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Time was, the Horus heresy was a compelling spot on the horizon of 40K, scraps of history inspiring imagination to create a thrilling, mysterious backdrop that was the first step to were ended up. There is only war.

But then we got hundreds of books providing huge amounts of details documenting the events of the HH, no longer a mystery but a full blown story with equal amounts of glory and disappointment.

So what’s replaced the HH as the mysterious historical period which serves as the origin story for the 10k years of Warhammer 30-40K. The unification wars? The golden age of humanity? And will it be ruined by GW telling us how the trick was done?

Has to be the Golden Age for me.

The Votann background contains info which I think point to it being horrific in its own way. In short, there are enough suggestions in there to suggest the Kin are children of the STC, designed to mine the deep core and not question it. A genecrafted sub-species which were essentially slaves at worst, indentured workers at worst.

I'd say for Xenos players it's always been the War in Heaven.
Everything human-related pales in comparison, including the Horus Heresy.

Yeah I think for the Imperium it's the Unification Wars, for Eldar, Necrons and Orks it's the War in Heaven.

Definitely the Unification Wars.

The war in heaven is balderdash. Forging gods as weapons, flinging black holes and juggling solar systems like bowling pins. There isn't anything that can be made comprehensible or meaningful in that arena.
Yet somehow at the same time the goofy little tomb blade scooters are also exemplary space superiority fighters.

It isn't even symbolic of anything in the way creation myths or apocalypse stories are. As the big galaxy breaking stuff is just things that the species involved could just call up on a console and do.

For me the Unification Wars, if done well, would be amazing.

Simply put Earth is the only planet I know and the only one I care about (one reason I prefer the Warhammer Old World with its historical references, to the word salad of AoS.

So a well done game set in the ruins of old Earth would be awesome. Obviously you'd have Thunder Warriors, Custodious, techno barbarian cyborgs and some generic riflemen. But then to that you could add various factions, and there is the well done part, that somehow reflect actual places on Earth but without being total cliches.

So NOT Japanese cybersamurai and American Psi Cowboys but something that is somehow along those lines but good...

If that makes sense.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
For me the Unification Wars, if done well, would be amazing.

Simply put Earth is the only planet I know and the only one I care about (one reason I prefer the Warhammer Old World with its historical references, to the word salad of AoS.

So a well done game set in the ruins of old Earth would be awesome. Obviously you'd have Thunder Warriors, Custodious, techno barbarian cyborgs and some generic riflemen. But then to that you could add various factions, and there is the well done part, that somehow reflect actual places on Earth but without being total cliches.

So NOT Japanese cybersamurai and American Psi Cowboys but something that is somehow along those lines but good...

If that makes sense.

I don't think GW could actually make a game in the Unification Wars setting that would deliver all that and not descend into a PR desaster... the factions are too close to real-world countries or organizations - stuff like the 'Yndonesic Block' and such - and the majority of them are some sort of eugenicist, dictator or other war criminals. Eugenic death camps canonically exist in that time period. Having stuff like that as playable factions, possibly with names and concepts attached to real-world countries, is just asking for a shitstorm. I'm not saying that you couldn't make a game or write stories in that setting that handle these themes well, i'm saying that i doubt that GW could do that, or would even want to, especially not in our current political climate.

I’d say go for The War in Heaven.

Unification Wars didn’t last terribly long, and canonically The Emperor’s soldiers (which included Astartes) should simply roflstomp all others, because that’s what happened. There’s just not the room to expand it beyond.

War in Heaven? Well, we know Eldar and Krorks were there. But what other species got caught in the middle? What species might’ve been created and wiped out? It’s also a building tragedy, as the outcome would be largely mutual Pyrrhic victory. Old Ones extinct or otherwise absent. Necrons losing their literal souls in the name of victory. Eldar triumphant, possibly beginning their slide into decadence in the peace that followed.

Several groups in the Unification wars held their own against the Emperor for some time. The Old Albia Ironsides, for example, resisted the Emperor in several wars before joining peacefully. Ursh required a massive war of conquest.

I don't think that is significantly different to the Horus Heresy, where we know Horus loses from the outset.

For me it’s just there’s no new tragedy there.

Emperor brutally unifies Terra, GC, HH, 40K.

War in Heaven? That went on for Millenia. That leaves a lot of room.

I don’t see the big deal about the unification wars. It’s just a post apocalyptic wasteland being conquered by a god with a comparatively overpowered army. There’s a few more interesting unexplored time periods. The war in heaven of course as many has pointed out. The golden age of mankind when humanity actually settled the galaxy and the Emperor was very much active. It’s an era we know very very little about though we know it happened before the fall of the eldar. Which seems to imply that golden age humanity conquered much of the eldar empire. Then the dark age of technology when the men of iron rebellion happened. Again we know very little of the actual events of this. Afterwards there was the age of strife which we know a great deal more about. We know it’s the origin of the knight houses. We know how specific planets handled it, such as caliban. Most of the planets that survived did so by developing warrior cultures and feudalism/dictatorships. Also by mercilessly mustering psykers. Many of the planets that did not succumbed to deamons. Finally there’s the reign of blood I guess with Goge Vandire. We know roughly as much about this event as we did about the Horus heresy before the books. A pretty cool event with such a fun ending haha.

Personally I’ve gotten a bit bored with 40k fiction. The primaris storyline and tau having a chaos god (whilst it makes sense) has kind of dwindled my interested in the lore. I guess if we go to an unexplored era then the golden age would be interesting to read about. Since pre fall eldar did not have the cast system and humanity did not have the bio engineering to make super soldiers we’d see a very different eldar and human race fighting it out. Or attempting diplomacy. It was probably a far more star trekky setting. Of course we know that everything goes incredibly wrong soon afterwards. Though it did last for between 5000-12000 years depending on the source. Fun fact, we are currently living in the golden age.

Edit: ultimately we will not read about any setting that does not feature sellable miniatures. So most likely a new situation will be made up where we can read about stuff. Most likely with primarchs and space marines. Similarly to how the beast storyline was made into this huge story whilst before it was barely mentioned. If it doesn’t feature factions with models then I doubt we’ll get to read about it. Perhaps that is for the best.