Insect-Infested Nurgle Chaos Lord
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The problem with 40k is that it's so huge and vast that even on most wiki websites they either just give you the quiz-notes version or will take you weeks to go through. TVTropes and Warhammer.Wikia both provide some decent descriptions, but can still take quite some time to digest.
Here's a really short abridged version of some of the most significant events in chronological order from the heresy:
1.) Just prior to the Great Crusade and the Heresy, the Eldar had a massive sex party that accidentally spawned Slaanesh, the chaos god. This event also destroyed the Eldar Empire, creating the Eye of Terror at the center of it. The Craftworld Eldar had long since fled the center of their empire but not all managed to escape the Eye. Dark Eldar and Harlequins fled into the webway, with the Dark Eldar laying down the foundations of Commoragh while the Harlequins started their circus parade or guarded the Black Library.
2.) Around this time (like within a millenium or something) The Emperor created the Thunder Warriors, proto-space marines that were basically drugged up brutes in heavy armor, to fight the Unification Wars to unite all of Earth/Terra under his rule. He succeeds in subjugating earth and creates a pact with the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars, who remain their own state separate from the fledging Imperium of Man (but a staunch Ally and trade partner, kinda like the US and Britain).
3.) The Emperor creates his 20 gene-sons, the Primarchs, under the Himalayan mountains. The Chaos Gods get wind of this and through their machinations the 20 sons are scattered across the cosmos. However the Emperor has already gotten the gene material from the 20 sons to create the 20 legions of space marines.
4.) The Emperor embarks on the Great Crusade, a campaign of vast proportions to unite all of Mankind's colonies under the Imperium of Man. During these travels he encounters all 20 of the Primarchs. Some willingly submit, others were not so happy to see him (see Angron) and quite a few had to be beaten senseless before joining them. Each Primarch is introduced to their legion and changes them to match the primarch's tactics.
5.) Something indescribable happens and 2 of the Legions, and their Primarchs were so disgraced that all records of their existence were wiped from history. The Space Wolves are rumored to have carried out the execution of the Primarchs and Legion Leadership of the two, while the remaining marines of those legions would be quietly merged into other legions (most prominently the Ultramarines).
6.) The Emperor admonishes Lorgar for building more temples than actually conquering worlds, as well as basically going against the Imperial Truth of "Science over Religion". Lorgar goes all emo at this, whereby Erebus corrupts him by telling him of the Chaos Gods. The two scheme to have Horus fall to the ruinous powers.
7.) The Emperor retreats back to Terra to work on his webway project, so that humanity can have access to safe warp travel. He leaves the great crusade in the hands of Horus.
8.) Horus is injured and is brought before a Warrior Lodge. Unbeknownst to him, the weapon that wounded him had chaos taint and the warrior lodge was a chaos cult. Soon the lodges spread throughout the legions while Horus starts hearing voices in his head, telling him the Emperor wants to take all the credit for Horus's work and eventually build an Empire where the Emperor is worshipped as a god, while Horus and his fellow primarchs are forgotten. Horus goes mad from the thought and starts planning the heresy.
9.) Magnus sees this and tries to warn the Emperor via warp sorcery, but the effort angers the Emperor (depending on the version, either Magnus's warning caused a breach in the Webway gate at Terra, he violated the Emperor's decree of not using sorcery, or both) and the Emperor sends the Space Wolves to bring Magnus in. Horus intercepts the order and instead tells the SW to execute Magnus. Thus the Burning of Prospero happens and Magnus is turned to Chaos.
10.) The Issvan Dropsite Massacre happens when Horus tricks the Raven Guard, Salamanders and Iron Hands into the titular dropsite to confront some traitors, only to have them cut off by the Emperor's children, Iron Warriors and Death Guards. The loyalists suffer a crushing defeat, with Ferrus Manus (Iron Hands Primarch) killed in the conflict. This was Horus's official declaration of the Heresy.
11.) Tons of small stuff happen and a bunch more legions turn traitor or are forced into servitude of a Chaos God. Horus and his fleet make for Terra.
12.) Horus besieges the Emperor's palace at Terra, bringing with him several legions. Only the Imperial Fists and Blood Angels stood against him while the other loyalist forces either try to replenish their losses or rush as fast as possible back to Terra to help with the defense. Horus senses this and seeing no quick victory decides to lower the shields on his flagship to bait the emperor into single combat. The Emperor, Dorn and Sanguinus all teleport onto the ship to confront Horus. Sanguinius gets there first but is killed so traumatically that all blood angels past, present and future have his death genetically imprinted on them, giving birth to the "Black Rage" affliction. The Emperor fights Horus next and tries to save Horus, but upon seeing what he does to someone (either a custode or a lone guardsman) is so enraged that he used a psychic attack that utterly destroyed Horus's soul.
13.) With the warmaster dead, the surviving traitors fled into the Eye of Terror. The mortally wounded Emperor is enthroned upon the Golden Throne to serve as the astronomican, but he leaves behind some final words for the remaining primarchs on how to rule. These would eventually see the creation of the High Lords of Terra (and who would twist his words for their benefit).
14.) The Dark Angels would return home only to find their own traitors among their numbers. Details are sketchy but the end result is that their homeworld is destroyed and the traitors flung into the warp across time and space. The Dark Angels repaint their armor while remaining silent about the whole incident of the "Fallen", lest suspicion about their loyalties come back to bite them in the ass. All Dark Angels (and their subsequent founding chapters) would have the secret duty of hunting down the so called "Fallen Angels".
15.) Roboute Guilliman would lay down the Codex Astartes, to ensure that no other man would ever wield the power of multiple Space Marine Legions. Some of the other surviving primarchs disagreed with this, but with the threat of another civil war over their heads, they dissenting primarchs eventually capitulated. The Space Marine Legions would be divided into individual Chapters, with the Codex being the guidelines of which to live by for them.
16.) The remaining Primarchs would try to defend what territory was already held by the Imperium and hunt down the traitors. but slowly one by one they either disappear into the Eye of Terror or are killed. Guilliman would not be killed, but mortally wounded and put in stasis, while Dorn would be the last Primarch to "die", although his ultimate fate is unknown (previously it was said his skeleton was recovered, but now it's just his hands). Two of the eight traitor primarchs would be killed because they rejected Chaos's gift of ascension, while the remaining 6 would be content to rule their own daemon worlds within the Eye of Terror, leaving their generals and captains to assault the imperium. Only Angron would make an attempt at attacking realspace durign this time, starting the first War for Armageddon.
17.) Goge Vandire, a High Lord of Terra, would become the head of the administratum as well as the head of the Ecclesiarchy, the religious sect of the Imperium. He would then use a Rosarius to trick the Brides of the Emperor that his will was divinely that of the Emperors by walking through a fire unscathed. WIth both positions under him, he would effectively have the support of the church as well as the military, and began enforcing his rule over the Imperium. A priest named Sebastian Thor would, with the help of the custodes, convince the Brides of the Emperor that Vandire was a fraud. With the combined might of a few Space Marine Chapters and the reformed Brides, they would overthrow Vandire. This was the Age of Apostasy. Following it, Thor realized that the Ecclesiarchy having it's own military was what caused this, but could not leave them completely defenseless. Thus the decree passive stated that the Ecclesiarchy may have "no men under arms", but permitted the Brides to serve instead (as they were exclusively female). The Brides saw this as atonement for siding with Vandire, and renamed themselves the Adepta Sororitas; SIsters of Battle.
18.) Some time in between, the High Lords of Terra decided to create several new Space Marine Chapters to guard a region known as the Maelstrom, which was in the Badab Sector. The Maelstrom was similar to the Eye of Terror, but was formed naturally. Nonetheless it served as an entrance to realspace like the Eye, and must be guarded against. The strongest of these chapters was the Astral Claws, led by Luftg Huron. But after repeated rejections of men and materiel requests, as well as having to work with increasingly worse conditions, Luftg decided to create his own empire within Badab so he can raise his own armies (beyond his chapter) to secure the Maelstrom. The Imperium perceived this as a secession attempt, and thus began the Badab War. The conclusion saw many of the chapters that fought with Huron being granted (harsh) forgiveness, while the Astral Claws were declared traitors and chased from their empire. Huron would be mortally wounded and rebuilt as Huron Blackheart. He would rebrand the Claws into the Red Corsairs, the greatest pirate force known in the milky way galaxy.
19.) Hive fleet behemoth, the first contact with the Tyranids, would invade imperial space. The first instances of this were the rising of Genestealer cults; genstealer-infected imperial citizens giving birth to xeno mutants who psychically enslaved them to the will of the Hive Mind, before calling the hive fleets to come devour the world. They moved as one giant, formless mass towards Terra. In between them and Terra was the realm of Ultramar. Determined to stop the alien menace there, the Ultramarines would send all of their forces, including planetary defense forces, against Behemoth. A bloody war was fought which saw the entire first company of the Ultramarines to be destroyed. This event would cause the formation of the Tyranid Hunters within the Ultramarines, who would become the premier troops seconded to Deathwatch as they have a fervor hate for the Tyranids. This event is apparently remembered by the Tyranids, as their subsequent hive fleets have always travelled in "Tendrils" instead of a singular mass so that if a splinter fleet was destroyed, the whole of the fleet will still remain to be a threat.
20.) The third hive fleet to invade imperial space, Leviathan, attacked the Imperium from "Below" the Galactic map, bypassing much of the defenses the Imperium set up against the Tyranids. with no choice and with the penalty of execution over his head, Xenos Inquisitor Kryptmann and a lone squad of Deathwatch went aboard a hive ship to capture a genestealer to infect the Octarius Sector, a sector held by an Ork Warboss of immense strength. This plan succeeded in diverting Leviathan's attention away from the Imperium, but Kryptmann knew it was only kicking the can down the road as whoever won the conflict would become a greater enemy than the two combined.
21.) The Damocles Crusade happened after the fledgling Tau Empire made contact with fringe Imperial Worlds during the former's Third Sphere Expansion campaign. After negotiations broke down (the tau insisting the humans join the Greater Good, while the Imperials either refused or told them that the Imperium does not allow alliances with xenos) the Tau forcibly attacked the colonies to continue expansion. The Imperium did not take this lightly and deployed a full invasion force. The end result is that while the Tau repelled the Imperials from the space, they suffered enough losses that their third-sphere expansion was halted indefinitely.
22.) meanwhile, with the approaching Tyranid Forces, the Silent King of the Necrons rushed back into the milky way galaxy to awaken his empire so that they may protect the fleshies from the Great Devourer. Not in a humanitarian sense, but they want fleshy bodies and if the nids ate it all it wouldn't be kosher. during the time before this and the Heresy, Abaddon would also launch 12 Black crusades against the Imperium for various objectives, none of which are really clear due to the fluff trying too hard to make him sound like a tactical genius rather than just faffing about in imperial space 12 times.
23.) Magnus consorts with various daemons to instigate the war seen in Warzone: Fenris. The most important part of this plan was to reveal the wulfen curse to the imperium at large. This was to be payback against the Space Wolves for the Burning of Prospero. Magnus would succeed in discrediting the wolves, notably having the Inquisition come and "cleanse" fenris and several of the worlds under SW control as well as deal a heavy blow to the wolves themselves. This sacrifice apparently also allowed Magnus to bring the Planet of Sorcerors out of the Warp and into realspace, effectively ressurecting Prospero. The Changling at this time also revealed the existence of the Fallen to the Imperium at large, causing the Dark Angels (who went to assist the wolves) to dive back into seclusion at the fear of retribution for their millenia-long secret keeping.
24.) Gathering the Storm happens and Abaddon instigates the 13th Black Crusade, behind him several chaos warbands united under one banner not seen since the Horus Heresy 10,000 years ago.
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