In the far-flung future of the 19M (19th Millennium) humanity and hundreds of other species are united under the Third Empire of Mankind and it is an age of technological advancement and unprecedented peace for centuries. It all ended when a complicated coup went horribly wrong. To prevent any military response it was decided that the empire’s vast communications network had to be shut down for a few days, to ensure the succession of the new democratic government. Also, a virus was planted into the warp beacon network to shut it down as well to prevent a response that way. The network of Warp Beacons is placed in each system, and by use of a warp processor, a ship could jump through the warp and to a nearby system equipped with a warp beacon. It allowed the galaxies civilizations to travel across wide reaches of space.
Unfortunately for the conspirators, their virus had been far too effective and not only shut down the warp beacons but deleted all navigational data and made while it technically came back in a few days the beacons had no coordinates to jump to and. Hundreds of system remained trapped and some would be isolated for decades or centuries. Worse, the communications system took months to repair after the coup had been successful and throughout the empire, planets waited in fear of what had happened. Independent worlds declared themselves independent and warlords sprung to using corvettes as runners between systems in attempts to control regions of space. When official communications were finally reestablished the new democratic government on Terra Imperia was unable to unite the empire as hundreds of thousands was still isolated without the technology to repair their warp beacons. Thus the empire was shattered and so it would remain for thousands of years as despots and minor empires of humans and aliens would rise and fall and one replaced another. Then, there was one final nail in the coffin of the new democratic government’s attempts for unity. They managed to one hundred worlds and brought the quadrant known as the Core into the fold. However, it all fell apart. A fierce species known as Urks. Their green, muscular and bulky warriors was an ancient threat localized in a lesser known part of the galaxy. However, the warlord Rugnash the Half-God assembled enormous armies and vast fleets and as he went be seized new resources, ships and weapons and in clashes with the democratic government’s forces he crushed them and claimed twenty thousand worlds in the Core as part of his expanding empire. It is due to the actions of Rugnash that has spread the Urks across the galaxy.
In the late 21M (21st millennium) the empress-to-be arrived on Earth. Mara. She found a microcosm of warlords fighting among the vast cityscape of Earth. She carved out a slice of her own and built a fort that would be the foundations of the Imperial Palace. In its bowels she used her vast array of knowledge to build cloning facilities and used genetic material from chosen eighteen individuals-seventeen men and two women and for the next ten years she grew an army of clones and then equipped these superhumans with strong and thick power armor and sent them out to lead her armies of followers to conquer Earth. These warriors, the first generation of Ultra Marines, swept through every level of the urban planet and united the planet. Some decades later Mara created powerful commanders to lead her legions of Ultra Marines. These were known as Primarchs, eighteen godlike men and women. Like Mara herself, both the Marines and Primarchs was immortal and would be untouched aging. Earth was renamed Terra Imperialis.
Mara called the wars to come to the Grand Crusades to reunite mankind and its former alien subjects. For one thousand years the Primarchs and Mara herself in the first centuries, led a war across the half the galaxy, subjugating hostiles governments and annexing systems by conquest and diplomacy. A religion worshipping Mara as the god-empress developed and spread with the aid of Mara herself. The religion would be a strong unifier in the Galactic Imperium. After a thousand years the civil war remembered as the Great Suffering struck the growing Imperium.
Next, we pick up afterward a technological dark age of a sort took hold. The emperors and empresses that followed Mara was not immortal but lived for far longer than any normal human. They were all of her blood and so her life, the Shienyashi line would rule the Imperium for generations.
In the early 30M the Imperium stands and has forced itself out of the dark age by the previous emperor, Leopold. The emperor that followed him faced foes from beyond the borders and the fierce and dangerous political intrigues of the Imperium’s highest echelons of society. The Republic of Independent Systems remains a strong rival of the Imperium with millenniums of hatred between them through proxy wars to total wars that ravaged thousands of worlds. Yet far more blood was shed with untold skirmishes, battles, and wars with the fierce and cunning Urks and their various clans and empires. From dark worlds and dimensional rifts numerous species of demons in service of ancient gods known as Elder Horrors and the constant fears of incursions from the cyborg known as the Necrophaan that assimilated entire planets into their society.
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