Warhammer Lore - You ask, I answer.

[shadeburn]

And now the Emperor... damn he is, imo, like one of the top 5 coolest guys in Warhammer 40k lore. I gotta warn you now, there is ALOT about him.

Now before I begin, the Emperor in Warhammer 40k is NOT TO BE CONFUSED with the one in WAR. They are entirely different! There is no cross-over! Ok now lets begin.

The Emperor of Mankind. This guy is quite literally a god in human form.

It is believed he was born in what we know today as the Himalayas, into a tribal society when the human race was still forming.

The interesting thing about Warhammer 40k is that it's history is more of a Sci-Fi thing . By that I mean In WH40k, the story takes place far in the future (rather then WAR taking place in a whole different 'alternate universe' altogether.)

Anyway, before we continue, you must understand the concept of the chaos gods. The chaos gods, imho, effect WH40k MUCH more then WAR.

Point is, the chaos gods are generated off emotions, Khorne thriving off of rage, Slaanesh off of envy and passion, etc.

Ok, now lets continue w/ the whole story. The Emperor is a psyker, meaning he has amazing mental power that he can use, ranging from things similar to 'force actions' like that in Star Wars, to passive abilities like protecting a material plane from chaos.

The Emperor also has eternal life (but is not invincible!). As I stated before, he was born around the time of Early humanity. He lived for thousands of years, watching empires and civilizations rise and fall, and using his abilities to guide humanity in the right direction.

The Emperor was well aware that the chaos gods thrived off extreme emotions (this is where my previous statement comes into play). He spent much of his trying to restore peace and harmony within humanity.

Then came the dark age of technology. This period in time, ranging from the 15th to 25th millennium, was quite literally the peak of human technology. Humanity had mastered many great feats, like the STC (Standard Template Construct), a sort of plan or blueprint. STC's were used to explain how to build almost anything, and could be modified with the user in mind.

This allowed humanity to expand very very very rapidly across the galaxy. However, after securing almost the entire galaxy, disaster stuck.

Chaos began to take root in the galaxy.

This caused the generation of huge amounts of warp storms, which can best be described as huge chaos rips in space that one simply could not pass.

Warp storms caused many solar systems to become isolated, splitting humanity into millions of small pieces. Civil wars began as men fought for control of the isolated territory whom they lived. Demons thrived and spread across the galaxy, killing many weakened isolated human empires.

Even our very own solar system was isolated. On Earth, techno-barbarians fought for control (think mad max but much more high-tech), and all of the great technology humanity developed was lost (with a few (and I mean very few) exceptions).

On Mars, the Adeptus Mechanicus (sort of part human part machine race who worship the machine God) were able to take control and repel the mutants occupying their land. They were disgusted by the wars taking place on Earth and so did not try to interfere, and instead for thousands of years remained on mars mastering new technology.

Now, finally, without further ado, enter THE EMPEROR! (about time, right xD)

Towards the end of the Age of Strife as it would be called, the Emperor, who had decided he could no longer guide humanity from the background, began developing super-genes based off his own DNA. He conducted many experiments in his under-ground laboratory in the Himalayas, and finally become content with a super gene he developed.

Long story short, the Emperor, who was living in his under-ground compound, set foot to recruit many techno-barbarians. With his charisma he was able to do just that, and he successfully made them into his very own gene-warriors.

With this new found force, the Emperor, tired of the warring of humanity, set out and conquered all of Tera (Earth) and Luna (the moon).

The Emperor, who had once and for all united humanity on Earth, then created the Primarchs.

These were twenty clones of himself, all of which with slight variations, all of which with the absolutely perfect genes, and became super humans.

And the Emperor then collected the genes of his Primarchs, and began making legions of men, called Space Marines, for each of his primarchs. Each legion had the same genes as their primarch, again, with slight variation between each marine.

Then came the birth of Slaanesh. This was due mostly because of the eldar, but thats another story for another time. With his birth, the warp storms dissipated. It was time for humanity to reclaim the galaxy.

Unfortunately, the chaos gods tried to sabotage these plans, and with their powers, scattered the still young primarchs across the galaxy.

With the warp storms gone, however, the emperor was able to set out and search for the primarchs. By the time he found them, they had reached adulthood, and often were the leaders of the planet whom they were sent to. When the space marines and The Emperor began a planet to planet search, they eventually found each primarch except for 2, who were never found. The primarchs, most of the time, instantly realized the Emperor was their 'father', and embraced his arrival to their planet.

With the Primarchs found, each one took control of a legion of space marines who shared the genes of their primarch. The legions set out across the galaxy to reunite the humans that had been isolated for thousands upon thousands of years.

Some worlds accepted their arrival, many others fought the space marines, beleiving their civilization was the correct one and the 'invaders' were their to destroy their cultures. Many others had 'forgotten' their history, and thought they were the only humans in the galaxy, often being very surprised when other humans came from above saying "Welcome back!" xD

Ok well now we are almost to the conclusion, if you have read this far, then damn, you have no life xD lol

I am gonna try to right this as briefly as possible.

The Primarch Horus, which was The Emperors favorite, fell to the influences of chaos. Many other primarchs fell as well. This started the chaos space marines.

In an epic war, the Chaos Space marines (once again) pillaged the galaxy, destroying much of what was gained from their previous campaign of conquering it.

They eventually arrived at Terra (earth), and in an epic battle, Horus killed the still great (good) primarch Sanguinus. Then the Emperor and his son clashed, and The Emperor killed Horus, sending the chaos forces to retreat into The Eye of Terror (this place where it is said the Chaos Gods reside.)

However, the Emperor was mortally wounded, and was then attached to the Golden Throne. While his body is dead, his 'spirit/soul' lives on, and thus his not entirely dead yet not entirely alive. Thousands of people must be sacrificed so that their souls can power the emperor and keep him alive.

The Emperor's psychic ability also keeps the astronomicon alive. This huge beacon allows for warp travel, and is kept alive by other psykers who slowly decay over time (tens and thousands of psykers btw). Should the emperor die, the astronomicon will be useless, ships could not travel through the warp (and thus could not reach other solar systems), the empire would collapse and then become eternally isolated (leading to its collapse.)

So, in a sense, the Emperor is still holding The Empire together.


xD
ino, alot of writing, sorry.

awesome, thanks +rep again.
Edit: Cooldown on rep D:

[Stephen Colbert]

pr0ph3t-

There are a lot of books about 40k and Warhammer Fantasy... none that I know of are made for summing up a race. But there are a lot of novels that follow characters and that such, some are really interesting.

If you are into 40k, I suggest reading the Gaunt's Ghosts series, I have read most of the books and really enjoyed them,

[shazarn]

Ahh i got a good one for ya
The story of the beginning of the Tk and Vampires
I read it a long time ago and i no-longer play the tabletop so dont ahve access to codecies
Thanks!