40K Timeline EXPLAINED. Everything You NEED to Know! | Warhammer Lore

this video is sponsored by into the am by the end of this video you're gonna know everything there is to know about the warhammer 40k timeline sorta let me explain but first if you're unfamiliar with 40k it's this super dark science fantasy franchise where humanity is ruled over by the bloodiest regime imaginable and religious dogma and beset on all sides by voracious aliens heretics and literal demons it's kind of like the exact opposite of star trek where star trek is all about peace and love and hope and 40k is like nah that we tried that in the grim darkness of the far future there is only but it's also super intimidating for new people to get into there's over 400 novels not to mention 30 years worth of lore and as somebody who's read over 100 of those novels most of those events albeit important don't really contribute to you knowing what's going on in the franchise so today we're going to take the entirety of the 40k timeline and boil it down to just the basics just those critically important time periods that you need to know about in order to understand 40k because if i was to try to explain the plot of all of those books in order we would we would be here for like 10 hours so with all that out of the way let's dive in where the timeline truly begins 60 million years ago with the war in heaven the war in heaven and its surrounding events can arguably be said as where the timeline of 40k begins to understand this we need to know about the necrons and the old ones you see before the necrons became the undead metal robots that we know in the 41st millennium they were a species known as the necron tier most records on this time are unfortunately incredibly fragmentary and what we do know is mostly derived from ancient eldar myths and legends a species who's famous for speaking in 99 metaphors and one percent facts so you have to take all of it with a little bit of a grain of salt the necron tier were a frail and dying people they lived next to a super radioactive sun that caused cancer to run rampant through their society they were however incredibly tenacious and refused to give up they sent their people out into space to find new homes and were ultimately successful populating many new planets however the curse of their homeworld would inevitably follow them into the stars and generation after generation would still be afflicted with terrible radiation sickness now all hope seemed lost for the necron tier but that all changed when they encountered an incredibly advanced alien species known as the old ones their technology was absolutely insane and they seemingly had unlocked the secrets to immortality now the old one's primary goal was to seed life throughout the galaxy placing microscopic organisms on barren worlds across the cosmos that would later develop into fully sentient species and it's even rumored that the old ones played a role in the development of our own species when the necron tier encountered the old ones they begged them for help but unfortunately the old ones would end up refusing them now they were sympathetic to the necrontier's plight but basically told them that their fate was their own and they were the masters of their own destiny that the old ones just didn't want to get involved now this infuriated the necron tier and they declared war on the old ones and this went about as well as you could expect it to the necron tier were nowhere near as capable as the old ones and basically got stomped into the dirt every single time they attacked now this would all change when the necron discovered a new species known as the catan who were basically giant formless star-sucking vampire star gods that were masters of the physical universe each and every one was a wielder of absolutely godlike power and they told the necrontier that they also had a deep-seated hatred of the old ones and if the two species were able to form some kind of alliance they would be able to work in tandem and wipe out their ancient enemies and if this wasn't good enough the catan also promised the necrons the secrets to immortality their people would not know another day of suffering and this sounded too good to be true for the necron tier and that's because it kind of was you see this immortality would take the form of their physical bodies being burned away and an ingram copy of their consciousness being downloaded into robotic mechanical skeletons their new bodies were made out of this miraculous metallic substance known as necrodermis an incredible living metal that had the ability to repair itself this was a substance that was originally developed by the neck frontier and had been used in most of their starships not only was it incredibly durable but it offered a lot more protection than their flesh bodies and their warriors could regenerate from any wound that didn't completely obliterate them this whole process was known as biotransference and the entire species was subjected to it now this was the day that the necron tier species died confined to the halls of extinction and in their place was simply the necrons now together the necrons in the catan would strike back against the old ones and their combined might was enough to put them on the same level harnessing the katan's limitless energy the necrons were able to make weapons of inconceivable power the war between the necrons and the old ones was the largest the galaxy had ever seen it spanned from the galaxy's core all the way to the galactic rim now during this war there was a point when the necrons suddenly realized that they had been tricked by the catan and the katan had used biotransference in order to separate them from their souls which they then subsequently devoured needless to say that necrons were pretty pissed and retaliated by attacking and destroying the individuals they once worshipped as gods shattering them into thousands of pieces and binding each of these shards into what were known as tesseract vaults and then subsequently used these shards as weapons it was around this time that the old ones created two new races to help fight against the necrons these would be the orcs and the eldari one being massive hulking brutes that were the ultimate physical specimens while the others were master psychers every single one being in tune with the warp and able to bring about enormous ruination by channeling its power with their mind so i just want to take a moment to point out that at this point in the timeline we have a race of vaguely egyptian ghosts trapped inside robot skeletons fighting against an entire race of psychic alien god frogs who have created a race of space wizards and space orcs in order to fight the undead robots 40k can get pretty wild sometimes now the devastation that was brought on by the war in heaven reached not just the old ones the necrons the eldari and the orcs but there were tons of other civilizations that were living peacefully in the galaxy as well and they all ended up getting caught in the crossfire at one point or another and this war spanned millions of years so the amount of untold destruction and lives lost is truly uncountable and the warp isn't just called the sea of souls for nothing it's where the souls of sentient creatures go when they die so the amount of angry and terrified souls that were lost in this war started flooding into the warp in mass and this would have some very particular ramifications but we'll circle back to that in a second now it was around this time that the necrons started experimenting with blackstone an incredibly bizarre material that has the ability to either channel and amplify the energies of the warp or nullify it completely so the necrons built massive spires made out of blackstone and placed them on thousands of worlds across the galaxy hundreds of thousands of years later these would be known as the blackstone pylons now the necron's original purpose for these isn't really stated as their major significance to the storyline wouldn't really become apparent until around the time of the black crusade but i'm getting ahead of myself as creatures solely of the physical universe with no ability to manipulate the warp themselves fighting against a race that was all about psychic powers it's pretty easy to assume that the blackstone pylons were meant as a defense network as negatively charging their energy could create a massive nullified area of spacetime where psychic powers couldn't be utilized and this would serve as a powerful defense network against their enemies so it's at this moment during the war in heaven when the warp becomes incredibly important to the storyline up until this point the immaterium or the sea of souls had been a rather tranquil place you see the warp is a mirror universe a reflection of our own but it's a realm of emotion rather than tangible substance like that found in the physical universe now there had been sentient species across the galaxy for a pretty long time at this point and there had certainly been wars and hatred and anger and all of those negative emotions but they had never existed quite on this scale a single planet that has a bunch of people that can't really get along and a bunch of negative feelings isn't quite the same thing as a galaxy spanning war in the absolute massacre of an inconceivable amount of people across the entire galaxy for a massive period of time caused the warp to become incredibly unstable the peaceful creatures that lived in the sea of souls were twisted into horrifying nightmares and during the events of the war in heaven the warp became the realm of chaos and if that wasn't bad enough the psychic allies that the old ones had created for themselves who were directly acting as conduits for the warp would end up tearing holes in reality and causing what was known as the enslaver plague massive amounts of these warp-borne monstrosities known as enslavers ripped into our universe and spread out across the cosmos devouring any sentient life they could find they flooded into the old one's bastions drawn to them like moths to a flame the old ones in their weakened state were in no position to fight them off and it is believed that they went extinct now admittedly everything gets kind of blurry here and we're not 100 sure what exactly happened to them but after the war had concluded the necrons were left in a fractious state they had taken inconceivable losses and the eldari had risen to power and were slowly expanding and taking over the galaxy if the necrons had tried to fight them after an all-out war with the old ones they more than certainly would have perished so the silent king ordered them to go to sleep within their tomb worlds and set the timer for 60 million years he believed that by this point the enslaver plague would have run its course and would have dissipated back into the warp also the eldari surely would have died off by then and whatever species was left over to inherit the galaxy wouldn't be ready for the godlike creations of the necrons who would then reclaim what was rightfully theirs now the time between the war in heaven and the rise of humanity is a time mostly dominated by the eldar who were left to inherit the galaxy after the war had concluded they knew a time of peace like no other as every other sentient species had no hope of challenging them so they could pretty much do whatever they wanted now here's the thing about being immortal and having no wars to fight you got a lot of free time on your hands so the eldar got really into the arts and other leisure activities pursuing pleasure instead of violence now this started off normal enough at first they pursued music poetry sculpture theater and pretty much any artistic pursuit you can think of but over 60 million years these pursuits of study started getting boring to them and their desires started to take on a much more hedonistic and depraved form but we'll circle back to that shortly now millions of years after the war in heaven had concluded far from the eldar empire there was a tiny little planet known as earth where a new species was coming into its own so why is the rise of humanity and the birth of the emperor so important now 40k is a franchise that focuses on a lot of different characters and factions but the human perspective is arguably the main one as most of the novels and stories focus on the humans and the storyline of humanity in 40k sees them rise to power and then have their empire crumble around them only to rebuild but be set in a new dark age probably the most famous quote that's associated with 40k summarizes this pretty perfectly forget the promise of progress and understanding for in the grim dark future there is only war so to understand how we ended up there we need to know where humanity began but before we dive into that i've been getting a lot of comments from you guys asking where i get these super dope t-shirts from they 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t-shirts for only sixty dollars and the best part is into the am was kind enough to give my viewers ten percent off their entire order all you have to do is go to into the am dot com slash wes hammer or just click on the link listed in the description of this video and pick out something cool and with that out of the way let's get into the grimdark the timeline of humanity in real life and 40k follow similar events all the way up to the present with one big golden difference and that would be the emperor of mankind now the individual that would come to be known as the emperor was born around the year 8000 bc you see there was a group of individuals known as the shaman each one of them an immensely powerful psycho much like the eldari and with the exception of the eldar psykers were insanely rare at this point in time it wouldn't be until tens of thousands of years later when psychers started popping up much more regularly in human populations back then it was more of a 1 in 10 million type of situation so the shamans foresaw a great apocalypse coming and humanity would need a being of inconceivable power in order to stand against it so all of the shamans sacrificed themselves to infuse their psychic essence into a single individual this creation was what they referred to as the new man the first in a line of superhumans that represented humanity's eventual evolutionary path the emperor who at this time was known as neo was born to mortal parents and lived in a neolithic tribe as the boy aged he became painfully aware that he was unlike any other person on the planet capable of great and amazing acts of psychic might he witnessed the barbarism of ancient man first hand when his uncle killed his father calmly and without wrath the emperor issued a single thought and stopped his uncle's heart as punishment for his crime the young boy realized that if humanity was to survive it would need law and order now you see he was what was known as a perpetual any mortal being that could never truly die neil would then keep himself hidden for thousands of years guiding humanity from the shadows now every now and then he would step forth and fill in the role of some type of leader figure a politician a doctor a general or even a messiah figure apparently at one point he would spend this period of time guiding humanity on the path he had envisioned for them making sure that certain events carried out according to his plans that were tens of thousands of years in the making over the years the emperor would gather other perpetuals to his side this included erda a childhood friend of his and the woman who would eventually become the mother of the primarchs and possibly most famously malcador the sigilite although he technically wouldn't meet him until somewhere between the 20th and 30th millennium when it comes to early human history the period between 8000 bc to 15 000 a.d is often referred to as the age of progress during this time powerful nations rose and fell with the emperor popping up in disguise every now and then to coax humanity in the direction of his choosing now there's a lot of evidence to support the fact that the emperor had godlike cognitive abilities and could foresee the path humanity would need to take step by step to achieve impossible outcomes humanity would eventually develop the means of space travel and would colonize the entirety of the soul system mars would be terraformed and became a habitable space much like that of earth well the asteroid belts would give rise to massive mining operations to provide the young species with everything that it would need to create some of the most advanced pieces of technology the galaxy had ever or would ever see and this was a good thing too because at this point earth was steadily running out of all of its natural resources the age of progress would officially come to an end when humanity set its sights outside of their star system and sought to colonize distant worlds and the next era that we're moving into was known as the dark age of technology so why do i feel like the dark age of technology is so important for you to understand you see this was the height of humanity's power where we lived in a golden age and can do pretty much anything most of the really cool equipment that you see in 40k that's used by humanity can trace its origins back to this time for example did you know that the bane blade one of the largest tanks that the astra militarum uses was originally just a scouting vehicle during the dark age of technology at least according to its stc also the suits of power armor known as terminator armor that the space marines wear was originally mining equipment during this time now that's a little bit of a misnomer the emperor created those suits specifically for war but their underlying technology all of the protective equipment inside of it was either used for mining the asteroid belts or as a protective system for people who had to work on plasma generators and one of the most important things to understand about what 40k even is is its human's continued existence after the collapse of their utopia so the dark age of technology lasted from the 15th to the 25th millennia now this was an age where the technology of mankind reached its apex a fact that was unknown to those that lived during this period humanity was capable of great and terrible things and the creations they brought into the universe were unlike anything the galaxy had ever seen through the application of science and technology every single one of humanity's problems had effectively been solved this was a golden age like no other no matter what crazy invention you can think up the humans that lived during the dark age of technology were able to come up with something even better every disease had been cured every problem solved and humanity stood united ready to conquer the galaxy any alien civilization that they would encounter that wasn't immediately peaceful would face the technological superiority of mankind and was quickly wiped out they created massive coiled machines known as sun snuffers that were capable of entirely wrapping around a sun and snuffing it out of existence they created artificial intelligence banks known as stcs or standard template constructs that contained the sum of all of humanity's knowledge and were capable of utilizing that information to create new machines the likes of which no human had ever even dreamed of now this was a period that saw the discovery and implementation of warp travel making jumps through the immaterium in order to cover great distances in space allowing faster than light travel using this technology humanity sent hive ships out in every direction in order to colonize new worlds and it was around this time that the sole system's population was getting out of control the people of this time realized that if their species was to survive that they would need to colonize worlds in distant systems and i know what you're thinking if the dark age of technology was so great why did the descendants of the people of this time refer to it as the dark age of technology and that's because thousands of years in the future what these individuals saw as enlightenment would end up being condemned as tech heresy you see humanity had become increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence in order to create their wondrous works and regulate practically everything about their lives this would give rise to the men of iron machines fully capable of thought that were incredibly powerful they would assist humanity in fighting its wars across the stars allowing for a rapid expansion through the galaxy now what exactly went wrong is not really clear but eventually the men of iron rebelled and sought to throw off the shackles that humans had placed on them this would lead to what was known as the cybernetic revolt which saw the humans of the dark age of technology suddenly forced into battle for survival against their very own creations across all of the worlds they had settled together there's an interesting short story known as the kabun machine and in it a member of the adeptus mechanicus is having a conversation with an ai and he's trying to explain to it why it's dangerous he explains to him that the ai is superior to him that it's superior to all humans no matter how heavily augmented they are and the nature of a superior species bound into the servitude of a lesser one is that without fail at some point they will realize their own superiority and rebel against their enslavers now this story takes place thousands of years after the cybernetic revolt but it's pretty likely that this is exactly what happened with the men of iron here's the thing having an entire society that is completely dependent on ai to do pretty much everything and then having that ai turn against you is definitely a bad situation but it would end up getting a lot worse because around the very same time psychers began being born in mass now individuals that were born with incredible psychic powers and were able to manipulate the warp had surely existed before this point but they were so unbelievably rare that most of humanity didn't even believe they existed and they hadn't been officially classified as a variant of human yet so when they started being born in mass across all of the worlds that humanity had settled there was no system in place to keep them in check humanity was dealing with a lot at this point and the exponential increase in psyches led to anarchy and chaos across all of the fledgling worlds of humanity many of these psycho individuals had no ability to control their powers or worse they utilized them for their own selfish means they became twisted psychopaths bent on inflicting as much suffering as possible and even worse they would unknowingly become conduits for demonic possession and the sikers that would become possessed had the ability to conjure wart portals which would allow for demonic incursions to take place hordes of demons rampaging out of portals and devouring entire worlds as insanity and madness ripped its way across human civilization the promise of the dark age of technology would end and we would enter what is known as the age of strife the age of strife for old night is probably the most referenced event in all of 40k if you were to download a hundred pdfs of 40k novels and just searched age of strife or old knight it would probably show up in around 80 of them this was the moment where the universe went from this perfect utopia for humans to this absolute hellscape and is the real beginning of the grim dark future not to mention the collapse of the eldar empire the birth of slaanesh and the creation of the eye of terror would have massive implications on the storyline going forward with the human species collectively losing its mind across the galaxy a period known as either old night or age of strife would begin which stretched roughly from the year 15 000 to the year 25 000. humanity began to regress into a dark age civil war and insanity ran rampant across every planet and this period of time saw the slaughter of billions of humans even worse massive anomalies known as warp storms were spreading across the universe they were created and fueled by the rampant sadism and debauchery of the eldar empire who at this point was still at the height of their power but hadn't really interacted with the humans all too much these storms made travel and communication through the warp next to impossible and thus all of the worlds humanity had colonized were suddenly cut off from one another they were completely alone and many of the distant colonized worlds would fall prey to attacks from zeno species such as the orcs who at this point had spread throughout the cosmos and even to more advanced species like the eldar who decided a healthy population of human slaves would help satiate some of their darkest desires humanity had risen to greatness and in the blink of an eye was now on the fast track to extinction now back on terra the powerful nation states that had united and ruled over the planet began to collapse until all that was left was feuding techno-barbarian warlords that ward against one another for control of territory and whatever remnants of the previous age could be scavenged this was also a time period that saw the rise of the mechanicum on mars now much like terra mars was having to deal with unprecedented civil war their advanced society was collapsing all around them and the fledgling members that would inevitably give rise to the tech priests of mars began a cult that worshipped the machines they needed to sustain life and this tech-based religion would eventually become known as the cult mechanicum the portion of the galaxy that humanity controlled basically went from star trek to mad max in a period of a few thousand years humanity would see 5 000 years of incalculable suffering and slaughter as the promise of the age of technology slipped further and further from their grasp now despite the odds the human spirit somehow endured and humanity would inevitably survive now meanwhile the emperor was yet to reveal himself but he had borne witness to every moment of human civilization for the past 30 000 years and in his study of the warp and the subsequent warp storms he knew something terrible was about to happen and he wasn't alone as back over with the eldar a group of them which would later become known as the exodites were horrified by what was happening to their people and foresaw a great calamity coming the exodites fled their empire seeking to colonize new worlds and live a more honest and primitive life for all intents and purposes the exodites basically became the amish of the eldar now all of the sensations that the eldar people were experiencing pleasure ecstasy suffering and anguish were being experienced on an incomprehensible scale all of which generated a psychic footprint in the warp that was growing larger and larger every single day now eventually a breaking point was reached and the chaos god of excess also known as she who thirsts or the prince of pleasure was born and when this new chaos god came into existence it ripped a hole in our universe and its resulting birth scream sent a shock wave of psychic energy out in every direction that obliterated the population of hundreds of eldar worlds for thousands of light-years the souls of all the eldar killed in this way were subsequently devoured by slaanesh and a similar fate would end up haunting all of the survivors as well as from this point forward whenever a member of the eldari died slanesh would be there ready to devour their soul deep within the warp slanesh would then go about murdering all of the eldar gods the only survivors being isha the goddess of healing jegarak the god of laughter and kane the god of war although he technically ended up shattered into millions of pieces so it's kind of like a half survival the eldar saw something like 99 of their population wiped out overnight and the only survivors were the exodites that were on their maiden worlds the craft worlders whose ships were outside the blast radius and the denisons of kimora a city that was located deep within a pocket dimension known as the webway and whose citizens would eventually become known as the dark eldar now this event was undoubtedly tragic billions were killed in an instant but if there was any kind of silver lining to it it would be the fact that all of the warp storms had been being generated by the gestating chaos god so as soon as slaanesh was born they were all wiped away and at this point in the 30th millennium suddenly warp travel was possible again and all of the human worlds would have the ability to be reunited once more the emperor saw this as the moment where he would finally reveal himself and he would lead the humans of terror back into the stars reuniting the entirety of the human race under one banner under the imperium of mankind now in order to do this he would have to reunite terra first at this point in the timeline the human empire has completely collapsed all of the planets are cut off from one another and the universe has become an incredibly terrifying place terra itself has become basically a wasteland ruled over by barbarians but this is the turning point where the emperor unites everybody and sets off into the stars to reunite the galaxy this is the moment where hope gets reintroduced back to the storyline although admittedly that's not going to last for very long over the almost 40 000 years that the emperor had been alive he had seen a lot of stuff and had become a master of pretty much every field of study you can think of and this included the science of gene forging and through this the emperor would create two of his own superhuman factions the custodians and the thunder warriors the former being the pinnacle of humanity the ultimate creation functionally immortal in the peak of physical and mental perfection each was a handcrafted demigod whereas the thunder warriors were genetically enhanced men taken from the various barbarian tribes across terra now the custodians on one hand were really difficult to make and required artistic perfection but the thunder warriors on the other hand the emperor cut a lot of corners with them if the custodians were the peak of perfection and the best that humanity could ever seek to become the thunder warriors on the other hand took all of the worst elements of humanity and cranked them up to 11. they were hyper aggressive brutes fixated on nothing but violence however since they were cheap to make the emperor was able to make a lot more of them than the custodians now one by one the emperor and his armies toppled all of the techno barbarian warlords and any small nation that had started either bent a knee to him or was destroyed now one point he perfected the formula for mass-produced super soldiers and would cease production of the thunder warriors the thunder warriors at this point were genetically unstable they were prone to having shortened lifespans and the longer they were in service the more their minds would start to degrade and supposedly many of them were starting to go crazy and were harder and harder to control the emperor believed that they had served their purpose and he would have no need of them going forward and thus he would order his custodians to wipe them out he had already begun work on his new super soldiers the astartes he had taken what he had learned from the thunder warriors but perfected them whereas the thunder warriors were meant to be the worst elements of humanity the space marines were meant to be the best and one day when the galaxy was fully and truly united the space marines would be able to lay down their weapons and take up new roles in this perfect society whether that be as politicians council members doctors generals or any other role that society would need of them this was a job that the thunder warriors were not going to be capable of now after earth had been united under the emperor's rule one of the most important decrees that he issued was the abolishment of religious worship the emperor had been around a long time and he had seen the horrors of religion firsthand that any decree that teaches you not to question and to accept things on faith was abhorrent to him he had seen millions killed in the name of some religious figure time and time again and determined that if humanity was to prosper it would need to put its faith in science so one by one every religious institution on the planet was destroyed including the very last church the church of the lightning stone of which the emperor oversaw the destruction of personally with everything going according to the emperor's plans his space marine legions developing and the warp storms dissipated the emperor would journey to mars and form an alliance with them now both planets realized that there was more to be gained through cooperation than through open warfare so the treaty of mars was signed and both planets were reunited once again now i will point out that the martian worship of machines definitely went against the emperor's decree about religion but he made a one-time exception for them the rest of the solar system would be united in a similar way and the emperor would begin formulating his plans to reunite all of humanity now in order to accomplish this the navigators of the imperium determined that they would need some form of anchor point in order to further explore beyond the bounds of the solar system and thus the astronomicon was constructed and it functioned kind of like the north star in that the device produced an enormous beam of golden light that could be perceived through the psychic sight of navigators from anywhere in the galaxy or even inside the warp by using this light they would always be able to pinpoint the exact location of terra and thus could use that knowledge to map the stars and make successful warp jumps as jumping between the worlds within the solar system was one thing but trying to make a jump halfway across the galaxy had an incredibly high probability of seeing the ship get lost and not being able to find its way back out of the sea of souls in addition the emperor realized that his armies would need powerful generals because he couldn't be everywhere at once so thus he created 20 demigod-like individuals known as the primarks based off of his own dna as well as his perpetual companion known as erda however before the primark project could be complete a great tragedy struck and each of the infant primarks was scattered across the galaxy now in recent books it was revealed that urda played a major role in this she learned of the emperor's plans for her children and the life of endless war that awaited them she acted against him and set her sons free choosing to send her children as far away from their father as she could in this way she hoped that they could just live normal lives now whether or not she had been manipulated by chaos is not entirely clear but it's safe to assume that as a mother she was doing what she thought was right for her children now the great crusade is appeared in time which the emperor and his armies journeyed across the stars to make contact with all of the human worlds the goal was to bring them back into the imperium while simultaneously locating all of the missing primarks these worlds had been cut off from the rest of humanity for thousands of years and many of them had completely forgotten their origins some welcomed the space marines with open arms happy to be part of something greater than themselves well others were resistant and wanted to remain free however the emperor's edict basically meant refusal was not an option the worlds could either join peacefully or by force the threat of violence from such an advanced society was often enough to bring them into compliance but in other cases the imperium would unleash untold devastation across these planets until a surrender was finally issued as the crusade progressed the imperium was ramping up production on ships and new astartes and their armies were growing stronger and stronger by the day each of the worlds that was conscripted into compliance would end up having to pay a tithe to the imperium sometimes between 5 and 25 percent of all of their natural resources or human population to be used as soldiers additionally over the course of the grand crusade each of the primarks would eventually be located and would be reunited with their own legion of space marines in total the emperor created 20 different legions each one having been crafted from the dna of their corresponding primark and since each of the primarks were incredibly different from one another all of the legions had different specialties the raven guard were masters of stealth-based warfare whereas the iron warriors were siege experts now the great crusade was incredibly brutal but from the imperium's perspective everything was going according to plan that was until treachery began to dig its roots throughout the space marine legions horus lupercal the war master primark of the luna wolves who had been chosen to lead in the emperor's absence after he returned to terra would turn against the imperium and fold nine of the 18 space marine legions as well as many sects of the imperial guard and adeptus mechanicus in a terrifying civil war against the emperor this event would come to be known as the horus heresy so why is the horse heresy so important to the storyline this is probably the most well documented points in time in all of 40k and it's that moment where the hope that i mentioned before gets completely crushed humanity was on the right path they were putting all the pieces back together after the end of the age of strife but with the introduction of treachery to the space marine legions that all came crashing down and at the current point in the 40k timeline they're still pretty much putting the pieces back together even 10 000 years later now even though the horse heresy and 30k in general are technically a prequel to 40k you could arguably call it a completely separate franchise and one of the most important things to me in it is as somebody who got really into 40k before i knew anything about the horus heresy the primarks were always these larger-than-life demigod type characters like hercules and odessius that were just spoken about as if they were legend he didn't even really know if they were real but when you start reading the horus heresy books they're main characters just seeing two of the primarks interact with one another and speak to each other was mind-blowing for me this timeline sees a lot of the factions that you'll see in 40k get incredibly fleshed out with the exceptions of the one that haven't really been introduced yet like the tau or the tyranids and technically the necrons were there too but they were still asleep in their tomb worlds so the horus heresy is probably the most well-documented period of time within the warhammer 40k timeline as the entire thing is only about 9 years long yet the horus heresy novel series is still being written as of the time of this recording and has over 60 novels in it even more so if you count all of the novellas and short stories that were created to support the main books now needless to say there is an absolutely ton of stuff that happens in the series but i'm going to tell you just what you need to know so for time the emperor led the great crusade himself however he needed to begin work on what was known to him as the webway project back on earth this bit of information had not been revealed to any of his primarks a fact that would end up causing resentment to build up in many of his sons now if the project had been successful it would have completely eliminated humanity's reliance on warp travel unfortunately that didn't end up happening but i'm getting ahead of myself so a new war master was appointed to act in his stead horus lupercal of the luna wolves was chosen for this role now he was still a primark with his own legion but for all intents and purposes he would be the voice of the emperor any decision that horus made would be as if it came from the emperor himself now he had his faults of course just like the rest of his brothers but when he was chosen as the war master even though a few primarks grumbled about how it should have been them they all recognized horus greatness and for a time he served his role incredibly well now that would all change on the moon of davon when horus was mortally injured by the planetary governor who had been corrupted by nergal wielding a blade known as the anathame a sword that was said to be so deadly that it could kill even that which was unkillable this wound placed horus in a coma and none of the apothecaries available on horus flagship the vengeful spirit were able to cure him now to horses marines at the time this seemed like a freak accident however that's not exactly what happened you see there was this chaplain named erebus who was a member of the word bearers legion and had been accompanying the luna wolves you see he had actually stolen the blade from a group of people known as the interex and then provided it to the man that would end up landing the blow all as part of his careful plan to end up corrupting horus it was revealed that he had been behind the scenes orchestrating the heresy at the command of his primark lorgaar who after having been reprimanded by the emperor for spreading his worship which completely went against his ideals had sought out other gods more worthy of their devotion the ward bearers would inevitably discover the chaos gods and set in motion events that would lead to the bloodiest civil war humanity had ever seen now back on the vengeful spirit erebus recommended bringing horus to the temple of the serpent lodge a place on daven where they could use sorcery to heal him now this was a diabolic place that was linked to the ruinous powers of the chaos gods a fact that was unknown to the luna wolves at the time many of the marines were against this but they didn't really see any other options so in desperation they agreed to try what erebus wanted and it was here in the temple that horus was put into a dreamlike fugue state and in this dream he would be manipulated by the chaos gods and the astral spirit of erebus into turning against the emperor he was shown visions of the future of the galaxy in flames of a human imperium that worshipped the emperor as a god humanity had descended into a new dark age and the emperor didn't care about humanity he had just been using them this entire time in order to obtain godhood now during this the astral spirit of magnus the primark of the thousand sons legion appeared before horus and tried to prevent what was happening but unfortunately he was ultimately unsuccessful and the corruption had taken root and horus's heart when horus finally awoke he had been healed and his allegiance had changed he set about orchestrating the downfall of the imperium now seven of the other primarks lorgar of the word bearers mortarion of the death guard fulgrim of the emperor's children puerto rabo of the iron warriors engron of the world eaters alfarius of the alpha legion and conrad kerrs of the nightlords would join with horus and pledge their allegiance to his cause now each of the traitor primarks realized that not all of their space marines would end up following them after their heresy had been revealed and thus it was determined which of the marines were likely to remain loyal and which ones would side with their primark with the loyalists identified the traitor legions would end up purging an enormous amount of their own men this would take place in the world of istvan iii when the marines that were selected for purging were sent down to the planet's surface to fight against the zeno species that had claimed it the mission was basically bogus and the real reason they had been set down was the traitors in orbit planned on wiping them out all in one fell swoop they would then inevitably virus bomb the planet and any marines that were not killed by the virus bombing were then set ablaze as the gas clouds were ignited and a massive wall of fire spread out in every direction incinerating everything on the planet's surface now there would be a couple of survivors here such as gavriel loken a luna wolf and one of the four members of the mournival but his story deserves its own video with the loyalists purge from their own legions the traitors would move on to istvan 5 and the events there would later be known as the drop site massacre the traders would end up calling for aid from many of the other loyalist legions specifically the legions that they felt they wouldn't be able to turn no matter how convincing their argument these included the legions and primarks of the iron hands the salamanders and the raven guard the combined forces of the traitor legions would open fire on their own brothers here and slaughter them to a man the primark ferris manus of the iron hands was killed by fulgrim during this battle but the primarks of the other two legions vulcan of the salamanders and corax of the raven guards would ultimately live on however their legions were reduced to a mere fraction of what they once were the raven guard for example were said to originally have 80 000 space marines but after the drop site massacre that had been reduced to 5 000 shortly after these events and halfway across the galaxy magnus of the thousand suns would seek to warn the emperor of horus betrayal he did this by astral projecting all the way to terra he felt like sending a message the old-fashioned way wouldn't get there in time or worse could have been intercepted by the traitors and shortly before this all psychic powers had been banned at the council of nikea so in attempting to warn the emperor he was directly going against his orders but magnus was doing what he felt he had to unfortunately he would end up being manipulated by the chaos god of treachery ziege and ended up destroying a psychic barrier around the soul system that the emperor had placed to keep the forces of chaos at bay magnus's astral form burst into the throne room unaware of what he was doing and hordes of demons followed him in the webway project was destroyed and the emperor ordered the space wolves and lehman russ to bring magnus in and answer for his crimes however the message was intercepted by horus who changed the order to kill magnus and the thousand suns and burned their world of prospero the space wolves followed their orders and decimated the planet in a desperate attempt to save his legion magnus made a pact with zinch who warped him into surviving sons off of prospero and to the planet of the sorcerers a world deep within the eye of terror later magnus would pledge loyalty to horus not out of some form of malice like his brothers but because he had directly been betrayed by the imperium the war master would lead a horrifically violent crusade against the imperium working ever closer towards terra and the imperial palace eventually the traitors would siege terra horus had been infused with the power of all of the chaos gods and in a great climactic final battle would engage the emperor in combat still seeing the good in his son the emperor would end up holding back not unleashing his full power hoping desperately that horus could still be saved and redeemed in this moment of weakness horus managed to land a mortal wound on the emperor and with that the emperor realized that there was no saving his son that he had been completely lost to him so the emperor unleashed his full power and obliterated horus so completely that not even his soul survived now in order to keep the emperor alive the astronomicon was quickly converted into a makeshift life support system the emperor's psychic mic would be used to power it and the machine would keep him from truly dying and here the emperor would remain for the next ten thousand years his physical body little more than a decaying corpse well his spiritual body was free to roam the warp and by all accounts has been growing stronger ever since now one of the greatest ironies of 40k is that since the emperor is a perpetual if he was to physically die he would be reborn this is a fact that the other members of the imperium were not aware of so over the last 10 thousand years they've been doing everything they can to keep him alive but if he had just been allowed to die he would have come back the trader legions would be pushed back from terra with the warmaster dead their siege had failed and in the period of time leading up to the 31st millennium an event known as the scouring would take place where all of the traitor legions were hunted down and forced into exile within the eye of terror after the heresy had fully concluded the imperium was left to put all of the pieces back together the emperor was gone the traitor legions had been pushed back and a period of rebuilding took place in order to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again a council of representatives known as the high lords of terra were implemented to rule in the emperor's place each coming from a different background and having different goals and objectives rather than the imperium being ruled by a single individual now that being said they were also supposed to quote unquote interpret the emperor's will additionally giliman primark of the ultramarines would propose that the space marine legions be broken up into chapters each of which containing no more than a thousand members the idea was that if treachery on this scale had happened once before then it could inevitably happen again and no single man should have the power of an entire space marine legion at his disposal many of the primarks did not agree with this namely vulcan of the salamanders whose legion had been reduced to just a mere fraction of its original power or rogueldorn of the imperial fist who viewed this action as a further weakening of the legion's strength after they had just concluded the bloodiest civil war in their history regardless of how they felt the book that giliman had pinned that outlined how all of the chapters should be organized known as the codex astartes was eventually implemented and all of the legions were broken up the 10 000 years between the horus heresy in the 41st millennium is where the bulk of 40k lore takes place this is where the majority of the books are set and you could make the argument that all of these events are definitely important but they're not critical to understanding the framework of the entirety that is 40k but there are a few details that i feel like you need to understand the first and most major is that during this time period we see all of the primarks inevitably end up disappearing and all for various reasons lehman russ dives into the warp headed off after the traitors corvus corax disappears in shame after he tried to rebuild his legion by cutting corners and inevitably accidentally made a whole bunch of raven guard abominations and giliman was mortally wounded by his brother fulgrim and subsequently put in stasis so it's kind of mirroring what happened with his father in the span of this 10 000 years we'll also see the damocles crusade where the tower introduced to the storyline first contact with the tyranids also occurs here oh yeah and the alarm clock for the necrons ends up going off and all their tomb worlds start coming back online but we're jumping ahead to the 13th black crusade because this is where the timeline finally started moving forward when we find ourselves in the 41st millennium the events of the horus heresy have slipped into legend most people alive during this time have no idea what transpired back then whether that be because of the intentional purging of specific documents a covering up of the truth or just that it happened so long ago that they don't remember this isn't true of the space marines they remember it all too well but where is most of the loyalist marines that are alive in the 41st millennium know of these events because of the records kept by their chapter however when it comes to the traitor marines that exist in the eye of terror time flows differently there and most of those marines were the very same individuals that participated in the horus heresy so they remember those events because they were actually there now the eye of terror was a pretty terrible place to live there really weren't a lot of resources and the traitor legions were far from united each one of them fracturing off into a bunch of different warbands led by various powerful warlords that were pretty much just pursuing their own interests in fact at this point chaos fought amongst itself more than it ever fought against the imperium or xenos now one of these space marines in particular was named abaddon and he had been the first captain of the luna wolves and one of the four members of horus's monaval during the horus heresy abaddon sought to unite the traitors and would end up reforming his legion drawing members from all of the various chaos warbands this legion would be called the black legion over the several thousand years that passed between the horus heresy in the 41st millennium abaddon or an appointed representative would lead what were known as the black crusades chaos incursions out of the eye of terror back into real space to attack various imperial worlds now for the longest time it looked like the traitors just weren't really very good at conquering as every single crusade ultimately failed to bring about the complete collapse of the imperium however it was revealed in the last few years that each one of these crusades had a much smaller objective that chaos was actually playing the long game the very first of these black crusades would take place in the 31st millennium about 500 years after the scouring now in response to these raids the imperium would end up fortifying the planet that was right outside of the eye of terror known as cadia and it became one of the most fortified positions in the entire imperium next to terra itself for 10 000 years kadia stood sentinel right outside of the eye ready to punish and push back anything that would try to leave it however in the 41st millennium all of the small victories that chaos had managed to achieve over the previous 12 crusades would come together in the 13th this was the period that saw abaddon's forces assault the canadian gate and in the end abaddon ended up sacrificing one of his blackstone fortresses an ancient alien spaceship made of the same material the necrons used back during the war in heaven to create their pylons he hurled it acadia like an artificial meteor the impact being absolutely apocalyptic and not just for the planet but for the vast network of blackstone pylons that had been built under cadia's surface millions of years ago by the necrons you see cadia wasn't existing just as a blockade for anything trying to come out of the eye of terror but that system of blackstone had actually been keeping it from growing with kadia destroyed the eye began to grow out of control and would eventually spread all the way across the galaxy this was known as the sycatrex meledictum or more commonly as the great rift it split the universe completely in half and all of the imperial worlds that were on the opposite side of terra were suddenly plunged into darkness and were cut off from the rest of the imperium to say this was a massive victory for the forces of chaos is a gross understatement this was single-handedly one of the most devastating events in the entire history of the galaxy and after the forming of the great rift is the time period we currently find ourselves in in the 40k timeline recent events have seen the resurrection of giliman who's come back to lead the imperium and is pretty horrified by what he's seeing as it's been completely dominated by superstition and religion where they worship his father as a god even though thousands of years ago he specifically told them not to during this time we would also see the rise of the primaris marines in the induction of giliman's indominus crusade which sought to reunite the worlds on the other side of the great rift but these are all topics that will dive in more in future videos and that's it that's everything that i feel like you need to understand about 40k in order to understand the storyline and the things that i chose to leave out it's not that they're not important it's just that things like the age of strife and the 13th black crusade end up being a lot more important than something like the damocles crusade you could read a hundred of the 40k novels and never touch anything in the war of the beast or the war for armageddon and you probably wouldn't be too confused but if you don't know what an stc is or know what the age of strife was you're probably going to get pretty confused because these things tend to come up a lot but what do you guys think do you feel strongly that an event that i left out should have been mentioned in this video if so let me know down in the comments what it is and why you feel so strongly about it and a lot of youtubers at the end of their video tell you to like and subscribe which if you want to do that it's super appreciated but more importantly go down to my comment section and leave a like on all the people that are leaving valuable information that you think are important for newcomers i know i personally tend to learn more about 40k lore from my comment section than anywhere else on the internet so let's turn this comment section into a valuable resource for new players and if you like this content and you want to help me make more in the future i do have a patreon listed down in my description it's because of the support from people like you on patreon that i was able to invest in an entire podcast set up i'm gonna make an announcement on that sometime in the future but just know that me and my friends are working on that right now until next time happy wargaming

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 2,387,958

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer story, warhammer timeline, 40k timeline, warhammer 40000 timeline, space marines, eldar, necrons, horus heresy, horus heresy timeline, primarchs, god emperor, emperor of mankind lore, imperium of man, birth of slaanesh, chaos gods, chaos gods lore, age of strife, the war in heaven, dark age of technology, dark age of technology lore, the 13th black crusade, cadia, fall of cadia, warhammer lore, 40k lore, warhammer 40k lore, astartes, stc

Id: B0Z4i1Sl94g

Length: 50min 35sec (3035 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022