Warhammer 40k

1. ·" Peace? There cannot be peace in these times. "
2. ·— Lord Commander Solar Macharius
3. ·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.
4. ·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 or data-slates , 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.
5. ·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 and data-slates tower upwards like mountains.
6. ·With flickering candlelight provided by floating Servo-skulls , processions of Administratum 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.
7. Chronostrife
8. ·For this task, Guilliman created the small Imperial organisation known as the Logos Historica Verita , formed from individuals of an inquisitive and unusually 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, political suppression or purposeful obfuscation by the High Lords of Terra .
9. ·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.
10. ·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.
11. Birth of the Star Gods
12. ·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.
13. ·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.
14. Old Ones
15. ·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.
16. ·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.
17. ·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.
18. ·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.
19. The Necrontyr and the Wars of Secession
20. ·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.
21. ·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 .
22. ·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.
23. ·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.
24. ·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.
25. ·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.
26. The War in Heaven
27. ·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.
28. ·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.
29. ·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.
30. ·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.
31. ·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.
32. ·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 the Silent King 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.
33. ·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.
34. ·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.
35. ·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.
36. Biotransference and the Rise of the Necrons
37. ·" 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. "
38. ·—Excerpt from the Book of Mournful Night
39. ·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.
40. ·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.
41. ·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.
42. ·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.
43. ·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.
44. ·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.
45. ·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.
46. Necrons Ascendant
47. ·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.
48. ·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.
49. ·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.
50. ·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.
51. ·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.
52. ·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.
53. ·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.
54. ·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.
55. The Tide Turns
56. ·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.
57. ·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 .
58. ·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.
59. ·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 .
60. Enslaver Plague
61. ·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.
62. Silent King's Betrayal
63. ·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.
64. ·Though the entire undying 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 warrior 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.
65. ·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.
66. ·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.
67. ·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.
68. ·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.
69. Great Sleep
70. ·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.
71. ·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.
72. ·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.
73. ·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.
74. ·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.
75. ·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.
76. ·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...
77. Age of Terra and the Stellar Exodus (M1-M15)
78. ·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 .
79. ·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.
80. ·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 .
81. ·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.
82. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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 ."
83. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
84. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
85. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
86. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
87. The suits proved invaluablefew, 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.
88. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
89. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
90. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
91. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.
92. Age of Technology (M15-M25)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.

Source: Timeline of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe

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