Rise and Fall
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AN: Sorry, I meant to upload it last week but the cite crashed. There will be more crossover mentions in this chapter. Enjoy!
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Review!
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M15
M15-M25: Age of Technology. STC database and fabrication technology is mastered by some of the greatest scientific minds in Mankind's history with the aid of allies and heralds a golden era of discovery, innovation and expansion. By harnessing the gifts of the human mutant psykers known as Navigators, Warp travel is developed, enabling starfaring voidships to swiftly travel enormous distances across space. STC systems transform the way that new human colony worlds are settled. The first Knight Worlds are established as the ancient human Long March colonies begin to flourish and new ventures are established, eventually leading to the establishment of more than a million human-settled worlds across the galaxy by the end of the period.
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Unknown Date.M15: Building on the work that created the Titans, human cognitive scientists develop the first truly artificially intelligent robots later remembered in human legend only as the Men of Iron. The Men of Iron are intended to serve humanity in peace and war, but they soon develop thoughts of their own, creating large debates and strife on whether they are truly alive or not. This conflict escalates into the Age of Strife and is put to rest by the Empress herself.
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Unknown Date.M16: The Great Diaspora of Mankind begins as sublight human Long March spacecraft begin slowly colonising the nearby stars surrounding Terra and the small core of earlier human colony planets. These colonisation attempts are carried out by massive starships that either keep their colonists in suspended animation for the centuries required to make the journey through realspace or serve as generation ships, allowing entire generations of a shipboard community to live and die within the confines of the colony starship before their descendants finally make planetfall at their new home. One of these human exodus fleets that will eventually form the Olamic Quietude, a technologically advanced cybernetic human civilisation, leaves Terra around this time.
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000.M18: The Warp-Drive was invented by Mankind. Prior to this, interstellar travel for the voidships of Mankind was limited to sub-light speeds. Travel between star systems was painfully slow, taking many generations, and most human interstellar colonies were isolated outposts established by the crews of Long March generation starships or vessels that made use of suspended animation technology. With the development of Warp-Drive and the Gellar Field, Mankind is soon able to make short Warp jumps over great distances. The Warp-Drive was one of the most revolutionary inventions in human history - what had once taken many generations of human lives now took only solar days or weeks. Consequently Mankind's colonisation of the Milky Way Galaxy was vastly accelerated in scope and timeframe beyond what would have been possible had humanity been limited to prior conventional reactive propulsion technologies.
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M20: Mankind spreads across the stars, becoming widely dispersed and divergent. There is evidence of many wars, but none that threatened the stability of human space. The wide spread of humanity across the stars gave birth to a cultural revolution. The existing records list xenos enemies and allies long since extinct, along with more familiar names such as Eldar and Orks and Transformers. Interplanetary trade was established and great fleets carried goods to and from the ends of the galaxy. As human planets became overpopulated, the recently invented construction mediums of plasteel, plascrete, ferrocrete and rockcrete were used to build colossal cities: the proto-hives. Researchers and engineers have also created the first human space colonies during this time.
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M21: Age of Exploration
001.M21: An unknown catastrophe around this time causes the human race's interstellar confederacy to increase its defensive military posture and begin developing new weapons and military tactics to meet the unknown threat. Some scholars believe this threat was a First Contact with a hostile xenos race, predicted to be the hive, while others claim it was preparation for war against the machine men. Many of these technological developments will later be recovered by the forces of the Imperium of Man during the Great Crusade of the late 30th Millennium.
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Unknown Date.M21: During the Great Diaspora of human expansion, Mankind seeks to remake the galaxy in its own image, including seeding worlds with familiar Terran flora and fauna. In many cases, these imported lifeforms eventually replace the new colony worlds' native ecosystems, leaving the human-settled galaxy with an unusual level of biological homogeneity. This cause the Empress to indirectly put massive restrictions on such terraforming to prevent widespread extinction of native flora and fauna in the galaxy.
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Unknown Date.M21: During the Dark Age of Technology the first Titans are created. These massive, crewed, robotic bipedal combat walkers can stand hundreds of metres tall, and often instilled terror by their mere presence. Based on humanity's Transformer allies, there was little that could equal their armament and sophisticated technology. There many kinds, including the Jaegers. When Mankind continued further expanding into the unknown reaches of the galaxy, they encountered several xenos races, with the exception of the primitive races and the long lasting allies of the Imperium, that were oftentimes deadly or extremely hostile. At that time each human colony had at least one Titan Legion, and many had dozens deployed in their defence. Titans played an instrumental role in protecting these early colonies from the depredations of these dangerous xenos, playing a pivotal role during the first Alien Wars.
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Unknown Date.M21: When mankind reached out to the stars and settled many far away worlds, among the apparatus of colonisation were formidable war machines known as Knights, which existed to protect the settlers from any threat. These small combat walkers are one-man versions of a Titan. Such Knights take on many forms, including the powerful gundam.
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M21-M23: The so-called "Iron Men" or "Men of Iron," artificially intelligent humanoid machines, are created by Mankind at this time. The Men of Iron were loyal only to Mankind, and served as humanity's army in the period when much of human space was united by a federation-type government that existed before the Imperium of Man. The Men of Iron were developed after the similar artificially intelligent constructs remembered only as the Men of Stone, but before the "modern" conception of robots. By the 23rd Millennium, extant records cite betrayal by select machines and a great war between robotic armies and humanity. Many speculate that the 'betrayal' was simply protests from the Iron Men to be recognized as an intelligent life form.
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M22
Unknown Date.M22: Mankind first encounters and fights with the Orks and Eldar during this millennium. By this time, both of these xenos species have become superpowers in the galaxy, and humanity suffers heavy losses. WAAAGH! Skragjaw nearly reaches Terra before unknown heroes of this time manage to throw the Greenskin menace back for the first time in human history. It will not be the last.
For the rest of the age, Mankind spread across the stars, becoming widely dispersed and divergent. There is evidence of many wars, but none that threatened the stability of human space. Interplanetary trade was established and great fleets carried goods to and from the ends of the galaxy.
As quick as Mankind's expansion had been, it was eclipsed by the speed of its collapse. The decline was so rapid, so utter and so nearly complete that little of those colonies or the civilisations they spawned remained. Speculation is rampant, but there are few facts. What is known is that human psykers are first mentioned towards the end of the 22nd Millennium, making a sudden appearance on almost every human world within a relatively short span of time.
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M23
Late M23: Widespread anarchy, descriptions of what must be Daemonic possessions and great turbulence in the Warp. Some records also cite betrayal by the machines and a great war with robotic armies. Whether factual or allegorical, the histories leave no doubt on one point - the golden age of Mankind's technological development had come to a spectacularly swift and brutal end.
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Unknown Date.M23: The Twins, Lady Saleth and Lord Gahiji, are born. They are raised by their older sister, Cassidy, on an unnamed jungle planet. Lady Saleth spends her days napping and dreaming of the present and near future. Lord Gahiji, unlike his sister, spends all his time in the wilds stalking any prey that catches his interest, including sentients. It is widely debated if Lord Gahiji was, in fact, taught by a Yautja hunter, for his fighting style is eerily similar to the honor bound hunters.
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M25: Age of Strife begins. There is a massive increase in the number of humans born with psychic powers around this time. Many of these new psykers lack the mental discipline to successfully make use of their power and are possessed by daemonic entities of the Warp, unleashing untold destruction on their homeworlds. Many people on worlds where these rogue psykers have appeared begin to treat all psykers as pariahs who should be immediately executed. The term "witch" comes back into vogue in the human language that serves as the precursor to Low Gothic to refer to those who manifest psychic powers. Many colony worlds become 'Gate Worlds' and are filled with powerful psyker energies that allowed the inhabitants to interact with beings on other dimensions. Terra and all of its interstellar colonies are cut off from interstellar travel and communication by the start of massive, galaxy-wide Warp Storms. This isolation over the next 5,000 standard years interacts with the genetic modifications and simple adaptations to local environmental conditions to create the first Abhuman subspecies of the human race, believed to have been the Awoken. Civil wars, plagues, daemonic possessions, persecutions and other terrible forms of strife consume many of the worlds of Man. A complete understanding of the knowledge once contained within the Standard Template Construct database available on every human colony planet is lost as is a complete copy of that database itself, once a collection of the most advanced human technologies developed over the last 25 standard millennia. This 5,000-year-long period of violence, fear and technological regression becomes known as the Age of Strife or "Old Night" to later Imperial historians. Human worlds throughout the galaxy are isolated by Warp Storms of terrible ferocity. A disastrous age of suspicion and dread begins as internecine conflict tears human civilisation apart. Fear and superstition lead to a regression in Mankind's mastery of science and many technological marvels of the previous age are lost to paranoia and war. Humanity's extraterrestrial allies fair no better, several are completely lost to extinction, a handful revert to a primitive style of living, many still are trapped in their own Age of Strife, and the fate of others is unknown. Aliens and daemons alike prey on Humanity's vulnerability, and although many planets are subjugated or lost to the era's woes, the surviving worlds continue to stand firm through this turbulent time - however, none do so without earning scars that linger to this day.
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M28
Unknown Date.M28: Age of Trade. Despite being cut off by the turbulent Warp storms that raged across the galaxy, the Squat Home Worlds are able to take advantage when there is a slight abating of these Warp storms that leads to encounters with other alien races. While the rest of the Imperium was still locked in the wars of the Age of Strife, the Squats made contact with both Orks and Eldar, and though initially hostile, quickly realised that trade was a more practical arrangement. The Squats remained carefully neutral in the numerous conflicts between Eldar and Orks, maintaining trade links with both sides, and during the Great Crusade that trade neutrality expanded to the Imperium.
Earth government broke down completely and the planet divided into dozens of inter-warring nations. After two and a half thousand years of continuous warfare little remained of the once sophisticated civilisation of the past. The planet had become a battleground fought over by techno-barbarian warlords and their warrior hordes. This was a dark time for the people of Earth - a time dominated by brutal rulers like Kalagann of Ursh, Cardinal Tang, and the most infamous of all, the half-mad/half-genius Narthan Dume Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire. The world was wracked by never-ending conflict as one tyrant displaced another. Petty empires rose and disintegrated; tribes formed, were destroyed and re-formed as diminishing, brutalised shadows of lost glories and forgotten triumphs. Uncounted billions died unknown and unremembered, while whispered names such as the Unspeakable King and the Seven Neverborn left legends to terrify generations to come. Anarchy and bloodshed was lord over all.
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Late M28: From out of this seemingly endless cycle of violence and doom a leader emerged - a warlord more powerful than any before him. He was the Emperor and His power lay in His rationality and foresight, and His mastery of science was as unequalled as His might as a warrior, although few suspected the true range of His powers and abilities. By His side is the merciful Empress, whose kindness, love, wisdom, and understanding united the scattered people of Earth as Her Husband begins a brutal campaign to put an end to the Terran Cycle of Tyrants.