Timeline of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe

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''This is an article about the fictional setting of the Warhammer 40,000 games systems and their derivatives. For a discussion of the games systems themselves, please refer to Warhammer 40,000''

This article relates to events in the universe prior to the late 41st Millennium in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. throughout this article, comparative references to dates will be with respect to the approximate time period 990.M41 to the end of 999.M41. This is the time period in which the perspectives of the Imperium and the Eldar are particularly relevant.

Pre-History
The Slann*needs review and references*

The Slann are an incredibly ancient reptiloid race in the Galaxy, pre-dating all other known corporeal beings. The Slann are commonly thought to have been an advanced race in excess of sixty million years ago and are implied as being responsible for the creation or advancement of most of the currently active species in the setting.

The War in Heaven*likewise*

A conflict arose between the C'Tan, immensely powerful, incorporeal beings existing (almost uniquely) in the material universe, and the Slann. The Slann, being physically weak and few in number but mighty in intellect and power, created the Eldar race and stimulated the genesis of the Eldar Gods as (originally) demigodly beings who fought alongside their mortal charges. In response, the C'Tan fashioned themselves corporeal avatars known as a Necrodermis from a metal-like substance and enslaved the Necrontyr race by bonding them with armoured shells, which became known as Necrons.

Eventually, the C'Tan were forced to withdraw, hiding for many millions of years while the Necrons hibernated on forgotten 'Tomb Worlds' inside massive complexes, tended by artificial mechanoid constructs and only occasionally disturbed by the probing of younger race's explorations.

Human Ascendancy
The Stellar Exodus

A poorly-understood period of history which is generally accepted to be the majority of mankind's initial forays into space and the genesis of most of the oldest Human colonies. This period is generally understood to lead into the

Dark Age of Technology

Again much of this era of human history is mysterious, but what is known (largely from the works of Keeper Cripias) is that a group known as the Golden Men relied on the works of the Stone Men in order to create a fantastically prosperous society, but one devoid (by later Imperial standards) of spirituality or piety. The Stone Men are known to have created a third group, the Iron Men, postulated to be androids in order to assist them. The Iron Men became uncontrolled, and a cataclysmic conflict broke out, resulting in a partial Malthusian Catastrophe.

The Age of Strife


 * merge the current AoS in here*

The Fall of the Eldar

 * insert blurb on the Fall*

The Great Crusade
cross-posted from Great Crusade

The Great Crusade began as the Age of Strife came to an end. The warp storms isolating human worlds had finally disappeared, and the Emperor was ready with his Space Marines and Imperial Army. Making a pact with the Priesthood of the Machine God on Mars, the Emperor promised to spare their lives (the Emperor despised their use of bionics and religion as being against what the Great Crusade stood for) so long as they aided him in his mission to reunite humanity. The Emperor was a man of science and technology, and so in him many saw the coming of the Omnissiah that had been prophecised. The Mechanicum pledged their support, and the symbol of the Imperium changed from the lightning bolt to the double-headed Eagle, to symbolise the union of the Empires of Earth and Mars. With the forge factories and mechanical output of Mars, the Emperor was able to refit his armies, and more importantly, he now had the use of the Titan Legions, formidable war machines with the potential to dominate the battlefield.

At first, expansion into outer space was slow, since the Emperor's armies were still small, and more importantly his Space Marine legions were inhibited by the lack of their Primarchs, which made the production time for a Space Marine much longer. However, this was to end, as on Cthonia, a planet in a system not far from Terra, the Emperor for the first time was reunited with one of his 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, and many times they saved each others lives. But after 30 years, the Emperor discovered another of the Primarchs. Although Horus was pleased at the discovery of one of his brothers, he secretly pledged to always be the Emperor's favourite.

Through time, all the primarchs were found, and each was placed in command of their legions. The legions as a result were massively expanded with new recruits from their primarchs adopted homeworlds, and space marines could now be produced within a year. But this acceleration produced fundamental defects within the psyche of each space marine which was later to prove fatal.

After the campiagn of Ullanor, the Emperor claimed it as the greatest victory of the Imperium to date, and that Horus should be given credit. Hailing Horus and his legion, the Emperor stated that he would have to leave for Terra to begin the next phase of his plan, and that in his place Horus would be declared Warmaster, de facto leader of all the Emperor's armies. Although Horus was troubled that the Emperor should leave him, with him as their new commander, the Imperium continued to expand ever outwards, and this situation lasted until the Horus Heresy.

The Horus Heresy
Horus Heresy

The Gothic War (12th Black Crusade)
The Gothic War is the common name for the wider conflict stimulated by Warmaster Abaddon's twelfth Black Crusade (Chambers 1999), which spanned the dates 139-160.M41. The conflict was fought almost entirely around the Gothic sector of Imperial space. The 21-year war resulted in millions of casualties, at least one Imperial world completey obliterated, many ships destroyed and many important personalities killed or incapacitated. 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.

Early Raids

The action begins as described in the Battlefleet Gothic book with (presumably Abaddon's) forces raiding a monitoring station on the isolated world of Arx. The protagonists in the book however do not appreciate the significance of this event until further attacks on outposts and shipping throughout Segmentum Obscurus reveal a pattern; mutilation of victims, in some cases the presence of unusual and severe fungal infestations, and not a single attacker - or corpse thereof - recoverable or even evident. It is suggested in the account in the book that the rumours among Naval crew of the reappearance of the Chaos warship Plagueclaw were both true and connected to at least some of the attacks. This is proved obvious when Chaos Space Marines of the Death Guard legion are held responsible for attacking the Morganghast hive world.

Typical to many of Games Workshop's portrayals of emerging galactic conflicts, the account then speaks of warp storms increasing in activity around the Gothic sector and a corresponding increase in unrest of Imperial citizens. This kind of activity in the setting is almost always used to set the scene for a war with Chaos forces and, true to form, the next few paragraphs detail a mounting sequence of strategic attacks by Warmaster Abaddon's forces against targets known - to both he and various protagonists on the Imperial side - through myths and ancient, vague records.

Abaddon's forces sieze two artefacts amid brutal attacks on the planets of Purgatory and Ornsworld, the Chaos Space Marines characteristically obliterating everything in their path and making off with their prizes. The Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night as the book calls them are later implicated in Abaddon's latest megalomaniac scheme, though they are themselves never described and their exact natures are uncertain - it is however said that the Eldar "spoke of the Hand of Darkness with horror and revulsion". In this setting it is obvious to knowledgeable readers the implications of this; Eldar are frequently implicated as bearers of detailed knowledge on any topics considered 'bad news'.

War Begins

Abaddon's forces and their allies then make a dramatic entrance; warping into locations in the Gothic sector en masse and causing a massive psychic shockwave to sweep through space, which disturbs the Immaterium so greatly that travel into or out of the sector is rendered impossible. They quickly launch large scale fleet attacks on Imperial bases and shipping, crippling many of Battlefleet Gothic's capital ships while still in dock, and destroying numerous orbital stations. This spells very bad news for the Imperial Navy, already stretched thin policing shipping lanes and suppressing local pirate activity.

Events take a further turn for the worse for the Imperium when a fleet commanded by Abaddon himself strikes the naval facility orbiting the planet Rebo V - which is founded around the ancient space fortress known as Blackstone IV. The fortresses, of which six existed in the Gothic sector and were seen converted into naval facilities, were known to be extraordinarily ancient and lay largely inactive despite the best efforts of the Adeptus Mechanicus to discover their workings. Some functionality was available though, and the Navy had fitted the stations with as much of their own technology as could be powered, turning them into formidable defensive hardpoints. The Navy was confident of the Blackstones' ability to defend themselves against any fleet attack.

However, as the fleet strikes, the Blackstone's systems shut down and the battle station is rendered totally inert. The Imperial fleet defending it is routed by Abaddon's weight of numbers and Blackstone IV is captured.

The Tyrannic Wars
cross-posted from Tyranids

The Tyrannic Wars are the collective conflicts ignited by the Tyranid race's sudden incursion on our galaxy, beginning around 745.M41 by the Imperial Date System.

Hive Fleet Behemoth
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 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 year later, an Imperial Inquisitor named 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 of the Warp"- somehow, the presence of a hive fleet near a planet stops psychic communication, which is the primary method of interstellar communication used by the Imperium.

The Tyranid force, dubbed "Hive Fleet Behemoth", cut a swathe into the Ultramar sector, the realm of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Undeterred by the Marines' strike fighters, the fleet 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 defense of the Ultramarines' homeworld of Macragge. Here, during the Battle of Macragge, the hive fleet was completely destroyed. However, the Ultramarines suffered heavy losses, losing their entire First Company in a last stand at the northern polar fortress.

Hive Fleet Kraken
The second wave of Tyranids to fight against the Imperium was known as "Hive Fleet Kraken". Instead of throwing one mass of troops against the human armies, this swarm split into countless smaller fleets, each one enveloping whole systems before reinforcements could arrive. Kraken was finally brought to battle on a grand scale at Ichar IV, a Hive World, in 993.M41 (Chambers, 2001). The brunt of this attack was borne by the Scythes of the Emperor and Lamenters chapters of the Space Marines and the Eldar Craftworld Iyanden, all of whom suffered very heavy losses. According to Lieutenant Kage of the Last Chancers penal regiment, the Imperial Guard "Lost over a million men at Ichar IV", though this may serve simply to illustrate in a very broad sense the scale of the battle, as numerically speaking a million soldiers is not a great burden for a Hive World. Kraken was not fully destroyed though, and split into several splinter fleets. There was little respite for the Imperium after Kraken's near destruction as a new hive fleet emerged soon after.

Hive Fleet Leviathan
The third wave of Tyranid attacks, "Hive Fleet Leviathan", appeared from below the galaxy and attacked from two points, cutting off large portions of the galaxy from reinforcements. In order to buy some time, the Imperium, under the command of Inquisitor Kryptman, attempted to redirect the attacks of this fleet towards the Ork-held worlds of the Octavius system. While the plan was a success, the Tyranids have since been steadily working their way through Ork space, suffering massive losses, assimilating everything that stands before them. The Imperium has bought itself a century at least to prepare for the next attack, but there is no telling how the Tyranids may evolve thanks to the newly-harvested Ork DNA.

Leviathan also attacked around the same time as Kraken, making both fleets difficult to deal with as one or the other would provoke some sort of uprise or invasion. To date, Behemoth is the only tyranid hive fleet that did not utilize the "tendril" tactic, suffering the consequences.

Leviathan, inevitably in the end, was immobilized and destroyed, thanks to the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos, Deathwatch and the Ultramarines Fourth Company (Read Latest Codex Space Marines-An Eternity of War).