The Beginnings of Human Expansion into the Stars
When people say that the history of humanity in the Warhammer 40K universe is exactly our own history, they are correct. Yes, you are canonical in the Warhammer 40K universe, but the journey of humanity to the 41st Millennium is a long and chaotic one. The future is now obscured by the dusty eddies of time. Therefore, let us now unravel what lies in this vast expanse.
By delving into the records that Imperial historians have so zealously maintained, even if no one survives to witness this long journey, we will today learn about the rise and fall of mankind. Previously, we recounted the history of the first beings in the universe and the emergence of the Necrons. With those now imprisoned and the Necrons slumbering in their tomb worlds, other populations of the galaxy were able to recover while building the greatest civilization in the Milky Way.
What these beings did not know was that 40,000 years ago, on a planet called Earth, an intelligent species of mammals was developing culturally and technologically – the species we now call human beings. Over the course of these millennia, different human civilizations arose and disappeared on Earth. The boundaries became ever smaller for these beings, until before the 15th millennium, humanity had mastered space travel.
The Stellar Exodus and the Colonization of New Worlds
From that point on, they began to terraform and colonize new worlds. First within their own solar system, and then beyond it. This period became known as the Stellar Exodus. However, in the beginning, the Immaterium and the Warp were still unknown to man, and travel between star systems was a slow process that took eons. As a result, these new colonies in other star systems had to be self-sufficient. This led to the formation of new civilizations in each of these colonized systems, civilizations that managed their own resources and began to develop their own languages and cultures.
It was during the 15th millennium that the so-called Age of Technology arrived, a period of extremely important developments for humanity. It was at the beginning of this era that explorers set out for distant worlds in search of planets that could provide food for the growing Earth population, as well as materials to continue the expansion of their species among the stars. When a suitable planet was found by the reconnaissance ships, the troops of the Long March were soon sent to them, carrying hundreds of colonists on journeys that lasted decades.
Arriving at their destination, these ships were dismantled and used by the colonists in their first settlements. Life began on these new worlds with no hope of return to Earth. And of course, this was never an easy process. On the new planets, the explorers faced extreme climatic conditions, unbreathable atmospheres, predators, and intelligent aliens. Yes, it was during this period that humans had their first contacts with other beings like the Orks and Eldar, and therefore their first conflicts.
The Rise of the Knight-Soldiers and the Tron Mechanicum
Obviously, this type of problem was already anticipated, which is why the Long March ships always departed with the STC (Standard Template Constructs) – intelligent data banks containing all of humanity’s scientific and technological knowledge, and the ability to create technologies according to the circumstances. With the STCs and their manufacturing facilities, humanity created armor with protected exoskeletons made of plasteel and military equipment. It was thanks to this gear that humans were able to establish themselves amidst the chaos of the galaxy, containing their enemies and navigating hostile environments that the colonists referred to as “knights,” in reference to the ancient knights of Earth.
These figures of noble, armed warriors soon came to be considered legends and protectors of Earth’s ancient history. To use these armors, the soldiers were connected to a mental impulse platform called the Tron Mechanicum, which also ended up altering their minds, reprogramming them to have positive psychological associations, with notions like obligation, social hierarchy, and loyalty, especially to their noble ancestors. Thus, these elite warriors developed their own society, with different hierarchies among the knights and a focus on the arts of war and governance. And so the Knight Houses became an essential part of human society during the Age of Technology.
The Development of Warp Drive and the Gellar Field
Then, around the 18th millennium, humanity developed Warp Drive and the Gellar Field, technologies thanks to which human ships were able to make brief jumps using the extradimensional realm of the Immaterium. From this point on, the travel time between interstellar distances decreased dramatically, which not only accelerated the process of human colonization in the Milky Way, but also began to allow transactions and communications between these new colonized planets and even Earth.
However, the dangers present in the Warp were still a problem. Pilots went mad and some ships never even reached their destination. This is because this space, known as the Warp or Immaterium, is a parallel dimension of pure psychic energy, completely unpredictable and where rational laws and the linear flow of time do not exist as in reality, in addition to being the domain of the Chaos Gods and their demonic servants. You can already imagine that it is not a nice place to frequent.
And it was in having to face these dimensions of pure chaos that humanity created the Navigators. It is unknown by whom, but it was during the Age of Technology that the psychic Navigator genes were created, allowing the creation of the mutants called Navigators. These Navigators are humans with extrasensory perception who can see through all the chaos of the Immaterium and ensure that faster-than-light travel is safe.
The Golden Age of Expansion and Scientific Progress
So, in the 20th millennium, humanity reached a golden age of expansion and scientific development. With the growth of populations, colossal cities were built, intelligent machines came to be widely used, and the refinement of the STCs allowed the sharing of knowledge even with the most distant colonies, thus maintaining a continuous level of progress among them all.
According to the ecclesiarchs of the Imperium, this was a period when humanity began to idolize science as its only god, a dark period of heresy, in which the God-Emperor already lived. Little is known of this period of history by Imperial historians. However, one certainty is that in those primordial times, the God-Emperor lived disguised in the life of a common man. According to ancient records, he was born in the 8th millennium before the common era in Anatolia. And he arrived in the 41st millennium because, after all, he is immortal.
But don’t think the God-Emperor stopped fulfilling his divine mission. In that primordial period, he spent his days seeking to elevate humanity physically, intellectually, and spiritually. He even claimed to have been the mind behind great inventions, such as the psychic Navigator genes. But long before, on ancient Earth, humanity had already created incredible technologies: machinery, biotechnology, small devices containing infinite knowledge, and futuristic clothing.
The Fall of the Golden Age and the Rise of the Imperium
Throughout the Golden Age, humanity united in a great and powerful interstellar government that involved not only the colonized planets, but also Earth itself. During this period, a group called the Men of Gold created the Men of Stone, artificially designed humans to accelerate the colonization process. The idea of these guys was to start a prosperous society, devoid of any trace of piety or spirituality. Their great focus would be solely on scientific and technological progress.
These Men of Stone eventually created the Men of Iron, autonomous intelligent robots, who for many years were loyal to humans, serving as both a workforce and as combatants. However, human dependence on these technologies made these beings see humanity as inferior. And then came the Cybernetic Revolt, a war where both sides bet all their resources. This was a catastrophic conflict, won by humanity at a high cost and still depending on the help of other species. The humiliation was thus total.
And after this war, all the political and economic power of humanity went down the drain. It was from this point on that the creation of thinking machines and artificial intelligences became a crime among human societies. And if at this point you’re thinking a lot about the Butlerian Jihad from Dune, I can’t blame you.
The Psychic Awakening and the Age of Strife
With the aversion to technology also came the fear of reason, progress, and scientific advances. In place of the Men of Iron, servitors began to be used – cybernetic slaves without consciousness and programmable, created from a fusion of human and robotic parts. To create the servitors, humanoids created in laboratories that had implants placed immediately after birth, as well as lobotomized criminals, were used.
It was also after the war against the Men of Iron that the first solid discoveries of human psykers began to emerge. Before, only the subject of rumors and pseudoscience, now there were real manifestations of psychic powers among human beings.
Among the more violent societies, psykers began to be hunted in a true witch hunt, while in the more enlightened worlds, they began to be protected by law and allowed to develop and explore their abilities.
This was until the risk of demonic possession among the psykers became evident.
In the years following the end of the human technological era, the Eldar Empire saw its decline. Resting in the position of the most powerful and intelligent species in the galaxy, they had developed their technology to a point where no Eldar needed to do anything anymore. Everything they needed to keep society functioning had already been automated. But this left the space elves a bit bored, without much to do.
It was then that in the 25th millennium they began to create cults of pleasure, dedicated to seeking every pleasure and sensation they could feel. In this, the Eldar seers had already begun to warn about the possible consequences of these hedonistic cults. However, they didn’t care and continued to seek increasingly extreme experiences, to the point that the Eldar began to die in completely destructive hunting rituals. Some of them even began to realize that this was already going too far and started to flee that insane society, founding rural colonies on distant worlds or going to worlds that had not been taken over by hedonism.
And so, in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the souls of those who die leave the physical reality and seek their rest in the dimension of the Immaterium. And with the death of so many degenerate Eldar, a new entity began to form in this dimension, a corruption that now ruled those lives, the Chaos God Slaanesh.
The emergence of Slaanesh brought many disturbances to the Warp, and parts of the galaxy began to be affected by great Warp storms, destructive fury phenomena capable of breaking the barrier between dimensions. With this, Warp travel and astro-telepathic communications were affected for years, and many human worlds ended up isolated from each other.
And remember when I talked about the Psykers? Well, the worlds that were intolerant of the psykers managed to hold their own, while those that decided to protect these psychics were destroyed by demons and other Warp entities that came with these storms. What followed was an age of insanity, disorder, and wars between human colonies. Worlds were devastated. Civilizations returned to barbarism, and many humans became prey to the hostile alien species that inhabited the galaxy. These species took advantage of the fact that those who had once dominated space were now weakened, transformed into a mere shadow of what they once were. This was a 5,000-year period of terror, war, and slavery, of which little is recorded. A period called the Age of Strife by scholars.
The Rise of the Imperium of Man
But it was in the midst of all this that the Imperium of Man emerged. This was just another video exploring the universe of Warhammer 40,000. If you want to check out the others, there will be a playlist in the description.
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