Masters of the Web
The enigmatic Old Ones spanned the stars through a network of hidden gateways, seeding countless worlds with life and shaping younger species to serve their designs.
Ten thousand years of war
The Warhammer 40,000 Timeline
The history of the galaxy, era by era — from the death of the Old Ones to the opening of the Great Rift and the dawn of the Era Indomitus.
~60 Million Years Ago
The War in Heaven
Long before humanity, the galaxy burned in a war between the ancient Old Ones and the soulless Necrontyr — a conflict so vast it scarred reality itself and stirred the first great powers of the Warp.
The Age of the Old Ones The Necrontyr Rise The Doomed and the Dying
Born beneath a merciless sun, the short-lived Necrontyr grew to resent everything that lived longer than they did, and forged that envy into an empire built for war.
The Great Betrayal Flesh Made Metal
Desperate to escape their mortality, the Necrontyr bargained with the vast star-gods called the C'tan and were remade as undying metal — the Necrons — losing their very souls in the trade.
The Fall of the Old Ones The War Ends in Silence
The tide turned against the Old Ones, and as they were hunted toward extinction their gateways collapsed, leaving the galaxy broken and the younger races leaderless.
The Long Sleep Sixty Million Years of Dust
Their victory hollow and their star-gods shattered and enslaved, the Necrons withdrew into stasis-tombs beneath a thousand worlds, waiting for a galaxy worth waking for.
M15–M30
The Age of Strife
Humanity's first golden age of expansion collapsed as the Warp grew violent and psykers awakened by the thousand. The light of a young interstellar civilisation guttered into millennia of darkness remembered as Old Night.
M15–M22 The Dark Age of Technology
Humanity spread across the stars on the strength of thinking machines and sciences now forgotten, reaching a height of knowledge it has never since equalled.
M23 The Warp Awakens
As psychic mutation spread through mankind, the immaterial realm churned with newborn terrors, and every inhabited world became a door that daemons could force open.
Old Night The Long Isolation
Warp storms drowned the stars and cut every human colony adrift, condemning them to centuries of famine, madness, and the slow forgetting of all they had once been.
M30 A Warrior on Terra
Amid the ruin of humanity's cradle, a being of immense power and vision — remembered only as the Emperor — set out to conquer a shattered Earth and end the long night.
M30–M31
The Great Crusade
United at last, the Emperor led humanity out of the darkness in a tide of reconquest, guided by his transhuman sons and the Legions they commanded, intent on binding a million worlds into one enlightened Imperium.
M30 The Unification of Terra
Having subdued his homeworld, the Emperor turned his gaze outward, forging the Space Marine Legions and preparing to reclaim every world humanity had lost to Old Night.
Early M31 The Primarchs Scattered
The Emperor's twenty gene-forged sons, the Primarchs, were stolen from his laboratories by the Ruinous Powers and flung across the galaxy, to be recovered one by one on distant worlds.
M31 A Galaxy Reclaimed
World after world was brought into Compliance and the lost knowledge of humanity recovered, until for one brief moment it seemed mankind might truly rule the stars again.
M31 The Warmaster Named
The Emperor withdrew to Terra to pursue a secret work, naming his favoured son Horus as Warmaster to lead the Crusade in his stead — a decision that would in time doom them all.
M31 The Council of Nikaea
Fearing the perils of the Warp, the Emperor forbade the Legions their sorcerers and psykers, sowing quiet resentment among sons who did not understand his caution.
M31
The Horus Heresy
Corrupted by the Chaos Gods, the Warmaster Horus turned half the Emperor's Legions against him, plunging the young Imperium into a civil war of betrayal, atrocity, and fratricide that would define the ten thousand years to come.
M31 The Fall of Horus
Wounded on a hostile world and whispered to by the servants of Chaos, the Warmaster came to believe the Emperor had betrayed his dream — and chose damnation over doubt.
M31 The Massacre at Isstvan
Horus purged the loyal warriors within his own ranks in a treacherous orbital bombardment, then turned his gathered traitor Legions toward Terra itself.
M31 Brother Against Brother
The galaxy tore itself apart as Primarch fought Primarch, whole worlds were consigned to fire, and the hungry powers of the Warp feasted on the endless slaughter.
M31 The Siege of Terra
Horus assailed the Emperor's own palace in a final, apocalyptic battle, and at the last father and son faced one another alone aboard the Warmaster's flagship.
M31 A Father's Last Victory
The Emperor slew Horus but was left broken beyond saving, interred forever within the life-sustaining Golden Throne — a god in all but name, and a corpse in all but law.
M32–M41
The Age of the Imperium
For ten thousand years the Imperium endured as a grim theocracy ruled in the Emperor's name — beset from without by aliens and daemons, rotted from within by corruption and zeal, yet somehow never quite falling.
M32 The Scouring
The victorious loyalists hunted the traitor Legions from the galaxy, driving them into a hellish region of the Warp where they would nurse their hatred for ten thousand years.
M32 The Second Founding
So that no single commander could ever again wield the power Horus had, the great Legions were broken into smaller, self-governing Chapters of Space Marines.
M36 The Age of Apostasy
A mad High Lord seized control of the Ecclesiarchy and very nearly tore the Imperium apart from within, until faith and civil war together dragged him down.
M41 The Gathering Enemies
Ork empires, Tyranid hive fleets, waking Necron dynasties, and the sudden rise of the T'au Empire pressed the Imperium on every front as the millennium drew toward its close.
M41–M42
The Great Rift and the Dark Imperium
As the 41st millennium ended, the greatest Warp storm in history split the galaxy in two, severing the light of the Astronomican and casting half the Imperium into a darkness where daemons walked freely.
M41 The Thirteenth Black Crusade
The Despoiler Abaddon launched his greatest assault yet out of the Eye of Terror, laying siege to the fortress world that had guarded the Imperium's flank for millennia.
M41 The Fall of Cadia
After brutal fighting the bastion world of Cadia was broken and destroyed, tearing away the keystone that had held the tide of Chaos in check for ten thousand years.
M42 The Great Rift Opens
A vast wound in reality ripped across the galaxy from edge to edge, and for a time the guiding light of the Astronomican failed, leaving countless worlds blind, isolated, and besieged.
M42 The Noctis Aeterna
In the blackness that followed, daemon legions poured into realspace and half the Imperium fought on alone in the dark, unsure whether relief would ever come at all.
M42
The Time of Rebirth
From the Imperium's darkest hour came an unlikely resurrection, as a long-lost Primarch returned to lead a new crusade — and mankind was granted not salvation, but a stubborn, bloody chance to endure.
M42 The Return of Guilliman
Roboute Guilliman, last of the loyal Primarchs, was woken from ten thousand years of stasis to find the realm he had built fallen into superstition and ruin — and took command regardless.
M42 The Primaris March to War
A new breed of transhuman warrior, developed in secret across the long millennia, took the field at last, reinforcing the thinned and weary ranks of the Space Marines.
M42 The Indomitus Crusade
Guilliman led a vast host out from Terra to reconnect and relieve the sundered half of the Imperium, retaking lost worlds and steadying a realm balanced on the edge of collapse.
M42 A Galaxy Still Burning
The crusade bought hard-won hope, but the Rift endures, the enemies of mankind gather stronger than ever, and the grim darkness of the far future promises only more war.