I'll give a brief history of the game and the story as well.
More than 25 millennia ago, Mankind began the first tentative steps to the stars. Equipped both with shockingly primitive technology and a burning desire for exploration and conquest, Man slowly, Blindly, Made his way to the nearest system outside his own. Generations lived and died on the long interstellar voyages; the first Humans to set foot on another planet had never seen cool green hills of Terra, nor had their parents, nor their parents' parents.
The first colonies were completely on their own, cut off by untold miles and uncounted years from any assistance. Most colonies died alone and unlamented; a scattered few survived and prospered. And the exodus continued.
With the discovery of the warp drive came the great Expansion, as what was once a journey of several centuries became a journey of several days. Warp space was tricky and dangerous stuff, and not to be entered lightly. Many ships simply vanished, never to be seen again. With the discovery of the navigator gene, which allowed ship's pilots to make longer, more accurate warp jumps, interstellar travel became much safer, and soon Men were exploring all of the nearby stars.
Alien contact followed shortly thereafter, and, with grim inevitability, the first Alien Wars.
The pattern was set.
The Dark Age of Technology
Exploration brought ne ideas, new wealth, new arrogance, and Science became God. The machines of travel and conquest achieved incredible levels of sophistication. There seemed nothing that Man couldn't do. Man himself was changing, ans psychic powers, once the stuff of quack science and trashy pulp thrillers, came to be accepted, and studied.
Though few realized it at the time, the end of the Age of Technology was heralded by the appearance of psykers - humans capable of using psionic powers such as telekinesis. The trigger for this appearance has never been precisely determined, but within mere centuries psykers were recorded on almost every planet know to Man. Some went mad; uncounted millions were burnt as witches, destroyed by ignorance and fear, and, possibly, prescience. A few those on, civilized, 'enlightened' planets, were protected and nurtured, allowed to test and explore their new-found skills.
This was to prove the greatest calamity that Man has ever perpetrated upon himself in a long history of foolish arrogance and stupidity.
Untrained and ignorant of what they meddled with, the novice psykers opened the galaxy to
invasion. Daemons - fell creatures in the warp, born of Chaos - attacked the minds of the
unprotected psykers, and through them, gained entrance to our galaxy. Monsters walked
the worlds. Ignorance and madness replaced enlightenment and technology. Aliens, sensing
Man's weakness, attacked savagely, attempting to regain all that they has lost. The Age of
Strife was born.
The Age of Strife
For more than five thousand years, warfare wracked Mankind. Nation battled nation, planet fought planet, system laid waste system. Man fought Himself, Daemon, and Alien. The fragile bonds of Civilization were lost. Abandoned colonies perished by the scores or reverted to barbaric savagery. Outspacers and aliens plundered and grew fat on the wreck of Humanity.
It was at this time that mutants began to appear in great numbers. As science crumbled, terra-formed worlds slowly reverted to their natural conditions; the Men on them adapted, or died. Thus were born the abhumans - the stocky Squats, the powerful Ogryns, the mad Beastmen, and many others.
Only the worlds where psykers were rigorously suppressed survived intact. The
retrenchment of Mankind was almost total.
The Rebirth of Man
Perhaps Man's greatest strength is His ability to create heroes in time of need - the greater peril, the greater the man. The Age of Strife, arguably the greatest peril Mankind has ever faced, brought forth the greatest man history has ever recorded - the man who would be known as the Emperor of Human Space. A shrewd diplomat, he gathered the loose fragments of Humanity into a single Empire. A brilliant soldier, he conquered those who would not join of their own volition and reclaimed the worlds lost to the Aliens. The strongest psyker the galaxy had ever seen, he drove the Daemons back into warp from whence they came.
The Emperor is immortal. For ten thousand years he has ruled the Imperium. For ten
thousand years he has ordered the lives of men. For ten thousand years he has protected
Mankind from the threats which abound in this hostile universe. For ten thousand years he
has sacrificed himself on the altar of Humanity's hopes for the future. For ten thousand
years the Imperium has endured, established out of strife and discord, a bastion of light in
the darkness.
The Emperor
Ageless and ancient, the Emperor is the undisputed master of Humanity. Wounded during the great conflagration known as the Horus Heresy, the Emperor caused a life-support machine of incredible complexity, the Golden Throne, to be built on Terra. Once it was placed within its confines, where he has remained ever since, ruler and prisoner, sustained by life- energy drained from millions of human psykers. His will maintains the navigation beacon known as the Astronomicon and binds Humanity together.
Throughout the Imperium, the Emperor's Will is carried out by two colossal organizations:
the Inquisition and the Adeptus Terra. Tens of billions of men and women - adepts,
scholars, priest, governors, soldiers and Inquisitors - exist only to serve the Emperor.
If you want to know the rest you'll have to go and by the game yourself. You can find it at most any gaming shops, and if they don't have it they should be able to order it in. Or go to Games Workshops site. It on my main page B. D. Wolf Games under links.
Last Updated May 20, 1999 by Branden D