Imperial Assassin

This chapter is mostly for those who don't really know much about Warhammer 40k or are casual readers like me. You can skip it if you want

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(Gerhart Kowl POV)

Exitus Acta Probat - The outcome justifies the deed.

That is our Dictatus Vindicare, the maxim of the Vindicare Temple. The temple I belong to and the one that caused me to die. But that is saying too much, let me first introduce you to the reality I find myself in. 

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It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. 

Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter ... and the laughter of those who love this chaos.

- Vulkan, Primarch of the XVIII Legiones Astartes "Salamanders"

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The galaxy is in flames, chaos reigns everywhere. But how did it get to this? Were we responsible for this tragedy ourselves? Or was someone else to blame? 

The human race, once a primitive race, like my old world, has managed to reach glorious achievements and advance technologically millennia ago. In the 15th Millennium, we could say a new age had arrived. The Age of Technology. The Age of Technology, informally often referred to as the "Dark Age of Technology," was the zenith of Humanity's scientific knowledge and technological prowess in the Milky Way Galaxy, which lasted from the 15th Millennium A.D. until the onset of the Age of Strife in the 25th Millennium.

It saw the development of the first true Human interstellar civilisation and the birth of some form of stellar confederation centred on the Human homeworld of Terra. Even now, tens of millennia later, Mankind has not been able to equal or regain its former height of achievement attained in this era. Instead, we have moved backwards. 

The Age of Technology saw Humanity reaching incredible technological heights. The invention of the Warp Drive, allowing humanity to travel faster than light through the Warp and the creation of the Standard Template Constructs (STCs) allowed humanity to explore and colonize the galaxy. The STCs contained all Human scientific and technological knowledge of the era and provided the instructions required to build anything the colonists might need. As most colonists lived relatively simple lives and required only basic equipment and machines, the more advanced technology available in a full STC was rarely utilised.

The resulting exploration of the galaxy brought Mankind new knowledge, wealth and arrogance. Science is said to have become Humanity's new god in this time, replacing in importance all of the previous Human religions. Perfection of the Standard Template Construct (STC) system permitted an explosion of colonisation that reached the furthest limits of the galaxy. This was the zenith of technological development and knowledge-sharing, for even the most far-flung colony had access to the entire inventory of Human invention. 

Humanity encountered several intelligent alien races during their expansion out into the galaxy, such as the Aeldari and the warlike Orks. With these discoveries began, in time, the first Human-xenos wars. With Mankind at the height of its power, the threat of aliens was viewed as trivial and eventually non-aggression pacts were signed between Terra, its colonies and many of the alien races. 

Imagine that, the threat of Orks and even the mighty Aeldari were considered as trivial ... TRIVIAL in those times. Now, humanity lives in fear of an Ork WAAGH or an Aeldari attack. That's how powerful our technology and the STCs truly were.

But then how did Humanity fall from its peak to this embarrassing and about-to-be-extinct race we are now? Arrogance of course. Arrogance was the cause of it. Artificial Intelligence and robotic constructs known as the "Men of Iron" were created to serve humanity. Why would we work ourselves, if there is an AI to do everything for us, right? Nothing could ever go wrong there. These machines were highly advanced and initially a great boon to human expansion and daily life.

One of the reasons Humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy during this era was the development of the Men of Iron and the Men of Stone. They were powerful and fully autonomous intelligent robots intended for both labour and combat and won many wars for Humanity, but for some unknown reason turned against their masters at the end of the Age of Technology sometime in the late 23rd Millennium and unleashed a terrible war upon the Human worlds. Who would have thought?

During this ancient conflict, remembered only as the "Cybernetic Revolt," both sides unleashed fearsome weapons of advanced technology. These included the mechanivores, massive thinking machines capable of lifting entire continents and ripping open chasms on planetary surfaces that extended down to the world's core. The mechanivores could even absorb space-time itself as a form of data. Yeah ... it was crazy back then. We had such powerful weapons and arrogance was the thing that got us. 

Among the other terrible weapons of mass destruction unleashed at this time were the serpentine machines called "sun-snuffers" that uncoiled into great structures in the void larger than the rings of Saturn and were designed to devour the stars themselves. Perhaps the most ubiquitous and dangerous of the weapons of this terrible war were the omniphages, swarms of intelligent, microscopic nano-machines that could consume everything across the surface of a world in only solar hours.

The Cybernetic Revolt was eventually won by an alliance of galactic powers, some of whom may not have been Human, but at a terrible cost. The damage to interstellar Human society was catastrophic and shattered much of Humanity's hard-won economic strength and political unity, and laid the foundation for the later collapse caused by the onset of the Age of Strife.

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Things didn't get any better for us after that and the results of 'free Warp use' came to bite us in the ass. It was a time of chaos and destruction for Humanity. Warp travel became increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible due to the great Warp Storms that convulsed the Immaterium and would herald the violent birth of the Chaos Entity Slaanesh and the later Fall of the Aeldari that first began in the 25th Millennium. It is a bit ironic that the peak of both the Aeldari race and Humanity was about at the same time and their fall as well. 

The economy of the Human interstellar civilisation had already been damaged by the terrible wars against the Men of Iron, and the growing frequency and extent of the Warp Storms caused trade and communication between the Human colonies to collapse, restoring the isolation of Human-settled planets and star systems.

In this situation, certain high-population worlds like Terra that relied heavily on trade with the rest of Humanity were suddenly unable to feed their enormous populations. Hunger and starvation followed.

Those Human psykers who had recently developed their powers were relatively weak and inexperienced, and at constant risk of possession by Warp entities after the great Warp Storms began.

The sudden impossibility of Warp travel meant that the once-unified interstellar Human civilisation broke apart into completely isolated star systems and worlds. Daemonic possession, widespread insanity among the psyker population and the increasing interstellar isolation led to inter-human conflict, utter anarchy and the regression of most Human civilisations into forms of barbarism.

The 5,000 Terran years following the end of the Age of Technology are thus aptly named the Age of Strife by the scholars of the Imperium of Man.

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Now, we need a brief overview of the last 10'000 years that lead us to the current moment, the 41st Millennium.

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The Great Crusade of the Emperor of Mankind began as the Age of Strife came to an end for Humanity. The Warp storms isolated the Human colony worlds for 5,000 Terran years had finally disappeared with the birth of Slaanesh and the Fall of the Aeldari in the 30th Millennium.

The man known only as the Emperor, a Perpetual and the greatest psyker in Human history, had emerged mysteriously from the darkness of Old Night as the greatest warlord of the Human homeworld. The Emperor, with the aid of His friend and ally Malcador the Sigillite, had united Terra under His rule during the Unification Wars which had ended in 712.M30 in the final decades of the Age of Strife. He intended to use His genetically enhanced Space Marines and the Imperial Army to now reunite all of Humanity under His enlightened rule and the rationalist philosophy of the Imperial Truth.

Making a pact known as the Treaty of Mars with the Cult Mechanicus of the Machine God on Mars in 739.M30, the Emperor promised to allow the Tech-priests to continue to practice their faith and maintain the political autonomy of their Mechanicum government if they provided Him with the starships and other advanced technology He needed to reunite the Human-settled galaxy.

The Emperor was a man of enormous skill in the practice of science and the development of new technology, and so in Him, many members of the ancient Mechanicum saw the coming of the Omnissiah -- the physical avatar of the Machine God -- that had been prophesied by their faith. In the treaty, they signed with the Emperor, the Mechanicum of Mars pledged their support to the creation of a new Imperium of Man in which they would serve as the Imperium's primary purveyors of science and technology in return for first access to any ancient technology, or "archeotech," discovered beyond the bounds of the Sol System.

With the signing of the Treaty of Mars, the symbol of the Imperium changed from the raptor's head and lightning bolt icon used by the Emperor during the Unification Wars on Terra to the double-headed eagle known as the Aquila, to symbolise the union of the empires of Earth and Mars. With the forge factories and industrial output of Mars, the Emperor was able to refit His armies, and more importantly, He now had the use of the Mechanicum's Titan Legions and Knights, giant robotic war machines with the potential to dominate the battlefield.

At first, the newborn Imperium's expansion into interstellar space was slow, since the Imperial Army was still small, and more importantly, the Emperor's 20 Space Marine Legions were inhibited by the absence of their primarchs, the genetically engineered transhuman military commanders the Emperor had created during the Unification Wars to lead His eventual reconquest of the galaxy at the head of the Legiones Astartes, but who had been lost to the Warp before the end of the Unification Wars due to the machinations of the Chaos Gods.

This lack made the time for the creation of a new Space Marine from a normal adolescent Human male much longer. However, this difficulty was to end, as on Cthonia, a planet in a star system not far from Terra, the Emperor for the first time was reunited in 801.M30 with one of His missing primarchs, Horus. Having been discovered at an early age, the Emperor took Horus under His wing and taught him all He knew. Horus and the Emperor had a truly unique bond, that of father and son, and many times they saved each others' lives. But after almost 20 standard years, the Emperor discovered another of the Space Marine primarchs, Leman Russ, on the icy world of Fenris in 819.M30. Although Horus was pleased with the discovery of one of his brothers, he secretly hoped to always remain the Emperor's favourite son.

In time, all the primarchs were found on the worlds they had been sent to by the will of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and each was placed in command of their respective Space Marine Legions. The Legions as a result were massively expanded with new recruits drawn from their primarchs' adopted homeworlds, and new Space Marines could now be produced within only a single Terran year. But this acceleration and the genecraft techniques employed to bring it about produced fundamental defects within the psyche of each Space Marine created from certain primarchs' genetic heritages through this process. These defects were later to prove fatal to many of the Emperor's dreams for Humanity.

The Great Crusade lasted for 200 standard years, into the early years of the 31st Millennium, and brought many long-lost star systems into the fold of the newborn Imperium of Man. Under the command of the War Council of the Emperor and His rediscovered primarchs, vast expeditionary fleets comprised of the Imperial Army and the twenty Space Marine Legions fought back aliens, feral Human tribes, petty Human dictators and the Warp-tainted forces that had gained control of large portions of Human-settled space during the Age of Strife.

Once a Human-settled world had been pacified, it was brought into "Imperial Compliance" by a new Imperial planetary governor chosen by the Emperor. Part of this process included the rooting out of any superstitious or religious beliefs of the population with a respect solely for reason and the measured advancement of science and technology, an atheistic belief system known as the "Imperial Truth."

The world was then often occupied by a unit or units of the Imperial Army that were left behind to complete the integration of the planet into the Imperium while the expeditionary fleet, led by the Astartes, moved on to its next target. As the primarchs took control of the Space Marine Legions that had been crafted from their gene-seed, the Great Crusade separated, moving in many directions and reaching far across the galaxy.

After the Imperial Crusade on the world of Ullanor concluded in 000.M30 upon bringing that planet into Imperial Compliance after the defeat of a great force of Orks, the Emperor claimed it as the greatest victory of the Imperium to date, and that Horus should be given all credit. Hailing Horus and his Luna Wolves Legion (later renamed the Sons of Horus), the Emperor stated that He would have to leave the expeditionary fleets behind and return to Terra to begin the next, secret phase of His plan to ensure Humanity's domination of the galaxy.

In His place, the Emperor announced that Horus would be declared Warmaster of the Imperium, the de facto commander of all the Emperor's armies on the Great Crusade. Although Horus was troubled that the Emperor should leave him and his brother primarchs to carry on alone for some unknown reason, with Horus as their new commander, the Imperium's armies and Space Marines continued to expand ever outwards, rediscovering lost Human worlds and bringing them into the enlightened Imperium's fold. This expansion lasted for five more standard years until the outbreak of the terrible Imperial civil war known as the Horus Heresy in 005.M31.

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But the seeds of destruction for the Emperor's great dream had already been planted. One of the primarchs, Lorgar Aurelian of the Word Bearers Legion, had secretly turned to the service of the Dark Gods of the Warp approximately one hundred and sixty standard years into the Great Crusade. Seeking the true source of divinity in the universe after the Emperor had brutally reprimanded Lorgar and his Legion at the "perfect city" of Monarchia on the world of Khur for spreading the falsehood that the Emperor was the one, true god of Humanity, the primarch began a great pilgrmage across the galaxy.

Lorgar's quest eventually led the Word Bearers into the heart of the great, permanent Warp rift in the Segmentum Obscurus later named the Eye of Terror. There, Lorgar made contact with entities who he believed truly were divinities worthy of his worship -- the Chaos Gods. Devoting himself to their vision of seeing the Warp and realspace intertwined into a single reality and the benefits he believed this would bring to Humanity, the primarch spent the next four solar decades preparing to convert his brothers and their Legions to the service of Chaos.

To this end, Lorgar arranged for the Warmaster Horus to visit the barbarous world of Davin not long after the end of the Ullanor Crusade. There, he arranged for the Warmaster to be mortally wounded by a weapon tainted by the dark touch of the Chaos God Nurgle, the Plaguefather. Even a primarch's superhuman constitution proved incapable of defeating the Warp-tained pathogen created by the Plague God, and so to save his life Horus' own Astartes handed him over to a cabal of Davinite Chaos Cultists known as the Temple of the Serpent Lodge.

There, in a foul, sorcerous ritual that had been prepared by Lorgar and was overseen by the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus, Horus' spirit was cast into the Warp, where the Chaos Gods promised to save his life if he would choose to become their servant and overthrow the rule of the Emperor of Mankind. Manipulating Horus' insecurities concerning the Emperor's affection for him and his unquenchable desire for recognition, power and glory, the Ruinous Powers succeeded in turning Horus against the Master of Mankind through a combination of lies and half-truths. With his agreement to their bargain, Horus' soul was returned to his body in the Davinite temple and he awoke fully healed, though he now walked the path of damnation.

Over the next few standard years, Horus began to surreptitiously move all the pieces of the Imperial military he commanded into place to launch a grand rebellion against the Emperor's authority that was intended to result in Horus claiming the Throneworld of Terra and the mantle of Humanity's new emperor. The Warmaster, always with the aid of Lorgar and his Daemonic allies, managed to suborn the loyalties of eight of his brother primarchs.

He did this by exploiting their own insecurities concerning the Emperor's treatment of them and the jealous rivalries that many of the primarchs had developed over the course of the Great Crusade with their fellows. Horus' promises of greater political autonomy and the removal of restrictions on the acquisition of certain technologies forbidden by the Emperor also won the allegiance of Kelbor-Hal, the fabricator-general of Mars and leader of the ancient Mechanicum.

By 005.M31, the treason of Horus, known in later centuries as the "Horus Heresy," spread to embrace approximately half of the Imperium's military forces, including small Planetary Defence Forces, many regiments of the Imperial Army, the 9 Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions and nearly half of the ancient Mechanicum's potent Taghmata forces, Titan Legions and Knight houses, forming the core of Mechanicum adepts who chose to serve the Ruinous Powers and were later called the "Dark Mechanicum", though they referred to themselves as the "True Mechanicum."

The Horus Heresy truly began at the world of Isstvan III, where Horus used the outbreak of a Chaos-fuelled rebellion against Imperial rule as a pretext to send all of the Loyalist Astartes -- those Space Marines who Horus and his allied primarchs knew would never turn against the Emperor -- to the surface. Once the Loyalists of four of the Space Marine Legions allied to Horus were planetside and engaged in combat, the orbiting Imperial fleet unleashed a devastating bombardment of virus bombs upon them, seeking to kill all of the Loyalists as well as the entire planetary population in what is remembered as the "Isstvan III Atrocity."

But Horus miscalculated, for several of the Loyalists learned of the plot beforehand and were able to warn their battle brothers on the surface of Isstvan III before the deadly barrage began. Thousands of Loyalist Astartes survived, forcing Horus and the Traitors to launch a solar-weeks-long campaign of grinding urban combat against their former allies as atmospheric occlusion caused by the virus-bombing prevented a simple orbital bombardment of their positions. At the same time, another group of Loyalists aboard the Death Guard Legion frigate Eisenstein managed to flee into the Warp with news of the Warmaster's betrayal, intending to let the Emperor know of the treachery of His favourite son.

After Horus finished off the Loyalists on Isstvan III with an orbital bombardment once the skies over the target area had cleared enough to allow a precise orbital assault, he moved his forces to the neighbouring world of Isstvan V to await the Imperial retribution he knew would come. The Loyalists rightly believed they outnumbered Horus' four Space Marine Legions and so when the Emperor, represented in the matter by Rogal Dorn, primarch of the Imperial Fists Legion and the Praetorian of Terra, sent a force of seven Legions against him at Isstvan V, the Loyalists thought the Warmaster's rebellion would prove short-lived.

But they had deeply underestimated the man the Emperor had chosen to take His place at the head of the Imperium's military machine. Of the seven Legiones Astartes sent against him at Isstvan V in ca. 006.M31, Horus had already secretly gained the allegiance of four, who abruptly turned on the three Loyalist Legions and destroyed them almost to an Astartes. In a single stroke, at the so-called "Drop Site Massacre" of Isstvan V, Horus had nearly doubled his forces and weakened those of the Loyalists to the point that he could now begin a drive on Terra itself.

The terrible civil war that ensued as Horus drove towards the heart of the Imperium lasted for a further 7 standard years, killed trillions of men and women across the galaxy and culminated in 014.M31 in a massive assault upon the Imperial Palace during the climactic Siege of Terra. After 55 solar days of fighting, the war was ended by the Emperor and Horus duelling in single combat aboard Horus' flagship, the Gloriana-class Battleship Vengeful Spirit, in orbit of Terra, before further Loyalist reinforcements could reach the Throneworld and throw the Traitor forces back from their prize.

Although mortally wounded during the final battle with His once-favoured son, who had become immensely powerful and swollen with the energies of the Warp as a result of the united favour of the Chaos Gods, the Emperor was able to strike down Horus using the full gathered might of His unrivalled psychic powers. Despite His great sorrow and reluctance, the Emperor obliterated Horus' soul from the Warp, preventing him from being resurrected to serve the Ruinous Powers once more.

Without their leader, the unity of the forces of Chaos soon crumbled and as Loyalist reinforcements led by Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines arrived in the Sol System, the Traitor Legions and their Dark Mechanicum and mortal allies retreated to the massive Warp rift in the Segmentum Obscurus known as the Eye of Terror.

At His own direction, the crippled body of the Emperor was installed into the cybernetic life support mechanisms of the psychic amplifier known as the Golden Throne. This allowed His mind to have an anchor in realspace from which He could battle the influence of the Chaos Gods in the Warp and continue to direct the energies of the Astronomican, the psychic beacon that was the lifeblood of the Imperium's communications, commerce and interstellar travel.

In a postscript to the terrible traumas of the Heresy, a battle between Loyalists and Traitors fought on the planet of Sotha, home to the ancient Necron Warp beacon known as the Pharos, drew the attention of the hive fleets of the Tyranids to the galaxy. It was in this ancient time that their vast biomechanical fleets first began to move across the extragalactic void towards the Milky Way Galaxy, drawn ever on by the shining psychic beacon of the Astronomican.

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The "Great Scouring," or simply "The Scouring," was the Imperium of Man's great counter-offensive against the Traitor Legions. It began immediately after the end of the Horus Heresy following the death of the Warmaster Horus and the failure of his assault upon the Imperial Palace during the Siege of Terra in 014.M31. Over the course of many solar decades, it finally succeeded in driving the forces of Chaos from their conquered territories within Imperial space into finding a refuge in the permanent Warp storm known as the Eye of Terror.

Before actually being confined for all time within the life support mechanisms of the Golden Throne, the Emperor had pronounced judgment on the Traitors: He declared them Excommunicate Traitoris, and determined that they were to be driven into the hellish Eye of Terror for all eternity. All records and memories of the Traitor Legions were to be later expunged from the Imperial archives.

Worlds such as Isstvan V and the former Legion homeworlds of the Traitor Legions would be scoured clean of all life because of the corruption of their people by Chaos. The Traitor Legions' associated troops from the Dark Mechanicum, the Titan Legions, Chaos Knight houses or the regiments and starships of the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy that had turned to Chaos were to be destroyed or driven into the Eye. It would be as if the Traitor Legions and their allies had never existed to sully the Imperium with their betrayal.

After the death of Horus, those Traitors who had not been slain outright during the Siege of Terra fled before the vengeful wrath of the Loyalist forces led by Primarch Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines Legion, who also took on the burdens of leadership of the Imperium as the Imperial Regent and lord commander of the Imperium in the Emperor's absence. Many Traitors made good their escape into unexplored space or disappeared into the Eye of Terror or other, lesser-known Warp rifts such as the Maelstrom.

Fighting continued for many standard years after the Heresy had ended with Horus' death before the Traitor forces were wholly destroyed or exiled into the Eye of Terror. Many Chaos-corrupted star systems were cleansed and placed under the watch of the newborn Inquisition. The Emperor's dream of a new age of enlightenment, a time when Mankind was freed from superstition and ignorance, would turn into something far different. The Great Scouring would be followed by the ten-millennia-long era known as the Age of the Imperium.

In the midst of the campaigns of the Great Scouring, the Second Founding occurred. The remaining 9 Loyalist Space Marine Legions were disbanded, their transhuman warriors transferred into the far smaller 1,000-Astartes organisations known as Chapters, in accordance with the newly-established dictates of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman's Codex Astartes. The Codex provided a highly-detailed manual and instruction guide for the raising, training, organisation and military tactics of a Space Marine Chapter.

The purpose of this reorganisation was to prevent any one leader like Horus from ever again making use of the power of an entire Space Marine Legion against the Emperor's realm. At the same time, because of their smaller size, the Space Marines were transformed from the Imperium's primary frontline military forces into a dedicated planetary assault and rapid reaction force.

A portion of the Space Marines, now collectively known as the Adeptus Astartes, maintained their parent Legions' original names, badges and colours whilst the remaining Chapters took on new names and heraldry and eventually developed independent Chapter cultures, traditions and beliefs. The majority of these Second Founding Chapters still proudly serve the Imperium today.

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The Age of the Imperium is the time period that began with the end of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium and is typically referred to in the present tense. The approximate time period begins in 014.M31, and continues forward to the present, with the last year represented in Imperial records before the opening of the Great Rift and the start of the Era Indomitus being 999.M41.

The Imperium faces numerous external and internal threats. Alien species and dark mystical forces—Chaos, the Tyranids, the Craftworld Aeldari, the Drukhari, the Orks, the T'au, and the undying Necrons—challenge its supremacy. Internally, rebellion, mutation, dangerous psykers, and subversive Chaos Cults pose insidious threats.

Despite its myriad problems, the Imperium's authoritarian and often harsh protection is crucial for Mankind's survival. Without it, Humanity would have succumbed to the countless perils threatening its existence long ago. Faith in the Emperor remains the guiding light for the Human race, preventing its extinction amidst a universe of horrors.