A brief history of the galaxy

In the days long since preceding the birth of mankind, a great and vast war of an unimaginable scale not seen before or since. The Old Ones, a mysterious and extremely advanced cold-blooded alien race, has their very existence threatened by the emergence of undying Necrons and their virtually omnipotent tyrant Star-Gods, the C'tan. The C'tan and their insatiable hunger sought to devour all organic life in the galaxy and they found the old ones to be a delicious treat for their appetites.

To combat the C'tan, the eldest race harnessed their lofty scientific knowledge and the unlimited powers of the Warp to create a number of potent weapons to combat the C'tan and their Necron slaves. These "weapons" were the Korks, 12-footed monstrous giants with immensely destructive physical strength and the lithe and supple Aeldari and their natural affinity to harness the destructive energies of the warp. Alongside the webway, the Old ones rallied their bio-weapons against the C'tan and their undying legions of steel in the conflict known as the War in Heaven.

As the war of heaven concluded, the galaxy was left in a smoldering ruin. The C'tan, although triumphant against the Old Ones, was soon toppled by their Necron slaves and shattered into shards imprisoned deep within special prisons in Tomb worlds. The Old Ones either left the galaxy or were devoured by malefic warp parasites known as Enslavers. The Krorks, without the wisdom and the genetic control of the Old Ones, grew feral and devolve into the race known as the Orks.

It was at this time, the Aeldari grew greatly in power. With the Necrons gone and their Krork cousins scattered, the Aeldari race would establish their foothold as the next masters of the Milky Way galaxy. Their faith in their forefathers, The Old Ones, would see their gestated souls elevate into warp into the gods that would one day become the Aeldari pantheon.

The Children of Isha

The Aeldari Empire, a vast interstellar empire that ruled nearly half the galaxy for millions of years since the War in Heaven. They conquered as they much as they could imagine, their technology and incredible foresight and divination allowing them the knowledge to surgically slaughter any threat to their dominion long before they realized they even had such a potential to threaten their power. Entire systems flourished with utopian grandeur and natural beauty as the Aeldari colonized every world and erected sublimely beautiful cities of sturdy wraithbone. Stars lived and died by their whim, as their greatly advanced knowledge of any psychic abilities granted them both immortality and power to shape anything to their very desires.

As opposed to the Eldar of the 30th and 41st millenniums, the Aeldari were unified as race and had no need to flee and cower in their world ships known as Craftworlds. Under the authority of the Supreme Council of the Throneworld of Aeldalin, the Aeldari Empire preserved and expanded their dominion to the greatest extent they could do so. Amongst many advantages, it was only the Aeldari who held a monopoly over the massive galactic highway known as the Webway. The Warp having long since been unsuitable for travel, the Aeldari Empire used their webway to travel to the furthest reaches of the galaxy with their expeditionary vessels, the Craftworlds. Their presence in the warp allowed them to reincarnate back to life whenever they perished, allowing them to experience the pleasures of life once more.

At the zenith of their power, almost every alien threat in the galaxy had been destroyed by them, the only beings mighty enough to oppose their power being the Krorks, however, they remain as barbaric and warlike as ever. They would later devolve into the modern-day Orks. They were easy to manipulate, often simply being made to fight each other by the machinations of Aeldari Farseers. The other lesser races, such as humanity were left alone, most being deemed as mere nuisances that pose no genuine threat to their power. By the time of humanity's Dark Age of Technology, the Aeldari had grown to become a very self-indulgent and reluctant race. Alongside their hedonism, the Aeldari had become rather incompetent and lazy to a degree, often relying on their automate defenses and Wraith-constructs to protect their Empire for them. Long since convinced of their superiority, they arrogantly believed that the humans and their childish "Galactic Coalition" were only pathetic fools to try and oppose them.

With history as the judge, the Aeldari found themselves shitting their own pants during the forgotten War of Reckoning when the Coalition's fleets reached as far the Empire's core-worlds, leaving thousands of worlds and countless Aeldari naval fleets in heaping ruins. Ultimately, the War of Reckoning saw the Empire's victory with the sudden and unexpected rise of the Cybernetic revolt that saw every Men of Iron launch an uprising against their human masters that would herald the age of strife.

Unbeknownst to the Coalition, the revolt was the work of a cabal of Farseers and the awakening of the slumbering C'tan known as the "Void Dragon" deep in the bowels of Mars. The Void Dragon compromised the Coalition's galaxy-wide Overmind network responsible for managing humanity's automata and systematically began distorting every digitized soul in its systems. It is unknown how the Void Dragon's rampage was put to stop, but nonetheless, humanity was devastated to cataclysmic proportions, with many surviving scientists having to regretfully destroy countless years of research and complete STC databases, lest any surviving trace of any deranged AIs return to devastate humanity once more.

The sudden increase of warp storms also prevented interstellar travel, causing thousands of human worlds to crumble into anarchy or succumb to the predation of malevolent warp creatures. Once allied Xenos species turned against their former friends and enslaved or butchered them Aeldari laughed at the lesser races' attempt to dethrone them of their power, unaware and entirely blind to the approaching doom that was to engulf their race entirely.

Like the Old Ones that fell before them, the Aeldari race will never again achieve this pinnacle of interstellar supremacy. For now, they are a scattered, broken race and godless race without much of a home to call their own. The name Aeldari grew to be a tarnished title holding merit no longer fitting its broken descendants. For a while, the diminished "Eldar" dwelled amongst the tongues of surviving Craftworlders and the frugal Exodites. Aboard their Craftworlds, the distinguished Asuryani Eldar would traverse the galaxy, fleeing the tendrils of insatiable Slaanesh and their shameful past.

In time, they would develop the famed Infinity Circuits, to house the souls of their dead and flee the touch of hungry Slaanesh. Meanwhile, the pastoral Exodites live out their long lives in maiden worlds across the galaxy, rejecting any form of mechanical technology that ought to ease the burden of their livelihoods. They live rather peaceful lives, only waging war atop their tamed reptilian beasts when provoked by invaders or servants of She-who-thirsts.

Deep in the bowels of the Webway, the unrepentant pleasure cultists of the fallen Empire rebuild their society in the once glorious webway mercantile city of Commorragh. The hedonistic noble houses squabble aimlessly over resources and control over the vast megacity, their vassals and agents callously slitting throats and performing vile and lust acts upon unsuspecting individuals. The depraved homunculi, arguably the worst of them all, commit unspeakable atrocities deep within their dark laboratories, uncaring about the constant infighting up above. So long as they can lengthen their lifespans by devouring the life essences of their unfortunate victims, they couldn't care much about anything at all.

The rise of the Imperium of Man

It is a time of legend and shining glory. After five-thousand years of strife and suffering, the Emperor of Mankind unites Terra ( known in ancient times as Earth) under the yoke of his immortal and benevolent rule. Through war and diplomacy, the Master of Mankind set his gaze upon the stars blinking in the canvas of the sky dreaming of one-day reclaiming humanity's lost colonies under the banner of The Imperium. For Mankind to achieve its manifest destiny, the Emperor creates 20 mighty genetic "sons" who will serve as his greatest generals in the greatest undertaking in humanity's history, The Great Crusade. These generals, called "Primarchs" are intellectually superior and mightier than any human being except for himself. It is from these mighty demi-gods that the Emperor's mightiest warriors, the Space Marines, are to be made from. In a galaxy plagued by monstrous terrors beyond human understanding, the Legiones Astartes are to be humanity's sword directed against these innumerable foes. They are the bulwark against terror, they are humanity's greatest protectors and they shall know no fear.

It was only through the immeasurable might of the Space Marine Legions and their mighty Primarchs that the Imperium conquered world after world, destroying any foe they faced with no mercy. One by one, the scattered worlds of Mankind would be absorbed into the Imperium as the lost children of Earth would suffer no more the horrors of the Old Night.

The Emperor's grand vision for humanity is bold and infinitely ambitious beyond comparison. However, beneath the veil of reality, an incredible and ancient evil lurks hidden. Scheming the doom of mankind and all life in the mortal life in the galaxy, the Dark Gods of Chaos kidnap the infant Primarchs from beneath a secret laboratory hidden deep within Terra's moon. They scatter their gestation pods across the warp, abandoning them in specific worlds across the galaxy, in an effort to one day corrupt them into their own unholy image.

Without his sons, the Emperor had to frustratingly readjust plans for the Great Crusade, personally leading all of the twenty Space Marine Legions until they may one day be reunited with their respective Primarchs. As the Great Crusade pushed past into the wider galaxy, the Primarchs were discovered on their adoptive worlds and given the command to their respective legions after meeting their long lost Father. For 200 years the Great Crusade ushered in a period of prosperity and security for the majority of the human race under the wings of the Aquila. As the Space Marine Legions conquered system after system, it seems as if Mankind's dominion over the galaxy reigns with any unfortunate Xenos race cast away or ultimately eradicated by the Imperium's mighty armies. It seems humanity's journey to the shining path was soon to be complete, with no living being able to prevent their ascension. Behind the ever-changing and turbulent tides of the Warp, the Dark gods orchestrate their incomprehensible schemes and unfathomably dark plans for the Anathema and his upstart Imperium. A war soon looms, threatening the final extinction of mankind…

The Eldar are a broken race. Once boasting an Empire that ruled supreme for millions of years, their excessive and lustful indulgences of nightmarish depravity lead to the degeneration of their ancient society and the birth of their final doom, Slaanesh, the fourth god of the dark pantheon of Chaos. In the 30th millennium, most of the surviving Eldar drift aimlessly across the void aboard their Craftworlds or toil their lives of working at the fields of the sacred Maiden worlds. Peace was not temporary, however. Many of the Slaanesh's servants slithered for every opportunity to claim as many Eldar souls to their patron deity as they could. They attacked every Craftworld trapped at the formation of the Eye of Terror that was once the heartland of the fallen Aeldari Empire. Slaaneshi daemonettes even went as far as to breach Webway portals to prey on helpless refugees taking refuge in that vast labyrinth.

In those days, Craftworlds were small and filled by grief-stricken and unruly refugees who knew nothing of the Asuryani Paths and the discipline they were soon to bring to their shattered society. It was really a ghost of a previous civilization, unlike the grim days of the next eleven millennia. The Eldar had many enemies than friends back then. Apart from the tendrils of the eternally thirsty Slaanesh, they had to deal with numerous barbaric and ultra-violent Orcish Empires, the parasitism of the Rangda and Khrave and raids from their forsaken Drukhari kin. Each of those myriad threats however were easily engulfed by the threat posed by countless armies of the burgeoning Imperium of Man.

There were very few Eldar alive who could recall the already fragmentary events of the War of Reckoning that preceded the collapse of the previous human civilization. Many of them were convinced that humanity had already gone extinct or was forever crippled by the warp storms and alien races that plagued them for the past 5,000 years. They were appalled beyond belief that they would rise up again in such huge numbers to claim swathes of territory in their absence. Led by a mysterious golden figure calling himself the "Emperor of Mankind", the armies of the Great Crusade conquered system after system, eradicating any alien race and liberating any enslaved humans that lived there. Spearheaded by the twenty Space Marine Legions and their god-like Primarchs, it was only a matter of time that they would set their gaze upon the remnants of Isha's children.

Like their Drukhari kin, the Craftworlders made extra efforts to remain hidden from the Aquila's ever-threatening gaze, only striking when the foe is most vulnerable and open to any form of attack. Unfortunately, many Craftworlds refused to adopt such measures or were goaded into defending the precious Maiden worlds they refused to surrender to the Imperium. Although the Eldar still proved themselves superior to the humans in terms of technology, they were wrong to have underestimated the might of the Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs. The Craftworld of Thuyela, still retaining some of the hubris from the days of their past glory, believed that they could assault an Imperial explorator fleet with ease. They would later perish at the claws of the Space Wolves' 4th Great Company, the Wolves scouring completely the Craftworld of any Xenos life. They would even proceed to destroy Thuyela's Infinity circuit, ignorant of its dire purposes.

Others such as Mor-ioh'i, Tounoetar, and Magc'Sithraal would be destroyed utterly by the forces of the Imperium. For now, it would appear that humanity would be the galaxy's next masters, reigning supreme underneath the guidance of its Emperor. However, towards the end of the 30th millennium of the Imperial Calendar, the Dark Gods and their unwitting pawns would begin their move against the only force in the materium that can ever pose a threat to them.