this was written by VulkansNodosaurus and I discovered that the total fics name was beneath bound stars and the section was called humanitys fall. i called it that before i knew its name.
forum/threads/miscellaneous-warhammer-40k-fantasy-thread.412145/page-229#post-19941054
The tech priest prepped the holovid, and Mortarion commented, "By the title of this video I think it is another one where you become a chaos god Father." The Emperor sighed and asked, "AND IS IT ONLY ONE FILE LONG?" The tech priest noted, "Its the only one the magic box dispensed." The Emperor glared at him and said, "WE ARE NOT CALLING IT THAT." The tech priest chuckled and said, "I know that." He then played the video before any could respond.
Does it please me, to prove my youthful folly right in the end? I tell my sons that it does not. The truth is, I do not know.
Immediately the booming voice of the Daemonic Lorgar was recognized.
I will say this much: this fate could have been avoided. The fifth God was born prematurely, by millennia. Humanity worshiped the God-Emperor for ten thousand years, in a galaxy's worth of voices - but ten thousand years is not so long, by the standards of true history. Fate might have run its course, even deflected as it was by Abaddon's folly. And after perhaps another hundred millennia of war, a megayear at most, if humanity still stood... then the Master of Mankind would come in truth, and the galaxy, and perhaps the universe, would bend to its will.
The tech priest was curious, "Trillions worshiping the Emperor for over ten thousand years wasn't enough to truly birth a chaos god? That doesn't make sense." So I brought about this apocalypse early. I do not expect the galaxy to thank me for its salvation. But then, when has it ever?
But humanity would not have stood. And even if it had, the God-Emperor would have replaced the Chaos Gods, rather than joining them; and that is not something I can accept, nor something I would if I could. A universe ruled by one god only, and the one born of my father's memory at that... it would be as good as dead.
Lorgar grumbled, "My counterpart is right about one thing." Lorgar Aurelian The date of humanity's fall is often set at 042.M42. In truth, the Warp and historical disputes make any attempts at such precise dating dubious; but that is of little consequence. The birth of the fifth Chaos God was like an echo of the fourth's: as eldar depravity created Slaanesh, so did human fanaticism create the Star-Father. At the time, the Imperium of Man had been recovering from the Millennial Crisis, when Abaddon had broken Cadia and created the Great Rift, and only the miraculous rebirth of the primarch Roboute Guilliman saved the Imperium. As Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade shored up the embattled frontiers of humanity, the Great Rift's cut across the skies inspired a great psychic awakening among every psychic species in the galaxy. Yet just as the rituals of Chaos cultists were strengthened, so were the Living Saints of the Imperium. Perhaps that should have been portent enough of what was to come.
Perhaps I am not pleased with what I have done. But even so, I am very much proud of it.
Robotue stated, "This appears to be a timeline that either is the result of the Gathering Storm or branches off from it."
The fifth Chaos God, whose name was Astropater, was not born from the corpse upon the Golden Throne, though it was irrevocably linked to it. Rather, it was shaped by the beliefs of the Imperial Cult galaxywide. Yet when the entity's silent birth-scream came, it was on Terra that it emerged into realspace, for every human in the galaxy knew of the Throneworld's supremacy.
The tech priest let out a hmm and noted, "This version of the deified Emperor has a name beyond holy tyrant or star father, interesting." Magnus the stated, "Actually Astropater means star father" To this Leman let out a loud, "Nerd!" "And on that day, so long as we can step forward and let go of the past, all our sins will be cleansed and all our pains will be cured; and when we look into the future, we will see it lit evenly by the Emperor's Light." - The Lectitio Divinitatus Ten impossible dawns came over Terra at once. A Warp Storm smothered nearly all of Segmentum Solar, stretching into southeastern Obscurus; a second Eye, at whose heart Sol blazed an impossibly bright flame. Yet the accumulated Warp-pressure was not sufficient to drag into Daemon-World status all the planets of the Imperium. Astropater's birth had been premature, and if not for the Cicatrix Maledictum as a source of fuel would not have been possible at all. As it was, the discharge of power sucked out the cohesion of every Warp Storm in the galaxy, with only two exceptions: the Eye of Terror, whose stable borders nonetheless drew far back, and the Maelstrom, which seemed unaffected. The other storms, including the Cicatrix Maledictum itself, were broken: they remained as turbulent as ever, but their energy was gone, as were their time distortion effects, and within decades they would dissipate entirely. For now, though, the shadow of the Great Rift proved an ironic savior: the worlds of the Dark Imperium were spared the shockwave of the new god's birth, and experienced no immediate effect, though psykers could sense immediately that something terrible had taken place. In the Bright Imperium, though, the shockwave was felt in full. Psykers fell into comas, which near the Solstorm were generally fatal. Every soul shook in terror. And meanwhile, in the Warp - not that there is any notion of simultaneity in the Warp - ten hosts of radiant daemons set out, a fifth voice in the Great Game of Chaos.
In an instant that was a lifetime, Materium and Immaterium changed forever.
The Emperor paled and said, "THAT CAN NOT BE GOOD FOR HUMANITY". Astropater's forces were shaped by the beliefs of the Imperial Cult, much of which was in turn drawn from heavily mythologized mythology or history. Thus, the Greater Daemons of Astropater, known as Angyls, were created from popular perception of Astartes, Sororitas, and Living Saints. They usually appear as enormous and angel-winged humanoids, clad in shining armor but faceless. Their strengths tend to lie in physical strength and agility, as well as in area-effect attacks of blinding light. The Lesser Daemons, Judicars, were born of perception of Inquisitors, Arbites, and Administratum adepts; they appear as unremarkable humans clad in grey, which do not stand out even in combat. It was quickly found, however, that they were not merely infiltrators; a Judicar that judges someone guilty (according to its eldritch and unknowable methods) will brutally and publicly slaughter them, before dragging their soul to eternal torment. During such Executions, a Judicar can easily kill even an enemy that would normally shrug off a Lesser Daemon's blows. The Judicars, though often sadistic, are bound fundamentally to obey the Angyls, which are typically more likely to be concerned with the destruction of their enemies rather than their torment. Below those classes of daemon and the Pilgrimm, daemonic beasts bolster Astropater's armies, notably the Sguta (appearing similarly to skull-faced grox, albeit much more golden and aggressive) and the Debitists (with the appearance of a canid-horse hybrid and the demeanor of a brain-damaged drill sergeant). Astropater was, like all the Chaos Gods, unique. His first precept was absolute obedience, his second hate for all xenos, his third the need to purge heresy and other thought-crime. At the same time, though, he exhibited a genuine care for humans, similar to Nurgle's care for all life. Human souls devoured by Astropater were (after a purgatory lasting up to subjective eternity) returned to the form of Pilgrimm, lesser daemons for all intents and purposes physically human in the realm of the Warp (which notably became mundane, albeit brainwashed, humans if summoned into realspace). The Pilgrimm experience was generally to live a life of menial labor in average Imperial working conditions (i.e. abject at best) before returning to be purged of their sins in this new life, ad infinitum. Nevertheless, by the nature of the Pilgrimm, they desired this suffering and could not conceive otherwise. Ironically, the despised xeno souls were generally granted the arguable mercy of utter oblivion. Humans still living, meanwhile, felt Astropater's existence as the Call (except in the Dark Imperium). It was a whisper at the back of their minds, appearing only in moments of particular intensity, an inexpressible pull to sacrifice themselves, with a certain subconscious awareness of just what that would entail. To accept the Call was to instantly give your soul to Astropater, those judged most worthy becoming Daemon Princes while the overwhelming majority were devoured into Pilgrimm. Humans could, however, prevent the Call by appeasing Astropater, much like the dark eldar appeased Slaanesh with others' pain. In particular, killing xenos ameliorated the Call for a time, and any human who owned (human) slaves, or otherwise had absolute subordinates, was immune to the Call. Additionally, the souls of dead humans not claimed by other powers were pulled towards Astropater.
Angyls and Judicars
The eyes of both Vulkan and Khan widened at this and the Tech priest commented, "Wow, Dark Humanity." (But for every human that heeded the Call, it grew that immeasurable bit stronger.) In the Warp, Khorne and Slaanesh both burned with hate against the new god, so much so that the formerly opposed deities had something resembling a rapprochment. Slaanesh saw Astropater as boring, as well as a threat due to his prejudice against the eldar; Khorne was perhaps defensive in desiring to keep hate as his domain, but more importantly saw Astropater's realm as devoid of anything resembling true rage. The Angyls' hate was a matter of their nature, and a constant rather than anything to do with retribution. Nurgle, meanwhile, was rather pleased with the commonalities he shared with Astropater, and to some extent this feeling was reciprocated, as the two were the only Chaos Gods with a distaste for lowercase-c chaos. Tzeentch, surprisingly, was also satisfied with Astropater's rise, perhaps for his message of hope or perhaps merely because of how dramatically it shook up the Great Game.
The Call was weak, in the initial decades after humanity's Fall. It did not matter, though, because the bulk of humanity did not think to refuse it. Naturally, an exception was provided by humans in Warp Storms, which also provided shielding from the Call. Null fields provided a similar defense; both were however only local respites. Ultimately, the only true means of restricting or preventing the Call was to sacrifice one's humanity; in particular, tech-priests generally felt the Call to a much lesser extent, and were more capable of withstanding it, some hereteks being unaffected by it entirely.
all of the eyes of the room widened at this, for Khorne and Slannesh were mortal enemy's. (All of this might well have started another galactic war, but if it did, no one noticed.) The eldar were the first to understand what had happened. It was a disaster without question, and while the reactions of individuals and factions varied greatly, most mentally concluded they had overestimated humanity. Certainly it would be hypocritical to punish the surviving mon-keigh for this, but as it was, the schemes of thousands of farseers to use the Imperium as a bulwark against Chaos had backfired in spectacular fashion. Other xeno races made territorial gains after the Solstorm's ignition, but for the most part they were not too affected. Even the Tau Empire, with a substantial human population, did better than might have been expected: the Greater Good did much to shield the gue'vesa against the Call's temptation. "Two new Ruinous Powers in only ten millennia. Truly, the idiots have surpassed themselves." - Imotekh Stormlord
Still, there have never been allies among the Chaos Gods, much less friends. The Warp sang with daemonic conflict, alliances and offensives of infinite complexity replacing one another in a torment that would have overshadowed the conflicts of the Materium had it had any chance of someone actually winning. The nature of Astropater's birth made it temporarily the weakest Chaos God in the Warp, though the strongest in realspace; the nature of its past meant the other Chaos Gods could, conceivably, have united against him despite their natures. But for all the freedom it was associated with, the Warp could not really change itself except through realspace.
The tech priest chuckled at this line by the Necron warlord.
But the Imperium was, of course, a different matter. To begin with, the Astronomicon was replaced with the fouler beacon of the Solstorm, which could be used for navigation but only by those willing to risk falling into its clutches. On the worlds of the Solstorm, all human souls were dragged to Astropater in the instant of his awakening. Outside, the Call sounded out, and one by one people began dying of what seemed like heart attacks, in every part of every world. Between that and the new Warp Storm in the sky where Terra had been (visible to humans everywhere in the 'bright' Imperium instantly, though for xenos its physical shape spread only at the speed of light) order generally broke down quickly.
This horror chilled the room.
Though little of its population had any idea of it, the Imperium of Man had died in an instant.
Magnus snarked, "How fitting." They would not be so for long, Teraon Erratch knew as he beheld the vista. Already there were signs of the ground moving. For all the (correct) accusations of tech-heresy, he was still a Magos of Mars: he knew full well what that meant. Without a doubt some daemonic parody of the tech-priests and servitors would come to replace his colleagues, and the gears would move again with dark purpose. Without a doubt, too, they would kill him when they found him. He estimated a probability of less than 10-9 that he would survive what was to come, which meant that his own destruction was the single thing in the universe he was most certain about. In the sky, Terra blazed golden through the smoke. His observations had shown it to have formed into a lattice of spires with the overall shape of an eagle, in defiance of gravity. Sol was mercifully below the horizon, only a blue glow in the west indicating its vicinity. It was brighter still, though it emitted only visible light. He supposed someone with a soul might have seen something stranger still. The other planets and moons were all still there, and thus far largely unchanged; the sole exception was Titan, which had entirely vanished.
The forges of Mars looked so strange when they were still.
The Emperor whispered, "THERE MUST BE HOPE." Teraon Erratch felt a drop of oil slide down the side of his mask, and even he couldn't tell if it was a tear.
And Mars... Erratch had long since removed, neuron by neuron, every organic component of his brain; but somehow that failed to stop the upwelling of emotion. They'd worshiped the Omnissiah, believing in a grand design that seemed more absurd by the instant. Now that very god had damned them. The servitors and engines remained, and in some factoria surely there were assembly lines still producing masterworks that would never be used.
The tech priest noted, "That is probably a tear." "...any sapients still alive called to coordinates..." The message was garbled, relayed across half the planet by half-broken relays. But even so, it meant there was still other intelligence on Mars - abominable intelligence, perhaps, but so was what Erratch had become. There was a purpose now, at least a potential one, something he realized now his germanium-based mind had been missing; and so Erratch filed his ident-codes, wrangling as many unmanned vehicles as he could. They would meet at Noctis Labyrinthus, to whatever end.
Then, his vox crackled.
The tech priest snarked, "C'tan vs Star Father. taking all bets."
