A Complete History of the Unification Wars (Warhammer 40k & Horus Heresy Lore)

a beginning is a very delicate time for chroniclers such as I this is especially pertinent there is expectations vested in a beginning for it is the point we deem most important to the histories we are about to relate one must make sure that it is vested with an appropriate revenants for it is in a very real way the commencement of a great work the balances must all be correct there are subtleties that are inherent in its choosing for is not the flow of time a constant thing almost crushing in its inevitable onward March how can one as humble as I possibly decide at what point in its long long current relevancy begins yet I must or it is my calling ever has it been so and it is a responsibility I bear with no small amount of both pride and respect the depths of the throne world from whence I pen my records grown with the accumulated pressure of millennia of history like the soaring crumbling spires wherein dwells the quadrillions of human lives that live and die every second upon this world the Stygian depths piled with the accrued accretions of an antiquity that trickles ever downward ever downward at the dust and rubble of constantly repaired hab units years are folded onto years the past compacted and thrust ever down into the lowest librarians and archives tax until these decaying shelves can barely hold the wastes of that which once was but like the half-heartedly repaired an ill maintained world which they squat in humanity has long long ago forgotten its ability to even maintain what is buried here many have forgotten that such a place even exists and to those that remember such as the power the very concept this knowledge presents well it is the thing to be guarded jealously the Imperium of our Most Blessed God Emperor is a putrifying nightmare thing a wholesale corruption of what was once good and just about our species but there are almost none who can remember this memory is not a thing to be cherished it is a burden a worse a danger memory distracts one from the blind rush to survive to hold on to the precipice which it would seem is all we are capable of doing in this darkest millennium the night draws ever in and the enemies that would see us cast down even closer and yet here I labor in the catacombs of holy terror in the forever night of these archival stacks hunched over a ver degrees cogitate are older perhaps than many of the records I examine the task I have been set is monumental and the being who said it more monumental still my life has been lived during what has felt like the final minute of humanity's hour in this hateful galaxy yet now a son of the god Emperor himself has returned to us he has set about the task of saving this Imperium of ours and if one's paltry chronicles may aid this in any way then it is a work I shall happily give my own soul to see done we must understand our past lest we risk again the damnation that befell those who came before to that end to understand a fall one must first understand the rise to understand the tragedy of the Horus heresy one must first grasp the glory of the Great Crusade and the dreams of unity before that a beginning is a very delicate time that this Chronicle and all that may follow stand as testament to what came before a flame however paltry to cast back the encroaching dark know then that this is a record of the early history of Terra as we of the Imperium know it the throne world the cradle the being that sought to unite us the history of the unification wars the beginning we set ourselves for all intents and purposes is the gestation of the Imperium if you accessed one's records upon the Dark Age of Technology you will know then that the era is the 29th millennium Terra once the seat of the greatest stellar Empire it had ever commanded is a toxic radiation bathed wasteland we of the forty second millennium know it as the ecumene Oppel as' a city that carpets the entire planetary mass in its rotting bulk but those many millennia ago life was very different Terra's mighty hive stacks still sought the heavens its dank catacombs still buried deep within its crust but between them they only ash choked deserts and scorched earth inhabited by nomadic techno barbarian tribes Reavers hungry to prey upon any that strayed into their domain the 30 hives fared little better many constantly changing hands from one insane desperate demagogue the collapse of the human Empire during the Machine Wars of M 23 and 24 at severed terra from the fruits of her galactic domain she depended upon for her very survival as all of the Magnificent mechanisms of the Dark Age of Technology crumbled or failed or worse rebelled desperation had usurped all other human qualities and the rapidly collapsing qualities of the home world ward with each other for whatever scant resources they could claim pazely at first but then apocalyptically unleashing atomic toxicological and biogenic weaponry Terra's biosphere a fragile thing after century upon century of climactic change was annihilated under the inferno of humanity's downfall scoured of almost all flora and fauna save for those preserved inside weakening dome cities thus began 5,000 years where the planets tore at itself five long millennia of ceaseless conflict between ever more desperate factions tribes nations and war bounds it is not even possible to frame within words all that we as a species lost during this time the age of strife the long dark old night this era goes by many a name but all are evocative of the rampant devastation and lunatic violence of our species as darkest epoch it was a tale writ across the span of the galaxy for out in the void the last colonies of humanity fared a little better the warp the ethereal Nothing place that sea of souls through which all human faster-than-light travel is achieved and grown angry and hateful as the machine wars gutted out the tides and currents of this dimension were agitated by a roiling mass within its hidden depths a presence humanity knew naught of the effect was that all interstellar travel was completely severed the void craft of our species reduced to crawling around the incomprehensibly vast Galactic volume at sublight speeds worse yet the warp storms that raged under the fabric of reality were agitating the gene long latent within the human species the one that unlocks our psychic potential allowing those cursed with it to channel the very energy of the warp into our reality all across the galaxy men and women awoke to find themselves with power to literally user all natural laws channeling a force greater than any gun dominating the minds of others worse yet some were so blasphemously powerful as to tear holes in the fabric of space-time from whence the horrific predator creatures of the warp could enter our plane and sup upon mortal lives as it has done seemingly in cycles eternal the galaxy burned the once myriad lights of humanity set within the sea of stars burned brighter than the fires of their damnation before falling silent guttering out as a grasping tendrils of all night both figurative and in many ways literal fell upon their skies there had once been this belief our species held that the passage of time inevitably bent towards a battering a progress that this great arc was bearing humanity ever onwards towards utopia simple was it and we had need only to remain on course and betterment would be achieved for all what petty fools we were civilization and advancement is neither a natural state nor a guarantee of the flow of time we are not owed progress by the falling grains of sand the mere fact of the age of strife and all its horrors is proof enough humanity has throughout its long span risen to Heights and plunged into depths going from glorious zenith to dreadful nadir like a drunkard stumbling or a child's mood swings with no guiding hand upon the ship's tiller beyond our own moral and technological limits we have stumbled more times than we can even remember and one means that quite literally for every time we fall history and remembrance is one of the first casualties knowledge put to the flame in the opening salvos of whatever new Dark Age we have caused or fallen victim to time and time again it has been so but the age of strife begat one of the darkest eras our species has ever survived through poultry though our records of times before it maybe should one's words trend to hyperbole it is simply because one has little in the way to frame and express the horror of this time all hell's Devils allegorically and literally bestowed to the world civilization crashed into the dirt progress science learning justice law equality all were thrown upon the pyre in the name of survival or worse greed and power lust for just as it was an era of terrible invasions from with ours it was not just at the hand of the xenos or the demonic other that humanity would suffer our species has ever been willing to turn upon itself in times of primal pained desperation and old night was no exception age of strife Irit era was a world gone mad global insanity tearing at the foundations of human civilization with a savagery unimaginable by previous generations even in the depth of their worst nightmares it was during this time that Cardinal Tang the ethnic of the Indonesia bloc committed his geno purges annihilating Suede's of his subservient population for the crimes of inferior breeding against his genetic Dogma callaghan of Earth carved out a domain to rival all others with his sorcery fueled monster generals marching army is a billion strong across deserts a continent-wide a million banners flying in the atomic winds woolum the Reds debased followers conquered a quarter of the globe but were finally halted by warriors raised by a Nord Afric were lured known as key bucha said himself to have called lightning from the clouds and granted his warriors a strength of a dozen men northen doom the half genius half mad corruptor king unified the pacific basin under the banner of the pan pac empire even these names now half remembered eidelons of an age of unholy viciousness are but a few among so many other petty warlords kings and tyrants that lived and fought and bellowed and bled and died under the choked sky of our scarred homeworld records and chronicles are understandably fragmentary this is both a product of the devastating wars themselves which meted out untold destruction upon the hive cities of the planet that destroyed so much of the accumulated knowledge of humanity's past but also of deliberate post unification sequestering and redaction ISM the early Imperium in its admittedly understandable rush to bury the past and seize the new human age did much to eradicate the names and lives of those who had wrought such pain upon our world and one cannot blame them these trivial despots of ages past or best where we have consigned them to be forgotten under the weight of brighter and better days or brighter and better people it is just that they exist only as a footnote in dusty tomes notable only for their ignorance in resisting the coming embrace of unity regardless I am a chronicler first and one must do what one can even with the most hazy of histories in order to develop the fullest record one can know that this is done not for veneration of these hated names or regimes far from it if anything it is to better understand why they deserve their remembrance as history's villains and as things righteously scoured from the face of our holy terror the map of Terror currently presented upon your screens is the result of years of work on behalf of its creator to provide a better understanding of the layout of age of strife era polities and states this is of course as best as they can be discerned based upon records scoured from surviving archival stacks it should be considered an estimate at best albeit one founded in good scholarship this is additionally an approximation of the status of the planets in the final years of old night at the end of five thousand years of ceaseless civil strife across the now blasted and scarred wastes of terror as is obvious from the map the oceans of Terror once abundant were simply gone radiated vaporized or stolen by resource mad demagogues when remains of the deep basins that once held abundant precious water are vast and sparsely inhabited wastes and deserts well it may strike a citizen of the present day is simply unthinkable Terra was once far far emptier than the city planet it is now before the world hive was razed to bury the past underneath countless tons of rock quarries and plasteel the wilderness of Old Earth was dotted with river tribes techno barbarian whole debts and what scant Nomad clans could eke out an existence they're taking our starting point in the south eastern most hemisphere we see the location of the long dead sub equatorial maglev clans of pan pas crow flying the edges of the southern pacific rad wastes raids by this clan were frequently mounted upon this region's major power the state of hi Brazil dominating a plateau that contains some of the last precious atmospherically sealed forestry industrialized far beyond the capacity of the clans and tribes of the wastelands it maintained power largely by geographical isolation from the worst conflicts of the era the Atlin wastes bordered this realm once one of the mightiest oceans of old earth now ashen westwards the plains of merica stretched out words its hives simile isolated and known for their extreme wealth in comparison to the rest of the planet through coin and intrigue did they keep the worst of the world at bay although often only just as tails hint of genocide subjected upon them to prevent their bountiful wealth from being contributed to undesirable recipients across the --at land uh stable squat the Nord Afric conclaves a region population dense and going to this often horrific lis war-torn to their north the old region of europa a torn mass of scar tissue it's powerful techno barbarian state meted out brutality all around being seemingly in a constant state of war with both the north africa conclaves and their neighbours in frank for their towards the pole the most northerly polity is also one of the most powerful upon the planet old Albia was a land of ash choked castrum cities and the people of old and proud lineage possessed of a martial temperament that held the pan-pacific hordes of the unspeakable king at bay old albion 'he's also retained the secret of rudimentary power armor cladding their soldiers in this technology and dubbing them Ironsides all of whom were renowned for their durability and ferocity upon the field of battle nestled nearby in the grim thule and ice basin were the city crawlers of the thule in tribes renowned worldwide as perhaps the most resourceful and tenacious survivors this hell planet could produce as we travel easterly we pass over the snow bound realms of the Nordic whose people constantly ward in the name of one or other zealous demagogue spouting whatever religions held sway at whatever particular time nearby the hunter clans of the Jew tricking bull clinging to an existence at the edge of the Nano toxic pontus yuck sinus before our course sees us passing into the ethniki of the Caucasus wastes whose mutated you Genest oligarchs ruled a herd of subservient gene stock chattel people often captured in raids mounted by their psyche earth rules to the southern a Khomeini Empire whose populations had managed to remain one of the most unblemished by the radiation storms and rampant mutation cycles that scourge other techno barbarian states the earth narky was also known to afford constantly to keep back the hordes of ish the mightiest and perhaps most numerous state upon Terra during this period spread over the largest of the former continents Hersh's strength lay in its sheer numbers as it was markedly unadvised technologically even by the severely regressed state of the era to this end they preyed mercilessly upon the neighboring terawatt clans who by contrast with the greatest forge savants of the era crafting terrible weapons of war in the depths of marinara nya to sell to any whose coin was handsomely generous further yet to the east the last of the dominant hive states squatted the Indonesia clock who yard from religious demagoguery to military junta and finally the vast lands of the Pan Pacific Empire who would soon began of the most diabolical tyrants the planet would ever see to provide acolytes with some context as to the wars that raged between these peoples and tribes and states and dictatorships I shall render unto this record an extract adapted where needed to account for the linguistic drift in proto gothic from The Chronicles of urge these annals surviving almost impossibly from age of strife Irit era yet to the present day tell a lurid account of the Wars of the techno barbarian nation against their enemies in the Nord Africa conclaves Shang Cal slaughter general - Callaghan of ICH the great Philistine tyrant prosecuted these vicious campaigns to obtain technology the conclaves possessed that vastly out matched that of the earlier Asian foes the techno gods of the hive cities had striven hard to preserve secrets of the long dead Dark Age of technology for their own it appears that to do so Shanghai fielded not only the ravenous hordes of ICH but the mercenary formations from the principalities that bordered callaghan's territory but the Chronicles referring to his employ of the tupolev Lancers and the red engines presumably some form of mechanized cavalry and armored formations given their nomenclature but given the state of terror in those years such names may be allegorical or fanciful and we may only guess the truth of their nature may be far more a sort Erik his formations were wielded by Shang Cal to great effect in the eighth battles that marked his approach to the conclaves culminating in the dreadful Battle of zoser hive for nine days and nine nights did the red engines despoil the carefully maintained agro panic Bay's of the outskirts rendering precious greenery back to deserts before unleashing crude and dirty atomic weaponry indiscriminately into the city's heart the gardens of zoser burned in radiation fire only for their ashes to be trampled by the charge of the tupolev Lancers at the head of a slavering horde of techno enhanced whiz troops from the wastelands of urge yet the tale of the Nord Afric does not end there for the Hierophant masters of the hive had barricaded themselves within their last redoubt resisting the hordes being at their gates Shang Cal frustrated at this resistance dispatched the Lord Marshal of the Lancers an old Kaiser to annihilate the whole - it is at this point that the Chronicles begad first mention of what should always be borne in mind during one's examinations of what scraps remain from this time as Kaiser advanced upon the fortress his own aerial critics had warned of the hero fans dreaded MAGIX from the admittedly archaic language it can be inferred Kaiser possessed readers of dreams or less prosaically seikar humans possessed of foresight powers that allow them to scry the immediate chronological future branchings of localized time these suckers warned their lord of the enemy's own war fueled powers and just as the dreamers had foretold the hero fans unleashed them as the earth scheitz drew near a horde of insectoid creatures uncountable sky blackening descended upon the invaders they clogged engine intakes and weapon barrels they swarmed around the humans who though armored found their every crack exploited as swarms of chitin s bodies pushed Eden to drown their eyes mouths throats it is said that water boiled though there was no fire he said men turned to stone or turn to liquid were still by reading from the text directly where the flagging insects did not crawl or madness lie so men did blister and recompose them own selves unto a terrible likeness of demons such fowl pests as the e fleet and the Genii that persists in the silent desert places in such visage they turned upon their kin and Nord then upon their bloody bones it would appear that demonic possession as we of the modern era are cursed to know it as was a spectra that blighted Tara just as it devoured the remainder of the galaxy when shankar learned of this defeat and the loss of his best mercenary forces he flew into a rage demanding his wrath singers attend to him while the text seems to assume the one reading it would understand the concept or we are left with our frustratingly vague descriptions it appears their leader a Magister named Maffeo or day engaged the hero fans of zoser in some sort of remote likely etheric conflict with the passage invoking frightening Li readily that the base names of primordial deities ones I shall not repeat unless they assail the wards of one's own sanctum for five days this battle of the mind and soul raged the sky began to tear until at last it turned a blood-red snow thick and hard fell upon the one scorching desert and out of the blizzard to the earth shite forces claimed to hear the voices of the dead cursing the living it is entirely unclear from the garish language quite how the war ended but what it does make clear is that it came at the cost of all the wrath singers of ish save for or de and proclaims in triumph that the presence of the hero Vance was extinguished utterly their fortress reduced to nought but a crater of rock that had turned to glass under the assault of unnatural and foul energies this event was the terror of mid m30 a planet of warp crazed sorcerer kings slaughter lords Gino oligarchs Tech blasphemers and genocide bishops it was a world of suffering where resources were scant and life cheaper than the fundamental things needed to sustain it our once verdant cradle was a radiation-soaked ruin of decrepit hunters scavengers clinging to existence against all the hell that could be thrown at them gone was progress justice was dead hope buried long ago while one has committed to this record the names of the surviving cities and states there were more so many more that perished in the fires of old night torn from the pages of history and they're very memories ground into dust alongside the bones of their slaughtered people what remained were merely the obstinate or most vicious amongst those who could persist upon this wreck of a world and they those blessed remainders it was they who would witness the coming of him the Lord of lightning the master of mankind the Emperor of humanity a full biography about the Emperor is a work for another time should such an account even be possible what is known of him is that he emerged at some point in the later centuries of m-29 or possibly m30 was another warlord upon Terra vying for dominance this is the first time humanity's histories such as they are speak of him as a giant of a man but decked in armor of gold possessed of an ability to inspire humanity that seemed to reach beyond simple human charisma of who he was where he was from to whom he had been born they and thus we know not it is likely many did not seek or care to ask for he only was ever to be addressed as the Emperor even in those days all who sought to oppose him scorned this it's nothing King this pretender there have been many many throughout history to acclaim such a lofty title reaching above their station and talents in a vain effort to impress or cow surely the enemies of the lightning Lord thought he was no different yet different he was impossibly different he was in a manner that would soon become obvious the most powerful psycho humanity had ever produced both in terms of sheer power and the control which he was able to exert over his talents he set forth to unite the world in its totality for the first time in human history under one man and one banner he spoke of unity true and final and of the manifest destiny of our species as masters not only of our world but of so much more thus began the unification Wars the Emperor's initial victories lie unrecorded or at least impossible to precisely paint upon any timeline but based upon the eventual location of the Imperial Palace and what we know of the estar t's project we can infer that his initial base of operations would likely have consisted of somewhere in the mountains of he Malaysia the lofty peaks of Terra's highest range befitted the soon-to-be master of the world after all and beyond this provided a highly defensible location from where the campaign's of planetary conquest could be mounted in winning these victories we can infer the Emperor's own initial polity wherever our whatever it may have been was his primary source of light lay baseline human man power but also were the first stock of his own custodians genetically enhanced warriors of simply peerless craft and power were born from the Li geo custody's were however less a military formation and more akin to the Emperor's body cards and life wards during this time as the nature of their gene craft elaborated further upon in a record of mine is painfully slow it is quite lightly subjugation of the outlying earthshine clans presented the best source for both initial territorial expansion and manpower for the newly founded hosts of unity as well as rough and hardy genetic stock for the Emperor's gene labs which were beginning to produce the very first Thunder warriors no history of the unification Wars could possibly be complete without acknowledging the incredible role these soldiers played in them nor indeed their impact upon the future of the Imperium the Thunder Warriors were not the first genetically enhanced soldiers in human history far from it an kind had millenia previously unlocked the secrets of the human genome dancing amongst the strands to pick and pluck and alter the Dark Age of technology was reelin twith casual to extreme genetic enhancements as gene science eliminated diseases prolonged life and crafted human forms suited to the extreme environments of the galaxy during the desolation of old Knight however arts that had become refined were lost forever and what scraps of learning remained were further debased by reckless and rampant misuse Jean craft became a wicked thing the tool of despots madmen and amoral flesh Smith's who simply sought to make weapons no matter the cost although the Thunder Warriors were indeed the latter they of the Emperor's first attempt in his unparalleled genius to build an army of geno troops he and humanity could rely upon an army that would follow orders instead of simply being Jean beasts to unleash upon the enemy never to be caged or collared again Tara had had little but monsters for millennia as the desperation of its flesh Smith's had seen them turn to hideous fusions of warped sorcery and genetic enhancement the Emperor needed soldiers not researchers and he by and large was successful the thunder warriors first organized into 20 regiments of a size not recorded by history were the first and finest genetically-engineered legions humanity had seen they were stronger faster than the average man by an almost inordinate degree and possessed resistance to the myriad dangers of the terran environment be it radiological storms chem tornadoes or mendicant nano plagues their creation employed rudimentary drug induced cycle conditioning to make them more pliable to orders as well as enhancing the warlike tendencies of the original subjects as many were plucked from the most brutal and importantly genetically stable slaughter tribes and Reaver clans the Thunder legions also referred to by the high gothic cognizant Li geocode Aegis were a complete paradigm shift in the military history of Terra and presented a massive sea change for what passed for the geopolitical arena of the blasted wastelands of its surface to aid their enhanced biology the emperor had made early entreaties to the terawatt clans while their initial resistance was fierce the open arms of the Lord of lightning rebuked they could not stand before the armies of unity and with their capitulation came pledges to arm the same regiments that had driven they and their machines to defeat their first contribution was to be the first mark of power armor made specifically for the frame of the Thunder warriors the mark 1 Thunder Armour rudimentary at best this armor was nevertheless effective in its brute simplicity much like they who wore it while exposed from the rear and providing little in the way of protection for its own subsystems it's advanced ablative nature would provide the Thunder warriors a much needed advantage as they took to the field against Jean bulked monstrosities Dark Age weaponry and the lunatic blood hunger of the enemies they were about to face command structure was rudimentary but rigid enforced primarily through the brute force and primal leadership skills of each Thunder legions supreme commander known as a Primark title I am sure will surprise acolytes of the modern era it must be noted that despite possessing a title redolent with far more meaning and significance than one need elaborate on here the generals of the Thunder legions were not genetically tied to their forces in the same way in the same way as the far more famous men who bore their name later would be the gen Han sment of the Thunder warriors was altogether cruder and had no such systems built into their ascension and maintenance as the years and decades of the wars tempered them they began to assume unofficial non-numerical titles often signifying a role or me.n they had come to specialise in or embody the forth of the Li geo cottages was dubbed the iron Lords for their skills at siege warfare for example and other almost too disturbing similarity I'm sure students will find rather remarkable [Music] the Thunder regiments would in time come to be aided by the foundation of regiments of baseline humans many of whom would draw from proud martial traditions of an ethnic group cultural lineage or simply mercenary legacy their names ring loud upon the honor rolls for they were to be the first of the exert us Imperialis the Imperial Army the Scarlet in for Lt hose ours the Trojan Volta where's the green and silver cloaked qui Halleck guard the Lucifer blacks the cush tune niganda of old ind the entirely mechanised corps - cavalry all specialized in one area of warfare or another for the emperor in his wisdom knew he could not rely just upon his thunder warriors to carry the world alone the majority of these regiments would be considered roughly human baseline although they possessed by no means a uniformity upon this front many incorporated technological or genetic enhancements into their structures in some way shape or form the G no 5 - chiliad for example bent the genetic stalks of their intake populations to the maximum allowances manpower demands could accept the regimens Eugenia stations carefully screened candidates ensuring hearty our bulk stock was allocated for frontline lineage batches while also ensuring any females with a minor psychic talent were marked for introduction to the command and intelligence ox or role it was said although must be noted largely with pride by members of the chiliad itself that the rigid genetic monitoring the regiment maintained would serve as the inspiration for the emperor's future plans the fires of the master of mankind's ambition were not to be contained and soon the unification Wars had become a truly global conflict as the hosts of the lightning and Raptor banners spread outwards in all directions bringing the Emperor's words to every one of Terra's petty tyrants submit or be annihilated the kingdoms of Terra would kneel or they would be scour from the face of the planet this was the Emperor's promise and to those who resisted the destiny of mankind he delivered it there were times however that the cost was high while the demagogues and priests and kings of these realms were not compared to the Lord of lightning they were off to still mighty possessed of either advanced technology hoarded for millennia or wicked sorceress powers the mad priest King mo lallan Sen ruler of the Nordic conclaves pitched his psychic beasts against the might of the Thunder regiments at the Battle of the red frost forcing their way through mutated Horrors pilgrim hordes and which marked thralls the Emperor and his golden custodies led the forces of unity to victory but only at the cost of 7581 thunder warriors the tyrant Ilham the red was only brought low by the Emperor personally imprisoned for evermore in the depths of the himalaya for his crimes against the species the Albion war clans resisted resolutely deploying their power armored soldiers of such advanced capability that they and their armored war engines were able to hold even the Thunder warriors at bay for considerable time the cost of the campaign became so high that the Emperor presented himself before the Albion Lords personally to appeal to their honor and to deliver the promise of unity to them their acceptance of these terms was perhaps one of the few times diplomacy was actually to work during the span of the unification Wars would that it had been otherwise but alas these were dark and terrible times and inflicted dark and terrible suffering because of it disaster was not unknown to the unity hosts during these years the Emperor's first attempt to rid Eurasia of the stain that was the ëthe narky of the Caucasus wastes resulted in the unprecedented loss of over 20,000 thunder warriors and nearly 1 million troops of the Imperial Army and other formations the unification Wars were not to be won with the tools the Emperor had begun with luckily for Humanity the Emperor had not been idle in the years surrounding 700 M 30 and the depths of the Himalaya hidden from the eyes of an entire species the Emperor had conceived his grandest ever feat of genetic engineering he had not been idle since the creation of his thunder warriors far far from it they had provided him with not only the necessary tools to win his first great victories but also hard data and experience on what would be needed to win the Wars of unity and indeed and delivered unto him the territories populations and resources he now needed for his next step combining geno secrets of the Dark Age of Technology biome antics Icona and his own peerless genius the emperor prepared to usher on to the world his own pry marks 20 sons mapped and grown from his own genetic template to be the generals he would need to carry his Imperium to its hegemony the details of their creation are either forever lost to us or archived under such privileges as they may simply be considered as good as but what can be established is that these beings represented an unprecedented fusion of genetic engineering and psychic manipulation possible only for a being of such unassailable psychic might and control as the Emperor they were to be however not simply attendants to him like his artfully constructed custodians no they were to serve as templates and progenitors for entire legions of a wholly new type of genetically enhanced soldier the Emperor had fought and bled beside his Thunder warriors and while he no doubt could take pride in their effectiveness the shortcomings were by this stage in the war quite obvious the crude nature of their biological enhancements ravaged their human bodies burning them out and causing complete cellular or organ failure within a few years of their ascension worse yet they were even before this prone to mental instability their psycho conditioning doing little to stem the damage their boosted adrenal systems and indeed frequent combat against things of purest nightmare ravaged upon their psychological profiles they were a means to an end a stopgap and had likely always been conceived of being so and from all that he had learned from them and all the secrets and technology and Jean craft they had helped him win the Emperor was building his new breed of warrior via starties colloquially to be known as the space marines despite laboring in the utmost ironclad secrecy in the depths of the world itself disaster was to strike while it is completely impossible for one to confirm how the pry marks were stolen from their gestation chambers as infants scattered by warp borne magics to the far corners of the galaxy and completely beyond the Emperor's reach quite how this clear act of sabotage to the Lord of lightning use erupt even his prescience one shudders to contemplate but perhaps expectedly the Emperor took such an apparently mortal loss in his stride for he had what he ultimately needed twenty genetic templates of unassailable purity the pry marks project had borne fruit and the estar t's project could flourish thanks to its efforts and this was escalated into full operating capacity as soon as time would allow the formation of the Legion as a starting is by city real time reckons to have occurred around 780 m30 in the final two decades of the unification Wars though many of the emperor's foes had been cast low by the Thunder warriors there were whole doubts that yet resisted unities pledge and they were the most vicious even hated Terra could muster while full Legion as a start ease ascension and development will be detailed in a later record it is important to note here that the estar T's method allowed for a certain element of mass production to be brought into the field of trans human soldier II consider if you will the Thunder warriors as akin to a town blacksmith or gunsmiths creations while the austerities were the product of a full line manufacturer while the legions were given numerical designations that gave the order in which they were founded it should be noted that all were founded roughly contemporaneously as the Emperor knew he could spare little in the way of time to test the at this point theoretical roles each would fulfill but being said the first or Primus Legion later to become the dark angels were the first to provide the template the others would follow namely the selection of a specific population that would be subjected to experimental implantation of a star T's organs and physiology each stage of creation would result in expanded implantation on increasingly larger groups of potential as starties candidates the last of these introductory stages was the Alpha induction which was believed to be the first non experimental implantation essentially the creation of a proto Legion of a star T's at minimum fighting strength ready to take to the field in the Emperor's name given the time frame in which the estar T's were first to take to the field and corroborating this with surviving records of their first combat actions we can presume that the initial creation phases of the legions happened almost stunningly rapidly the proto legions were deployed as soon as they were combat ready often achieving massive victories or breaking a foe of unity that had long resisted even the might of the old hundred or the Thunder legions thus Africa liberation was spearheaded by the twelfth Legion achieving through unprecedented bloodshed a victory that had been feared would have taken many many more years the state of or iakh fanatical in its devotion to the ideal that it alone possessed the divine right of Terran rulership was annihilated in a single night by the forces of the 17th Legion to better send a message that religion and superstition had had its day and that day was now past the Pioneer companies of the fifth Legion disappeared into the wastes of Terra's hinterlands prosecuting mendicant recidivists uncontained mutant hordes and relaying intelligence on potential terror lands back to the hosts of the Imperial Army The Witches of the Himalayan wind collars were finally purged from the seat of the world by the seventh Legion while the stygian under hives of the Terran sink cities saw the eighth Legion stalking their shadows purging whatever criminals had decided to go to ground as unities like purged them from the surface terror itself was however not the only theater for the legions nearer orbital space contained several ancient but still occupied orbital plates akin to slabs of cities cast into the void these two were to be reclaimed and with stunning rapidity yet would serve the Emperor's legions for an altogether different purpose the pacification of Luna Terra's sole natural satellite was the first extra planetary colony of humanity a gateway to the soul system and the deep void beyond and in this age of Darkness the soul realm of the lunar gene cults of the salon are long isolated in their sealed hab domes the cultists had over millennia turned flesh craft into to based religion structuring their orbital society around cloning and genetic enhancement they stubbornly had refused all entreaties the emperor had made towards them knowing full well that the Lord of lightnings ambitions extended to the control of Luna as well as Terra the seizure of all the knowledge and technology thousands of years had seen the sellin our soul masters of what they were not prepared for however was the arrival of the legion as a starties as the 7th and 13th legions mounted a frontal assault on the lunar Defense Grid the sixteenth in a tactic that would later come to define them led a spear tip strike force comprised of their entire force of arms cutting power to their crafts engines far beyond enemy sensorium range and drifting silently towards the surface as their fellow legions continued their attack thus L&R for all their Gen hands intellects and biological weapon forms were only able to withstand the 16th brutal shock assault for six hours before final capitulation was signaled despite their undeniable efficiency it was not always stunning victory that met the legions during the terrible assault on the tempest galleries the 18th Legion one of the most numerous already was tasked with breaking the eighth narky of the Caucasus who had been responsible for inflicting almost crippling defeats upon the Emperor's armies for so many years leading a subterranean operation made possible by their advanced physiology the 20,000 warriors of the legion fought through anti chambers older than many Terran hives meeting with ferocious resistance from even older thinking machine sentries caged in by the earth Nagi the automata reaped a horrific toll upon the Legionaries they fought but eventually the xviii carried the day collapsing the power fields that had shielded the earth narky for so many decades and allowing the hosts of unity to sweep in and purge the caucasus hives it came at a dreadful cost with less than a thousand austerities of the 18th legion remaining by this period in the unification Wars earliest records show that the cohesion amongst the civilian and planetary government not ignored by the Emperor by any means was beginning to strengthen the imperial palace the gigantic continent fortress was raising from the peaks of the Himalaya from the Tower of the hegemon any who wished could watch the walls take shape the Dome of the sanatorium Imperialis form and countless atmospheric processors render the ones choked region habitable once more the first four High Lords were appointed by the Lord of lightning the Lord militant commander of the Imperial armies the Chancellor of the estate Imperium the provost marshal of the division Arbutus and the master of the administration the latter two were instrumental in the projection of Imperial civilian power during this period as the arbiters peacekeepers were a sorely needed police force for a planet that had seen naught but lawlessness from millennia and the administration the bureaucrats responsible for keeping the armies of unity supplied fed and marching together before High Lords formed the top of a system of government at the civilian level subservient to the Emperor's military regime yes but crucial for its continuing survival and future expansion there was however no credence given to the idea of ever implementing the ancient system of a Democratic mandate as the imperial hierarchy deemed that Humanity of this time in far too much peril for the masses to be granted to the means to dictate their own course it was an autocracy and ever more would be power devolved downwards from this Council of terror to the Lord civilian regional governors assuming responsibility for Suede's of terra and below them provincial Magisters temporal commanding provinces roughly drawn up and equating two former Terran polities by virtue of ease of power transfer if nothing else the system was imperfect being essentially an experiment at a world government on a planet that barely remembered the concept this apparatus was nominally in charge of enforcing the Lexx Imperialis first codified imperial legal and judicial system but still leaned heavily on the military of the empire for assistance where even the heavily armed but now ill experienced divisio arbiters could not bring lawbreakers to heel the High Lords themselves were in some ways quite contrary to the Emperor's own wishes chafing under the supreme authority the regime was ever ready to exercise the Lord Chancellor as master of coin constantly despaired at the material cost of say constructing the Imperial Palace while the first provost marshal openly aired her discontent that the master of mankind had chosen for his personal sigil the wraptor and lightning bolt standard by her words Eagles seek only to feather their own Aries and storms do not but destroy the breaking of the earth narky had marked one of the last outright apocalyptic engagements of the unification Wars where once battles had spread the length and breadth of continents their aftermaths clogging the ocean trenches with mountains of dead resistance now crumbled as the last enemies were shattered the Astarte is granted to the emperor a quantum leap in terms of time commitment alone as they broke the backs of enemies long a thorn in the lord of lightning side callaghan of ich des part of the great techno barbarian hordes was slain the despotic cardinal tang of the indonesia clock whose warped quest for genetic purity and ushered in a reign of bloody pogroms death camps and genocides was captured and thrown into the Imperial penal colony of new sicán began where his identity was quickly discovered and his body torn limb from limb by his fellow inmate finally the last holes of northen doom tyrant of the Pan Pacific Empire surrendered our were annihilated the tyrant himself executed in the shattered ruins of his realm legend tells that the Captain General of the lis geo custody's constant in Val d'Or had personally ordered the half-mad half genius put to death for his survival was deemed too dangerous a threat to the rule of Imperial law over Terra history is unsure of the final engagement of the wars as records from this period appear deliberately tampered with for reasons to be elucidated upon later the massacre at Gao Turei in Frank is a candidate as this incident was precipitated by a religious uprising aimed at denying the Emperor the expansion of his secular Imperial truth ideology the Thunder legions were sent in to crush it five thousand in number annihilating fifty thousand rebels in turn demonstrating that there was room for neither recidivism nor religion in the Emperor's brave new world another possibility and in this humble chroniclers opinion perhaps the most valid it's the final siege of the kingdom of urato and the Battle of mount ararat official imperial histories penned by contemporary history tours and laser embellished by the iterators of the Great Crusade speak of this conflict as having seen the Honda warrior Eric Tyrannis leading the last remaining soldiers of the Emperor's firstborn up the blood-soaked slopes fighting tooth and nail against an enemy whose nature and indeed purpose goes unrecorded 100 titles had Tyrannis most glorious and renowned of the Thunder legions the butcher of scandia the victor of god ra the last rider the throne Slayer he was a legend in baroque powered armor a veteran of a thousand battlefields and it was he who planted the Raptor and lightning bolt banner of unity upon the mountains peak toppling the last and final foe of the master of mankind and ushering in with the blood of him and his kin the age of the Imperium a pleasant lie that I do not mean to cast aspersions upon the work of historic hours past or at least not all of them they may have simply had a truth dictated to them by men in such a position to do so as has sadly always been the way of things I do not mean to cast aspersions upon the work of Imperial iterators or at least not some of them there were a unique hybrid of chaplain mendicant ideologue and outright propagandist and they had their role in our great history as much as any the rest of us the truth of the matter such as it is has only emerged through access of the logos historic aversion to macro archives once completely sequestered it would appear from records oft contradictory but all dreadful in import that the Thunder Warriors did indeed take Mount Ararat for the banners of unity and it additionally appears that the majority of those that continued to survive their rapidly decaying physical condition were gathered for that explicit purpose it is likely it would have been seen as the greatest of honors to them they as the original children of unity the first hosts of the lightning Lord to place the capstone upon the wars that had claimed uncountable numbers of their brethren and to carry humanity forth into an era that they had bled for for so long their progenitor however had darker purposes in mind with his new legion ezza starties performing admirably and accomplishing feats the thunder warriors never had nor could the emperor had in secrets ruled that their time had passed and these tools had outlived their usefulness Erik Tyrannis and his brethren fell not to the foe but to those they had thought kin both of purpose and a family the liji o custodies and unnamed elements of the legion ezza starties called the thunder warriors marking in transhuman blood at the end of an era and the violent horrific glorious birth of another across Terra pre-planned assaults on the last of the Thunder legions repeated this pattern with the Warriors of a war that was now guttering out dying within sight of all they had striven for it was however not a clean wipe of the slate and it did in fact my records recently uncovered precipitate a grand political crisis in the nascent Imperial government he first High Lords to bear the title provost marshal of the division Arbutus who-whoa makanda wire was simply appalled by what she saw as nothing short of a power grab by the litchi o custody's she and her colleagues in the other high Lordships declared that captain general Val d'Or known by the senate Oram to be the emperor's executioner's ex enjoying this dark period was personally attempting to usurp the rule of the still fresh lex Imperialis by exterminating seemingly at his own behest an entire branch of the imperial military she was perhaps understandably terrified at what she saw as the specter of the age of strife risen anew of a dictator blood Lee seizing the reins of power through a genocide as had happened time and time and time again candor wire and aware that the order was from the Imperial Household itself as the emperor was abroad on campaign utilized her formidable political power to provide sanctuary for the last remnants of the Thunder legions under at this point nominal command of their last Primark you shoten she bade them do nothing short of march upon the imperial palace itself to bring the seemingly uncontrollable custodian to heel whether or not this was ever aimed to have been effective is somewhat move the conversation was predictably disastrous however noble are gaped lessly misguided canned wires intentions were however much she believed such a show of force may have shamed valdore into submission the captain general was completely unwilling to brook any disagreement and set 10000 starties freshly created from the emperor's gene labs upon the besieging thunder warriors none survived the culling of the thunder warriors is an actor that many including the Emperor himself appear to have gone to great lengths to purge from the pages of history it is from this admittedly far gone vantage point understandable it would have been a dire blow to the authority of the newly minted Lord of Terra for its to have been known he played so callously with the lives of his subjects especially at such a crucial time in history no doubt there were fears amongst Imperial circles he would appear to many as another matt.taryn autocrat instead of the role of the sole and true Savior of the species while it is easy to look upon such an act as a brutal genocide of a tyrant it must be examined within not only context but also extant evidence to gain a full perspective there are numerous passages detailing incidents involving mentally unstable Thunder warriors succumbing to almost berserker light states mid-battle refusing orders are disciplined in doing so and creating issues for Imperial forces constant invalid or zone journals speak of his disgust at their butchery noting an instance where an extermination of a kingdom soldiery expanded outwards to complete genocide of the civilian population their biology was similarly unstable as their gen Han streaks were the product of a template forged in cruder times and with crueler technology hot housed flesh crafts and essentially indiscriminate recruitment from techno barbarian populations or to aspects of Imperial genetically enhanced soldiery the Astarte is very much addressed there is indeed a laterally occurring example that deftly illustrates the threat they may have represented to the Imperium if gone on addressed several years after unification the twelfth Legion war hands were dispatched under orders of the Emperor himself to quell an uprising that had taken place on a solar asteroid prison colony known as Cerberus much to the surprise and horror of Imperial command the insurrection was being carried out by a group calling themselves the date tar all of whom were in fact thunder warriors though ravaged by biological and physical degeneration they had seized the asteroid and were now its saw rulers their annihilation came at an absurdly high cost with each of the date Tarr claiming the lives of four to five legionaries this is the only recorded incidence beyond the palace engagement of a star teased directly combating thunder warriors from a position of equal footing and it quite viscerally highlights the credible danger a full-blown insurrection of dangerously unstable Imperial soldier II would have represented the Thunder legions were fundamentally unreliable despite the tales that may be told of their heroism loyalty and bravery what does not mean to do them insult or injustice with these words indeed the stories told of Eric Tyrannis are noble even alongside the greatest heroes of the earliest Imperium but they were monsters created to fight monstrous soldiers of terrible brutality for an age of terrible brutality that they managed in many cases to rise above such violence and strove to embody the truest ideals of unity even to the end should not be forgotten and to one's mind should absolutely be how history remembers them the last of the dictators were toppled the last of the witch clans were expunged the last mutant hordes were put to flame the last rampant thinking machines demolished for scrap and the stones of the last Church ground to dust the armies of the Emperor covered every corner of the globe and extended beyond to the orbital plates and the silvery sphere of Luna Terra was for the first time in uncountable millennia together under one banner the Raptor and lightning bolt flew from every pennant the unification wars were over and the Emperor was Lord and Master over the birth world of the human race there was naturally the specter of recidivism our of populations and regimes pledged loyal attempting to seize the chance to turn their backs upon their old measures were taken and organizations enshrined in order to better consolidate the power of the Imperial Household the imperial military was strengthened through the merging of various unification Wars era command systems under the umbrella of the division militaries under the direct purview of the Emperor's own war council itself an assembly of the highest commanders of the media custody's exert us Imperialis and legion as the starties the custody's however the watchful eyes of the emperor expanded their secret intelligence network through their every division while lurking in the shadows the newly founded officio assassin Oram a collection of the most vicious and effective assassin clades on Terra were poised to deliver final Imperial justice to any who required the ultimate reprimand military occupation of much of the globe was still a necessity but where the recalcitrants of certain populations let them spit in the faces of the arbiters it was soon a sayed by the Astarte x' although not through direct policing it should be noted identification of specific populations deemed at risk of insurrection allowed legion recruitment to levy them for sources of manpower both strengthening the legions and bleeding these populations of the young males they would have traditionally fielded against their enemies the 3rd legion for example took almost exclusively for its body neophytes from the scions of Terra's aristocratic bloodlines while the 13th first cog no men the war born was rather literal owing to its practice of recruiting from the most warlike and independent techno barbarian clans these populations not brought to heel but forced to surrender by near annihilation were deemed especially dangerous by the division militaries especially now that there were so many who were reduced to inhabiting refugee camps orphaned populations bitter from defeat from such groups as the pan paw crow maglev clans and the families of the mid Africa oligarchy xiii eagerly recruited while for other legions such diverse cultural and genetic backgrounds would have been presented as an almost unthinkable risk to stability of Intel a peculiar quirk in the 13th gene seed saw those implanted displaying notable trends towards formations of hierarchies military cohesion and deference to authority figures by its rigorous application the restive and potentially treacherous were quelled brought by genetic machination into the Imperial fold as ironically enough its most disciplined and finest soldiers it has been noted that owing to the fact the 13th Legion apparently saw no frontline combat during unification save for the pacification of Luna such recruitment was likely to have been a deliberate weapon to subdue these populations in an admittedly highly efficient manner with some going so far as to dub the practice the final weapon of unity it should not however be understated the degree to which the unification Wars succeeded in their purpose unity was quite literal and in all aspects not just militarily and geopolitical but ideologically Terra had been scourge for millennia by those who wished only to plunder the homeworld for their own gain now at its summit there dwelled a being whose aspirations were grander to an immeasurable degree while it was obviously not to be discounted that the emperor was a psycho without equal and that his peerless power no doubt contributed to his victory it must also be understood that it was a victory as much for the promise that unity brought when the emperor had spoken of his dream he had done so with an unshakable conviction of one who knew the manifest destiny of our species lay not on this rock and that to bind all under his banner of the common good of humanity unified was the grandest of all possible goals but also one achievable if men were to simply believe it could be so his Imperial truth the atheistic philosophy that underpinned his Imperium and deserves a record of its own had been a sorely needed antidote for the Terran populations suffering under the yoke of greedy men masquerading as profits of a blessed word for those who saw the suffering of humanity as some divine punishment rather than the fault of the mundane and even went so far as to assay the terrors of a world that had been scarred so deeply by the foul pollution of rampant psychic abuse in the Imperium there were no God's no demons no heaven no hell not save for what the science of humanity had devised explanations for beyond that there was simply that which we could not yet comprehend but promised the truth such a understanding simply had to be sought denying superstition as we went and it would eventually be achieved we could peek behind the Stars and comprehend their workings as rational not the hand of some fiery angel or sky father it came at a cost as feigns containing priceless art knowledge and culture were put to the torch lest the stain of such fantasies be let corrupt but it was ultimately unifying beyond what humanity of any previous generations could have conceived of the unification Wars were a foundational conflict in many ways an era of horrific violence an apocalyptic warfare that was in the grand historical scope ultimately completely necessary for the achievement of what was to come well the pragmatic price is in retrospect easy to rationalize it is ill becoming to forget the countless myriad of tragedy and horror that they caused from the smallest to the grandest for they were very much a part of the fabric of the now as any grand victory parade memorial monuments or even stellar Empire the Imperium was built upon the bone dust a billion human dead many rightly consigned to their fates but many others there for no reason other than that war is a conflagration that consumes all without recourse unit he had a bill and the cost was beyond imagining but who owe what it would assure in the unification wars were over and Tara was one it was a feat that had once been a lunatics dream now made real but the Emperor had goals loftier still and they stretched beyond the sky beyond the light of our Sun out ever out into the Stars themselves to achieve this he would need to undertake the greatest logistical political and military endeavor ever attempted in the history of humanity though it may be deemed the grandest of heresies one wishes to close this record with words attributed to the last tyrant of the Pan Pacific Empire northen doom the half mad half genius dictator now dead and buried with the rest of old Knights despots it is perhaps grotesquely apt and we consider all that would come to pass as the days of history marched on and the shadow of the war master fell on the Imperium his words are as follows the wisdom of our times is thus we know only that we are ignorant ignorant of what we have lost ignorant of why we fell from the lies ignorant of what awaits us now among the stars but what will shedding this cloak of ignorance cost us I wonder upon finding the truth will we ascend to Olympian heights of glory or flee back in terror into the shadowed oblivion of a new Dark Age until such a time as one may provide elucidation upon subjects diverse this has been the chronicle of the oculus of the Imperium Ave Imperator gloria in excelsis terra this video and this channel is made possible through the incredibly kind support of my patreon subscribers if you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon comm forward slash oculus Imperia if you want to kick me a buck or two to help keep the lights running and the scripts flowing you can keep up to date with channel news if you follow me on Twitter at BUTT STUFF guide you know not changing that name anytime soon and new this month if you'd like to support the channel with some merchandise my very first t-shirts are up for sale on teespring comm ford slash oculus Imperia join the channel on discord as well a link to all of this will be in the description below

Channel: Oculus Imperia

Views: 614,430

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Lore, Warhammer 40k Lore, Warhammer 30k, Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy Lore, Forge World, Games Workshop, Astartes, Primarchs, Space Marines, Adeptus Astartes

Id: IMFI8waM8rs

Length: 78min 33sec (4713 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/JWBSS]

Since he hasn't posted here, and I think it's relevant to this audience, this is a vid by Oculus Imperia (a very good 40K lore channel) on pre-Crusade Imperium. It's a great video, check out his other stuff too.