth.

In 883.M41 the 423rd Cadian Regiment's spearhead, led by Knight Commander Pask, was the largest armoured assault undertaken by the Imperium since the Battle of Tallarn during the Horus Heresy. Over 8,000 Imperial tank companies and 35 super-heavy tank detachments were annihilated during the near-total destruction of the Renegade Adamant Fury Traitor Titan Legion upon the Planus Steppes.

In 888.M41, during the Crusade of Wrath, the Black Templars Chapter inflicted heavy losses on the Word Bearers Traitor Legion, reclaiming several star systems previously lost in the Warp rift of the Maelstrom.

In 891.M41 the worlds of Persya suffered attacks from Aeldari Corsairs during the Long Midnight who swathed their targets in utter darkness before pillaging and slaughtering at will. The vicious raids only ceased upon the arrival of the Imperial Navy's Praxion Patrol.

In 897.M41, the fortress-convent known as Sanctuary 101 was destroyed, along with all the Sisters of Battle within, during an attack by the Necrons. No survivors or signs of the perpetrators' identity are left behind. Some few scholars in the Imperium begin to understand the vast threat that the awakening Necrons might become to Mankind.

In that same year, 897.M41, a new Tyranid menace, code-named Hive Fleet Gorgon, is spotted by Imperial outposts, heading directly for the growing T'au Empire in the Eastern Fringe. No warnings are given to the T'au of what is soon to befall them.

In 901.M41 the terrible civil conflict known as the Badab War began when Lufgt Huron, the Chapter Master of the Astral Claws Chapter, refused to hand over his Chapter's tithe of gene-seed to the Administratum and instead announced his secession from the Imperium, declaring himself the Tyrant of Badab. Twelve standard years of intersystem war follow, wreaking havoc on shipping lanes in the Maelstrom Zone and embroiling more than a dozen Space Marine Chapters. With much loss, Badab Primaris finally fell to the Loyalist forces, but Lufgt Huron and some 200 of the Astral Claws escaped to take refuge in the Maelstrom of the Ultima Segmentum. There, they became Heretic Astartes and changed their name to the Red Corsairs. They become dreaded pirates and raiders of Imperial commerce. Huron adopts the title of "Blackheart" and continues to recruit more Astartes Renegades to join his growing Chaos empire.

In 907.M41 Ork WAAAGH! activity rises throughout all five segmentae of the Impeium, forcing the Novamarines, Raptors and Howling Griffons to be redeployed away from the Badab War to counter the growing Greenskin threat.

In 913.M41 the disciples of the Thousand Sons Chaos Sorcerer Ahriman sacked the Librarium on the world of Jollana in their conitnuing pursuit of knowledge that can be used to reverse the curse of the Rubric of Ahriman upon the Thousand Sons.

In 920.M41 Aeldari pirates attacked the advance escort of a fleet of Black Ships as they exited Warpspace in the Thanos System. The pirates destroyed three frigates and captured the troopship Emperor's Faithful. The pirates quickly disappeared, taking with them a vast complement of Astra Militarum and Navis Imperialis personnel. As a result, the fleet of Black Ships is left vulnerable and is picked off one by one in further xenos raids.

In 925.M41, the Necron World Engine is revealed as the architect of the destruction of the Vidar Sector. It is finally destroyed, thanks chiefly to the sacrifice of the entire Astral Knights Chapter.

In 926.M41 during the Vaxhallan Genocide, a Chaos Space Marine warband known as The Purge slaughtered over 14 billion Imperial citizens and claimed the planet Vaxhall as their own. Vaxhall served as an astropathic relay hub and as an Imperial Fortress World, the buttress of the Herakles System.

In 937.M41 Inquisitor Pranix commanded 5 companies of Space Wolves and units of the 301st Cadian and the 14th Tallarn Astra Militarum regiments in an attempt to reclaim the 9 Hollow Worlds from the clutches of the Chaos Lord Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs warband. The Imperium's forces are stunned to see how quickly the Red Corsairs have expanded in only a few solar decades and how vast their Renegade empire of Chaos-worshipping pirates has grown.

In 941.M41 the Second War for Armageddon began when the largest and most powerful Ork warboss in millennia, the Warlord Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, led a vast WAAAGH! that, after much rampaging, met its match upon Armageddon, a Hive World of vital strategic importance to the Imperium in the Segmentum Solar. The Orks were defeated only by the stubborness of the defenders, the combined might of three Space Marines Chapters and the legendary heroics of Commissar Yarrick. Ghazghkull escaped and vowed to return one day.

In 963.M41 the Imperium ran afoul of the T'au Empire when the Ultramarines clashed with a T'au expeditionary fleet for control of the cursed planet of Malbede. When the conflict awakened the Necrons whose tombs were hidden on Malbede, the Ultramarines joined the T'au in a temporary alliance to defeat the emerging Necrons. In the wake of the battle, Exterminatus is proclaimed on Malbede by the Ultramarines' Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, but he generously allowed the T'au to evacuate before the surface of the planet was destroyed. The world's destruction set off a brief flicker of unknown energy on dozens of planets throughout the galaxy. Many feared that more Tomb Worlds were awakening in response. Unfortunately, the Imperium of Man now found itself facing two more alien enemies -- the humanoid T'au who sought to expand their growing interstellar empire to "serve the Greater Good" and the Necrons who desired to reestablish their galaxy-wide empire of ages past.

In 969.M41 the ancient starship Blade of Eternity was once again sighted, this time near the Cando System. As it is approached, the ship is mysteriously replaced by the infamous Death Guard Plagueship Terminus Est. The Zombie Plague proceeded to sweep across the system. Infected refugees carried the Chaos foulness far and wide across the Imperium.

In 973.M41 a violent Warp storm troubled the dreams of men and women across the galaxy -- for those more psychically aware, the storms proved catastrophic. Nightmares cracked the barrier between realspace and the Warp, slaying many psykers and creating rifts between the Immaterium and reality. Although brief, thousands of Daemonic incursions cause untold damage and many dark seeds of Chaos corruption are planted across the Imperium.

In 975.M41 the Bloodthirster Skarbrand materialised on the Cadian Shock Troops-garrisoned Fortress World of Lutoris Epsilon. His berserk rage infected all he surveyed and soon the fortifications were drenched in blood as the Imperial Guardsmen turned upon each other in crazed bloodlust. Lutoris has since been considered cursed and is currently classified as a quarantined Forbidden World by the Inquisition.

In 976.M41 a massive Ork invasion smashed into the western sector of the Segmentum Ultima. WAAAGH! Grax was denied taking the Forge World of Ryza, but the surrounding sectors suffered great devastation.

In 989.M41 WAAAGH! Snagrod rampaged across the Loki Sector, culminating in an assault on Rynn's World that nearly exterminated the venerated Crimson Fists Chapter of Space Marines when an unfortunate accident destroyed their fortress-monastery with one of their own missiles. Imperial forces retook the Agri-world in 991.M41 and the Crimson Fists began the long process of rebuilding the Chapter back to full strength.

In 992.M41 Aeldari forces attacked Cadian holdings on the world of Aurent, only to be utterly defeated through the inspired tactical genius of Ursarkar E. Creed.

In 993.M41 the Ultramarines crushed a rebellion on the Industrial World of Ichar IV, only to find themselves in the forefront of a desperate defence against the arrival of the Tyranids' Hive Fleet Kraken and the start of the Second Tyrannic War. Elsewhere, the Asuryani CraftworldIyanden was simultaneously ravaged by other tendrils of the Kraken. Two Space Marine Chapters -- the Scythes of the Emperor and the Lamenters -- were all but wiped out by the hive fleet and hundreds of Imperial worlds were lost to the ravenous Tyranids before the incursion was finally halted.

In 138.997.M41 Humanity peered into the abyss when the twin tendrils of Hive Fleet Leviathan emerged from intergalactic space and struck at the underbelly of the Imperium from below the galactic plane, cutting a swathe of truly horrific destruction through Segmentums Tempestus, Ultima and Solar in what is sometimes called the Third Tyrannic War. It became clear that the two previous Tyranid incursions into the galaxy had been only reconnaissance expeditions for the main hive fleet.

In 221.997.M41 the world of Piscina IV was invaded by Orks under the joint leadership of Ghazghkull Thraka and the Bad Moons klan Warboss Nazdreg. Orkish teleportation technology was employed in a surprise attack and only the stout defence commanded by Master Belial of the Dark Angels Chapter and the timely arrival of Imperial reinforcements ended the Ork threat. Although the Imperial victory was great, several Imperial commanders, including Belial, felt that Ghazghkull had another trick up his sleeve.

In 509.997.M41 elements from the Ultramarines and Mortifactors Chapters made a stand against one tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan on the world of Tarsis Ultra. The defenders defeated this tendril with the use of a genetically-engineered biological plague, but the remainder of the enormous hive fleet rampaged on across the galaxy unaffected.

In 601.997.M41 Ghazghkull Thraka came face-to-face with his old Human nemesis, Commissar Yarrick, on the battlefields of the world of Golgotha. Yarrick was captured by the Orks but ultimately released as Warlord Ghazghkull was planning to invade Armageddon once more and wanted to ensure a good fight. Greenskins flocked to Ghazghkull's WAAAGH! in ever greater numbers.

In 977.997.M41 the small but vibrant T'au Empire began its Third Sphere Expansion. The T'au forcibly captured half a dozen more Imperial worlds on the Eastern Fringe and several more joined the T'au Empire willingly to serve their Greater Good.

In 757.998.M41 Ghazghkull finally returned to Armageddon for his long awaited rematch in the Third War for Armageddon at the head of a new, even grater Ork WAAAGH!. Ghazghkull had further perfected the teleportation technology that he experimented with on Piscina IV and began the campaign with devastating victories over the Imperial defenders. Imperial commanders, having learned from their previous encounters with this wily Ork warlord, committed massive numbers of troops and quickly sent out the call for aid from nearby Space Marine Chapters and further reinforcements. Several solar months into what rapidly became a battle of attrition, Ghazghkull grew bored with the grinding stalemate and left his minions behind to finish the fight while he set off to conquer the surrounding planets. He was pursued by Commissar Yarrick and the Black Templars, who swore an oath to finally bring the Greenskin warlord to heel.

In 718.999.M41 Hive Fleet Leviathan invaded the large Ork empire based in the Octarius System. This Octarius War between Tyranids and Greenskins raged on for years afterwards with no signs of stopping. Imperial Navy and Inquisition scout patrols kept a close eye on the conflict, for should a victor emerge, there were precious few forces of the Imperium on hand to counter whichever enemy should arise out of the sector-wide bloodbath.

In 884.999.M41 the Dark Angels' 5th Company battled elements of the Crimson Slaughter Chaos Space Marine warband for control of the artefact known as the Hellfire Stone which the Heretic Astartes mistakenly believed would end the curse of Khorne that plagued them to eternally hear the cries of every individual they had ever slain. The Nephilim Sector trembles as the hated foes clash...

In 975.999.M41 the light of the Astronomican grew noticeably dimmer, while contact was lost by Terra with the world of Ultima Macharia and was only intermittent with Macragge and Cypra Mundi. Some Imperial scholrs theorised that this was because of delays and losses amongst the Black Ships, while others pointed to omens of impending doom and the gradual weakening of the Emperor.

In 978.999.M41 Drukhari raiders crippled the massive Imperial Navy moorings at Bakka, leaving many Imperial star systems vulnerable to attack.

In 980.999.M41 the Red Corsairs launched a major raid from out of the Maelstrom, bringing the Chogoris, Kaelas and Sessec Systems under siege. Rumours reported that Huron Blackheart had grown his group of Renegades as large as the full Space Marine Legions of ancient times. The Chaos Lord now wielded military power unseen since the time of the Horus Heresy.

In 982.999.M41 The Great Awakening occured, when a ripple of psychic activity passed through the Imperium, awakening the dormant powers of countless latent psykers. The resulting backlash created innumerable localised Warp rifts and a thousand worlds were lost, hopelessly embroiled in Daemonic incursions unleashed by possessed psykers.

In 987.999.M41 the Necrons rose to strike the Cypra Segentus System -- the first recorded Necron attack within only 2,000 light years of Terra.

In 989.999.M41 the Ultramarines 3rd Comnpany liberated the Lagan System from the T'au Empire during the conflict known as the War of the Rising Sons. Even while they did so, several key worlds of the neighbouring Dolmac System capitulated without firing a shot to T'au ambassadors and joined the T'au Empire.

In 990.999.M41 the Devastation of the Octarius Belt occurred when Asuryani from the Biel-Tan and the Saim-Hann craftworlds assaulted many worlds surrounding the Octarius System with the intent of denying crucial biological resources to Hive Fleet Leviathan. Many were Ork-held worlds, but quite a few were colonised by the Humans of the Imperium. The loss of Human life was substantial, as was the loss of tithes that the planets would have paid to the Imperium in its time of need.

In 992.999.M41, the Night of a Thousand Rebellions occurred. Uprisings and discord struck countless planets across the Imperium. Unrest raced like wildfire, consuming many outlying planets, but also supposedly secure worlds like Enceladus, Darkhold, and Minisotira. Even the homeworld of the Lions Defiant Chapter was lost to anarchy caused by secret cults and frenetic agitators. Contact was also lost between Terra and large swathes of the Segmentum Pacificus.

In 993.999.M41, wave after wave of astropathic pleas for help flooded at once from all across the galaxy, though there was only an eerie silence from the Segmentum Pacificus. So powerful was the influx, so overbearing was the psychic current, that the Adeptus Astra Telepathica suffered serious personnel losses amongst their astropaths. Whole astropath choirs collapsed at once, driven mad or slain outright, their minds bursting. Vast breakdowns in Imperial communications ensued, increasing both anarchy and panic as the endless psychic screams for help echoed across time and space.

In 999.M41 the Thousand Sons effected their return to realspace when the Traitor Legion launched the Siege of the Fenris System. The attack drew the Space Wolves back to defend their homeworld of Fenris, allowing the sons of Magnus the Red to wreak vengeance upon them. The scions of Leman Russ were forced to join with their longtime rivals the Dark Angels and other Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes to cleanse their home star system of all Chaos taint. But first they had to overcome a plot of Tzeentch unleashed by its Daemonic servant the Changeling intended to make the Dark Angels think that the Space Wolves had fallen to the Ruinous Powers. Unnatural Daemonic footsoldiers from the entire Chaos pantheon joined in the slaughter before Magnus himself stepped forth from the Warp onto the surface of Fenris, there to face the Chapter that had thought to execute his gene-sons on Prospero ten thousand years before. Space Wolves, Dark Angels and Grey Knights champions fell to Magnus' psychic might, their minds and bodies dashed to particulate matter. But the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar was able to land a blow on the Crimson King, allowing the Daemon Hunters of the Grey Knights to work their rites of banishment. Though the Chaos invasion was driven back, its purpose had been achieved. The psychic anguish of a billion deaths rippled through the Immaterium, providing the final component in a ritual millennia in the making.

The power taken from the worlds of the Space Wolves saturated the Thousand Sons homeworld in the Eye of Terror, the Planet of the Sorcerers. It vanished from the Warp only to burst violently into realspace, appearing near the burnt husk of lost Prospero. The old and new homeworlds of the Thousand Sons now orbit the same cursed star -- a star that has become an omen of doom in skies throughout the Imperium.

In 999.M41 the Blood Angels were tested as never before. A tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan was judged to be on a direct course for their homeworld of Baal even in the wake of the delaying action successfully unleashed during the Cryptus Campaign of 998.M41. Worse, the dread Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha returned from the darkness of the Warp with a Daemon army at his command, his first blow striking against Ammonai, outermost planet of the Baal System. Faced with a terrible war on at least two fronts, Commander Dante of the Blood Angels made swift preparation, uniting many Imperial and non-Human worlds under the banner of survival. Even some former foes could be counted in Dante's alliance, though whether or not they could be entirely trusted is another matter.

In 995.999.M41, Abaddon the Despoiler launched the 13th Black Crusade out of the Eye of Terror with the intent to seize the Fortress World of Cadia and the surrounding worlds of the Cadian Gate it defended and so allow the forces of Chaos to assault the heart of the Imperium for the first time since the Horus Heresy. The forces of the Chaos Gods read like a roll call from epic battles of past ages. Always in the vanguard were the Black Legion, followed by the Death Guard, World Eaters, Alpha Legion, Thousand Sons, Night Lords and others from the annals of the Imperium's blackest days. The Traitor Legions and Renegade Chapters of Space Marines long thought extinct renewed their assaults on the realm of the hated Corpse Emperor. Before them ran infected, plague-ridden Chaos Cultists, deranged mutants and traitorous scum in numbers too great to be counted. Behind them towered Daemon Princes, Daemonhosts and other Warp creatures eager for the slaughter to be found in the mortal realm. Astropaths everywhere cringed to open their minds to receive messages from across the Imperium, for the Empyrean rang with mind-splitting peals, possibly the sound of the myriad tears ripping in the barrier between the Materium and the Warp, or perhaps it was simply the laughter of the Dark Gods. The Imperium was forced to mobilise the largest military force since the Horus Heresy to meet the massive Chaos assault. The valour of the Imperial defenders was ultimately rewarded. Though the forces of Chaos managed to secure a foothold on the surface of Cadia, the Imperial Navy defeated the Chaos warfleets in orbit of the Fortress World and trapped the Chaos armies on the world below where they were annihilated. Unfortunately, Cadia's defenders soon learned to their horror that all the battles they had faced had simply been the precursor to the assault that would begin when Abaddon himself came to Cadia...

But the Chaos assault upon Cadia was not the only terrible danger to beset the Imperium. With every passing solar month the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Leviathan marched closer to Terra, drawn by the light and power of the Astronomican in the Warp inevitably towards the heart of the Imperium. The heroism of the Space Marines and the Inquisition managed to slow down the progression of the massive hive fleet, but its ultimate objective was never in doubt.

The Tyrannic Wars (745.M41 - 999.M41)

The Tyrannic Wars are the collective conflicts ignited by the Tyranid species' sudden incursion into the Milky Way Galaxy, beginning in 745.M41 by the Imperial Calendar.

Hive Fleet Behemoth (745.M41)

The first recorded encounter with the Tyranids occurred in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy and was documented in reports from the planet Tyran. An Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator Research Station at Tyran identified a collection of worlds in the area that had been stripped bare of their biomass and atmosphere. The station was subsequently attacked and consumed. A standard year later, an Imperial Inquisitor named Fidus Kryptman, who received information regarding the attack, arrived on Tyran to investigate.

After searching the planet he chanced upon a data codex hidden deep within Tyran's crust, which contained information about the invaders. The information collected by the Explorators on Tyran allowed Kryptman to identify the pattern of attacks and predict the course of the hive fleet. However, these predictions came too late: several more civilisations were wiped out, largely because astropaths could not send psychic requests for help because of a phenomenon known as the "Shadow in the Warp" -- somehow, the presence of a Tyranid hive fleet near a planet stops psychic communication and transportation through the Warp, which is the primary method of interstellar communication and transport used by the Imperium's astropaths and Warp-Drive-equipped starships.

The Tyranid force, dubbed "Hive Fleet Behemoth" in a rare moment of literary imagination at Imperial Command, cut a swathe through the Realm of Ultramar, the interstellar domain of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Undeterred by the Space Marines' Chapter fleet, the Behemoth reduced Prandium, the Garden World once known as the "Jewel of Ultramar," to bare rock.

Eventually, Chapter Master Marneus Calgar mustered his entire force for a last-ditch defence of the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge. Here, during the Battle of Macragge, the hive fleet was completely destroyed with the aid of the Imperial Navy's entire Battlefleet Bakka and the sacrifice of the Emperor-class Battleship Dominus Astra. However, the Ultramarines suffered heavy losses, losing their entire Veteran 1st Company in a last stand at the world's northern polar fortress.

Hive Fleet Kraken (993.M41)

The second wave of Tyranids to assault the Imperium was designated "Hive Fleet Kraken." Instead of throwing one mass of bioforms against the Human armies, this Tyranid swarm split into countless smaller splinter fleets, each one enveloping whole star systems before reinforcements could arrive. The Kraken was finally brought to battle on a grand scale at Ichar IV, an Imperial Hive World, in 993.M41. The brunt of this attack was borne by the Scythes of the Emperor and Lamenters Chapters of the Space Marines and the Asuryani Craftworld Iyanden, all of whom suffered very heavy losses.

According to Lieutenant Kage of the Last Chancers Penal Regiment, the Astra Militarum "lost over a million men at Ichar IV," though this may serve simply to illustrate in a very broad sense the scale of the combat against the Kraken, as numerically speaking a million soldiers is not a great burden for an entire Hive World to expend in its defence since it is home to billions of people.

The Kraken was not fully destroyed after the engagements at Ichar IV and Iyanden, and split into several smaller splinter fleets which have continued to represent major threats to the Imperium as they spread and grow like a xenos cancer upon the galaxy. Yet there was little respite for the Imperium after the Kraken's near-destruction as a new and even larger hive fleet invaded the galaxy.

Hive Fleet Leviathan (997.M41)

The third and by far the largest wave of Tyranid attacks, Hive Fleet Leviathan appeared from below the galactic plane and attacked from two points in 997.M41, cutting off large portions of the galaxy from Imperial reinforcements. In order to buy time, the Imperial forces, under the command of Inquisitor Fidus Kryptman of the Ordo Xenos, attempted to redirect the attacks of this hive fleet towards the Ork-held worlds of the Ork Empire of Octarius in the Octarius Sector.

While the plan proved a success, the Tyranids have since been steadily working their way through Ork space in what became known as the Octarius War, suffering massive losses, assimilating everything that stood before them. The Imperium bought itself a few standard years to prepare for the next attack, but there was no telling how the Tyranids might further evolve thanks to the newly-harvested Orkoid DNA.

Hive Fleet Leviathan also attacked around the same time as Hive Fleet Kraken, making both hive fleets difficult to deal with for the Imperium as the elements of one or the other would provoke some sort of uprising by Genestealer Cults or invade Imperial worlds outright in the Great Devourer's eternal quest for more biomass to enhance its hive fleets' reproduction rates.

To date, Behemoth is the only Tyranid hive fleet that did not divide its mass into different "tendrils" comprised of splinter fleets that attacked Imperial space from several different locations at once, and it suffered the consequences of being less strategically-minded than its successors.

Yet the Tyranids' goal remains clear. An analysis of their fleet movements through the galaxy has determined that they are being drawn by the potent psychic beacon of the Astronomican towards one destination: Holy Terra.

13th Black Crusade (995.999.M41)

The 13th Black Crusade is the most recent and the greatest of the incursions launched against the Imperium by the Chaos Lord Abaddon the Despoiler, and was the greatest conflict fought between the forces of Chaos and the Imperium of Man since the Horus Heresy. Under the command of the Warmaster of Chaos, the Traitor Legions poured out from the Eye of Terror, emptying a hundred Daemon Worlds and bursting into realspace in hitherto unforeseen numbers.

The armies of Chaos started at the Cadian Gate in a great push towards Terra. The goal of the Chaos forces was the Fortress World of Cadia, the capture of which was the ultimate goal of the forces of Chaos since it would allow them to create a forward base for a new drive upon Terra to topple the Emperor from the Golden Throne and end their Long War.

Rumours persisted that the Daemon Primarchs rode at the head of the armies of the Traitor Legions, returned to the mortal realm to usher in the End Times. Imperial forces counterattacked, but there was no end to the forces of the Dark Gods. Despite the best efforts of the Imperium's staunchest defenders -- including the Black Templars, Imperial Fists, Dark Angels and Space Wolves -- Cadia, lynchpin of the defences surrounding the Cadian Gate, eventually fell to Chaos after Abaddon himself arrived with an even larger force of the Black Fleet following Cadia's successful defence of the first Chaos incursion.

After a further heroic Imperial effort led by the Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed and the Living Saint Celestine delayed the Warmaster of Chaos' plans to personally seize the prize he had long coveted, Abaddon deployed one of the Blackstone Fortresses he had acquired in the Gothic War, the Will of Eternity. Destroyed by the Imperial Fists' mobile star fortress Phalanx before its Warp Cannon could be used to eliminate all life on Cadia, the Despoiler turned even the fortress' floating corpse into a weapon.

Its massive remains were flung from orbit onto the surface of Cadia as an artificial meteor, its kinetic impact killing most of Cadia's remaining defenders and at last allowing the Eye of Terror to swallow the world. The geothermal stress caused by the fortress' impact ultimately caused Cadia to rip itself apart. With Cadia and its Warp-repulsing blackstone pylons destroyed, the Eye of Terror began to expand across the galaxy in what the Chaos forces called the "Crimson Path" even as Abaddon at last realised his dream of seizing the Cadian Gate for the forces of Chaos.

With the first goal of the 13th Black Crusade achieved, Abaddon next turned to launching an assault upon Terra itself. However, the inherent fractious nature of the forces of Chaos, combined with the unexpected continued resistance of Imperial forces remaining in the Cadian Gate region, slowed the Chaos advance as the Heretics began to consolidate their gains. A new Chaos empire soon grew up around the shattered remains of Cadia itself.

Finally, even as multiple calamities loomed over the Imperium, on Terra the Adeptus Mechanicus secretly reported to the High Lords of Terra in 986.999.M41 that the mechanisms of the Golden Throne were failing and they no longer possessed the knowledge required to repair that ancient piece of technology. Unless something could be done, the God-Emperor would die and then Humanity would face the drawing darkness alone...

War in the Eastern Fringe (ca. 999.M41)

During the 13th Black Crusade the T'au Empire used the re-deployment of Imperial forces to the Segmentum Obscurus to initiate the Third Sphere Expansion of their empire in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, unleashing what became known among Imperial historitors as the Zeist Campaign, the Prefectia Campaign and the Second Agrellan Campaign.

The war led to massive casualties amongst the Imperial and xenos forces before the T'au Empire's expansion briefly came to an end following the Exterminatus unleashed upon their Sept of Mu'gulath Bay following the Second Agrellan Campaign.

Guilliman Awakens (ca. 999.M41)

Strange events, the appearance of the ancient Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl and a cryptic alliance with a mysterious Aeldari faction known as the Ynnari conspired to awaken the Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman from his millennia-long slumber in a stasis chamber in the northern polar regions of Macragge during the Ultramar Campaign of the 13th Black Crusade.

The primarch was immediately embroiled in battle upon awakening after a Chaos assault was unleashed by the Black Legion upon the Shrine of Guilliman in the Temple of Correction where he had long slumbered as Abaddon sought to prevent his return.

Once Ultramar was safe from the assaults of Chaos through the actions of the resurrected primarch, his Ultramarines and their Successor Chapters, Guilliman embarked on the Terran Crusade to meet with his father the Emperor for the first time in 10,000 standard years.

What transpired at that meeting within the Imperial Palace on Terra is unknown, but at its conclusion Guilliman was restored to his ancient role as the lord commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent, the first among equals on the Senatorum Imperialis. The primarch proceeded to purge the High Lords of Terra of those officials he found corrupt and incompetent.

Era Indomitus (ca. 999.M41 - Present)

In the wake of the Fall of Cadia in the 13th Black Crusade, reality tore itself apart from the Hadex Anomaly at the core of the Jericho Reach in the Eastern Fringe, to the furthest star system of the Segmentum Obscurus in the galactic west. From that hole in space-time were unleashed Warp storms of a size and scope not seen since the Age of Strife, cutting off the galactic north entirely from Terra.

The initial period, known as the Noctis Aeterna -- or the "Blackness" -- was terrible indeed. For a time, all Warp travel proved impossible and the far-spread planets of the Imperium were isolated, with no travel or astropathic communication possible between them.

Worlds in their hundreds fell before the ensuing Chaos onslaught. The pulsing Great Rift or Cicatrix Maledictum spread like an impenetrable curtain, robbing entire systems of the holy light of Terra. The birth of the Great Rift marked the start of what will be called by Imperial historitors the Era Indomitus.

The Imperium of Man is cut in twain by the coming of the Great Rift, divided into the portion known as the Imperium Sanctus where the Astronomican can still be detected by psykers and Navigators, and the Imperium Nihilus on the far side of the rift from Terra where the Emperor's light no longer shines.

Psychic Awakening

PsychicAwakeningSymbol

The symbol of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, which was heavily involved in the events of the Psychic Awakening as the number of Human psykers dramatically increased during this period.

The "Psychic Awakening", also sometimes referred to as the "Age of Witches," is the term given to a phenomenon of the Era Indomitus that dramatically increased the number of new psykers and greatly enhanced existing psychic abilities across the Milky Way Galaxy in the wake of the birth of the Great Rift.

While the massive increase in the flow of Warp energy into the local realspace of the galaxy through the Cicatrix Maledictum dramatically enhanced the power and duration of Daemonic incursions, particularly on worlds adjacent to the Great Rift, it also intensified the psychic abilities of the Craftworld Aeldari and the "miraculous" psychic phenomenon that had once rarely accompanied the worship of the Emperor as the god of Humanity.

The Psychic Awakening thus proved both a boon and a hindrance to the attempts of the forces of Chaos to overwhelm realspace in the wake of the victory earned in the 13th Black Crusade.

For every world that fell to the dominion of the Dark Gods there were also increasing reports of "miracles" in which even individuals who had never manifested the abilities of a psyker were saved by the spontaneous eruption of supernatural abilities. This was particularly true for those servants of the God-Emperor like the Sisters of Battle of the Adepta Sororitas whose unshakable faith in their deity now seemed capable of manifesting into potent mystical protections or miraculous defences against the machinations of Chaos and xenos forces.

This phenomenon affected every faction in the galaxy, hindering or advancing the next steps in their various agendas.

Battle of Lion's Gate

As the first Warp storms broke over Holy Terra following the birth of the Great Rift and the onset of the Noctis Aeterna, its pollution-filled skies turned a roiling crimson. Khorne, heedless of the plans of his brother Chaos Gods and hungry to prove his superiority as the power of Chaos waxed anew, sent forth eighty-eight cohorts of his Daemon Blood Legions to assault the Imperial Palace. The Blood God wanted the glory of tearing down the Golden Throne for himself, and so the skies of Terra congealed into bloodclouds that deployed the Red Host directly before the Lion's Gate of the Imperial Palace.

The gun batteries of the palace are second to none, yet they alone could not halt this red tide. Led by the resurrected Primarch Roboute Guilliman, the newly reappointed lord commander of the Imperium, the Primaris Space Marines, Adeptus Custodes and Sisters of Silence fought side by side to stem the Daemonic tide.

Although the rash Chaos assault was turned back and broken long before it could reach the Eternity Gate to the Inner Palace, the High Lords of Terra were shaken at the boldness of the foe. Without the beam of the Astronomican, their arcane machinery and protective devices were not enough to halt the fell powers from materialising even on the sacred soil of Holy Terra.

Khorne, upon receiving the returning forms of his slain Daemons, grew so apoplectic in his rage that his Brass Fortress in the Realm of Chaos trembled. So great was the heat from his outburst that the essences of the eight Bloodthirsters that led the failed attack were wholly obliterated.

Indomitus Crusade (ca. 999.M41 - Present)

After his defence of Holy Terra at the Battle of Lion's Gate, Roboute Guilliman gathered a vast new Imperial armada that he named the Indomitus Crusade, the largest concentration of Imperial military forces seen since the original Great Crusade over ten thousand standard years before.

Along with elements of the Adeptus Custodes, a small contingent of the Silent Sisterhood, and a vast war host of Primaris Space Marines from many newly founded Chapters and the Legions of the Unnumbered Sons, the primarch set a winding course.

Strike forces from over a dozen pre-existing Chapters of Space Marines, led by the Imperial Fists, joined the fleet. Thus began many new legends as Guilliman travelled to aid beleaguered planets, breaking sieges and sweeping away Chaos and xenos invaders alike to bring hope back to the desperate defenders. It was not long before word began to spread, as all those planets that could still receive astropathic messages hailed the return of a hero of Humanity out of myth.

Once more, one of the demigods of the past fought for the Imperium of Man. The Indomitus Crusade would reach the end of its first major phase over a solar decade into what some variants of the Imperial Calendar considered the 42nd Millennium at the Battle of Raukos, which concluded with the stabilisation of the Imperium Sanctus from the assaults of Chaos. Afterwards, Guilliman would turn his attention to helping his Realm of Ultramar defeat the forces of the Death Guard Traitor Legion and the servants of Nurgle in the Plague Wars.

Devastation of Baal (ca. 999.M41 - Unknown Date.M42)

After sacrificing the Shieldworlds of the Cryptus System to fend off the xenos' earliest advance on the Baal System, the planet of Baal itself came under intense attack by Hive Fleet Leviathan. The Tyranid hive fleet was of such mass, even after its considerable losses, that it blotted the stars from the skies. Lord Commander Dante bolstered the formidable defences of the Blood Angels' Chapter homeworld and its moons like never before. Not one to await attack, Dante also sent forth scores of preemptive strike forces to delay, mislead, and whittle down the living armada. Hundreds of splinter fleets were thus defeated. Dante's call, beseeching the Blood Angels' successors among the Sanguinary Brotherhood to send immediate aid to their parent Chapter, did not go unheeded. The Flesh Tearers were the first to arrive, and ultimately all the Successor Chapters save the Lamenters answered the call. Even the Knights of Blood, who had been declared Excommunicate Traitoris by the High Lords of Terra, arrived to bolster the defences.

It was still not enough. Learning at an exponential rate, Hive Fleet Leviathan could not be thwarted by the same strategy twice. Advancing steadily, their superior numbers cleared the entire surrounding sector of life before the xenos made planetfall upon Baal and her twin moons. The first nineteen waves, each larger than the last, were driven off at great loss to the Blood Angels and their successor allies. Five Chapter Masters fell in that bitter fighting, three in the Battle at the Dome of Angels alone. The Tyranids began the process of absorbing all biomass from Baal and its moons, absorbing even the radiation-poisoned deserts of Baal Secundus. With their defences in ruin and Baal's moons stripped and broken, the remaining Space Marines retreated back to the rubble of the Blood Angels' sprawling fortress-monastery. There, they prepared for a last stand as the next wave swept downwards. Doom, it seemed, had at last come to the Sons of Sanguinius.

It was then that the Great Rift cracked open the galaxy in the wake of the fall of Cadia to the 13th Black Crusade, and the withered Baal System was blasted by the aetheric storms. Although no further attack waves came from the Leviathan Hive Fleet, not a single Imperial defender remained alive upon the last moon, Baal Prime. On Baal itself there were already enough Tyranids to destroy the Imperial troops many times over. Even with no chance of victory, Commander Dante led his troops, each fighting retreat seemingly more hopeless than the last. The empyrean energies spilling from the Great Rift caused time itself to pass strangely on Baal. The combatants may have faced each other for mere solar days, or Terran years may have passed in the rest of the galaxy.

As the final perimeter was broken, the stars reappeared. Looking skywards, the Tyranids on the surface of Baal sought contact with their hive fleet, but it was gone, replaced by a newly arrived Imperial fleet. Like an angel of vengeance came Roboute Guilliman and his Indomitus Crusade. After many more battles, Baal was finally cleared of the xenos threat. A great rebuilding of both world and Chapter was undertaken, for the Blood Angels and their successors were sorely needed elsewhere in the beleaguered Imperium. Guilliman brought with him Primaris Marine reinforcements to replenish the ranks of the Blood Angels and the Sanguinary Brotherhood. Guilliman named Dante as the regent of the Imperium Nihilus and charged him with doing what he could to reclaim taht half of the Imperium for the Emperor. What became of the Leviathan is a mystery, although a clue was found upon the now-barren moon of Baal Prime. Xenos skulls were piled impossibly high in the much-reviled, eight-pillared symbol of one of the Blood Angels' most terrible and ancient nemeses: the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha and his army of Khornate Daemons.

War of Beasts (001.M42 - 025.M42)

The strategically located Hive World of Vigilus linked the Imperium Nihilus with the Imperium Sanctus through the Nachmund Gauntlet, one of the only known stable passes through the Great Rift. Realising the importance of this planet to the survival of the Imperium, it was assaulted by multiple xenos and Chaos forces, including the Black Legion under the command of Abaddon the Despoiler. The conflict became known as the War of Beasts.

Though the Despoiler's invasion was ultimately defeated by warriors drawn from multiple Space Marine Chapters under the command of the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, Vigilus remained a world largely under siege from Ork, Drukhari and Genestealer Cult factions.

Talledus War (Unknown Date.M42)

The Talledus War was a War of Faith fought in the Era Indomitus between the forces of Chaos and the Imperium of Man to defend the Shrine World of Benediction in the Talledus System of the Veritus Sub-sector. Though Benediction was the Chaos forces' primary target, all the inhabited worlds of the system faced a large-scale assault led by the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion.

The Word Bearers, as always, sought to convert the bulk of Humanity to the service and worship of the Chaos Gods. They took great pleasure in furthering this agenda by attacking a world and system that was of such importance to the Imperial state religion they deemed a fraud. The fall of Talledus and Benediction to Chaos, and the conversion of its people to the true faith of Chaos, were deemed a potentially major milestone in the Word Bearers' plan to throw down the Corpse God of the Imperium and claim Mankind for the Dark Gods.

The war proceeded on three fronts, on Benediction, on the Astra Militarum Fortress World of Ghreddask and in the void surrounding the asteroid belt called the Tears of the Emperor at the very edge of the system.

On Benediction, the Word Bearers forces commanded by Kor Phaeron nearly seized control of the Grand Honorificum cathedral-city complex. The Loyalists were saved by an unusual phenomenon that was part of the Psychic Awakening when the faith of those gathered in the cathedral summoned forth from the Warp the protective spirits of the sacred Imperial dead. This supernatural force, later remembered as the "Saints' Wall," surrounded the Grand Honorificum in a protective psychic shield and extinguished the grip on reality held by many of the Daemons making up Kor Phaeron's attacking army. This miracle allowed a demi-company of Salamanders Astartes to cut the remaining force of Chaos troops in two and establish a new defensive perimeter for the cathedral complex.

On Ghreddask, the intervention of a Black Templars strike force destroyed the Soul Harvester mobile fortress-factory that had left the Imperial defenders at a loss, though the suicidal counterassault cost the life of the Astartes commander, Castellan Dramos.

In the void, within the Tears of the Emperor, a piratical Night Lords fleet commanded by the Chaos battleship Nightmare of Celyx sought to draw in Imperial military and commercial shipping translating into the system from the Warp by using captured Imperial astropaths to throw off their Navigators' abilities. The Night Lords then took the spoils and reaped with great pleasure the terror of their victims.

The arrival of Vanguard Marines from the White Scars' 10th Brotherhood turned the tables on the Heretic Astartes pirates. Their hit-and-run strikes soon transformed into a vicious, void-based guerilla war as each side tried to lure the other into ambushes. The White Scars succeeded in blunting the Night Lords' attacks on incoming Imperial shipping, but were unable to annihilate the Chaos raiding force entirely.

Though the Imperium has so far managed to blunt the Chaos assault on the Talledus System on every front, the conflict is far from over.

Plague Wars (ca. 012.M42)

The Plague Wars were an attempt by the Daemon and Heretic Astartes forces of the Chaos God Nurgle, including the Daemon Primarch Mortarion and his Death Guard Traitor Legion, to conquer the Realm of Ultramar and add it to the Plague God's growing realm in realspace. The Plague Wars began at some point after the birth of the Great Rift and the onset of the Noctis Aeterna and ended in ca. 012.M42, after the Primarch Roboute Guilliman successfully ended the first phase of his Indomitus Crusade and brought Imperial reinforcements to defend Ultramar.

To the galactic north of Ultramar, the followers of the Chaos God Nurgle first established dominion in the Scourge Stars soon after the success of the 13th Black Crusade in precipitating the fall of Cadia. From this hive of corruption, armies of Nurglite Daemons poured forth, accompanied by the traitorous Death Guard Legion along with Renegades and Chaos Cultists beyond count.

Three loathsome spearheads pushed into Ultramar, attacking along a hundred fronts and bringing with them unnatural pestilence. The defenders of Ultramar -- Astartes and mortal alike -- fought bravely, but quickly lost ground. Ultramarine Primaris Space Marines of the Ultima Founding arrived not long after the successful completion of the resurrected Primarch Roboute Guilliman's Terran Crusade from Terra aboard Fleet Avenger to reinforce their beleaguered Firstborn brethren, but even these transhuman reinforcements could only slow the attackers' progress.

By ca. 012.M42, the Imperial defenders all across Ultramar were depleted in dozens of ground campaigns, while a Plague Fleet systematically destroyed the realm's Ultramar Defence Fleet and star fortresses. Guilliman returned from the successful completion of the first phase of the Indomitus Crusade to stabilise the Imperium Sanctus, and his deft and defensive manoeuvres bought time to launch what became known as the "Spear of Espandor" counterattack.

The combined plague armies were eventually fought to a standstill amongst the ruins of the world of Iax, before the Death Guard Daemon Primarch Mortarion escaped with his forces back to the Scourge Stars under cover of a Virus Bomb attack, both because of his brother's staunch defence and because Nurgle's realm in realspace had come under assault by the forces of the Blood God Khorne.

In a brief respite from the work of safeguarding the Emperor's realm after Mortarion's defeat, Guilliman ordered the rebuilding and decontamination of Ultramar, as well as the establishment of new procedures for creating further Primaris Ultramarines.

It was not long before the demands of the Indomitus Crusade called the lord commander of the Imperium away from Ultramar and back out into the dark galaxy. The Ultramarines began the work of preparing their vengeance against the servants of the Dark Gods.

Fourth Tyrannic War

The Fourth Tyrannic War began in the Era Indomitus, when the largest mass of Hive Fleet Leviathan yet encountered attacked the Western Reaches of the Segmentum Pacificus, seeking to strike at a relatively undefended region of the galaxy while the defenders of the Imperium were otherwise engaged with the forces of Chaos emanating out of the Great Rift.

The great Tyranid assault began with the coordinated attack from above and below the galactic plane by three new tendrils of the Leviathan dubbed Hive Fleet Nautilon, Hive Fleet Promethor, and Hive Fleet Grendyllus, respectively, by the Imperium. The two tendrils were moving in parallel towards their ultimate goal of Terra in the Segmentum Solar, and with the Imperium distracted by the demands of the Indomitus Crusade few Human forces initially were available to stand against it.

See Also

Sources

  • Battlefleet Gothic Rulebook (Specialty Game)
  • Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (8th Edition), pp. 18-19
  • Codex: Dark Eldar (5th Edition), pp. 5-20
  • Codex: Necrons (5th Edition), pp. 5-53
  • Codex: Necrons (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), "The Price of Power," "The Awakening," "The Necron Dynasties," "The Awakening Empire"
  • Codex: Necrons (8th Edition), pp. 69, 100, 113
  • Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pp. 18-19
  • Codex: Tau Empire (6th Edition), pp. 17-19, 25, 29
  • Codex: Tau Empire (7th Edition), pp. 8, 40-42
  • Codex: Tyranids (5th Edition), pp. 6-31
  • Dark Imperium (Novel) by Guy Haley, Ch. 9 "Imperator Gloriana," pp. 96-97 (Chronostrife)
  • Devastation of Baal (Novel) by Guy Haley
  • Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook (5th Edition), pp. 122-129
  • Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook (6th Edition), pp. 166-177
  • Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook (8th Edition), pp. 40-47, 52
  • Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan - Rulebook (10th Edition), pp. 222-255
  • Warhammer Community - A Brief and Bloody History of the Tyrannic Wars
  • Warhammer 40,000 Timeline
  • Pharos (Novel) by Guy Haley
  • Imperium Nihilus - Vigilus Defiant (8th Edition), pp. 5-20
  • Psychic Awakening: Faith & Fury (8th Edition), pp. 8-19
  • Shield of Baal: Exterminatus (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), "Into the Jaws of Death," "The Death of Worlds," "The Rising Leviathan"
  • War Zone Fenris - Book 2: Wrath of Magnus (7th Edition) (Digital Edition), "Turning Point," "The Fires of Flameheit," "The Serpent and the Wolf"
  • Gathering Storm - Part One - Fall of Cadia (7th Edition), pp. 12-13, 16, 20, 22-23, 26-33, 35-37, 40-42, 44, 48-49,52-53, 58-60, 62-65, 68-69, 72-78, 80-86, 88
  • Gathering Storm - Part Three - Rise of the Primarch (7th Edition), pp. 4-93
  • Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Imperium Maledictum (Images)
Warhammer 40,000 Timeline
Pre-Imperial Eras War in HeavenAge of TerraAge of TechnologyAge of StrifeFall of the Aeldari
Founding of the Imperium Unification WarsGreat CrusadeHorus HeresyGreat Scouring
Age of the Imperium Time of RebirthThe ForgingNova Terra InterregnumAge of ApostasyAge of RedemptionThe WaningTime of EndingEra Indomitus
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