Editing Setting:Brighthammer 40,000/2nd edition (section)

== Background ==
''In the Noble Brightness of the 41st millennium, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!''

Beginning after the ascension of the Eldar that created the Order God of Passion Slaanesh some 10,000 years ago, the Emperor of Mankind appeared to guide humanity out of a self-imposed dark age. After a great war with the Lords of Order, his most favored son Horus and several of the Emperor's noble princes, or primarchs, sacrificed their mortal form to become princes of Order within The Warp and save mankind.

Since then the Emperor has ruled for 10,000 years from the Golden Throne on Terra, bringing peace and the lost knowledge of the Golden Age of mankind. There is clearly no better time to be alive.

Now the last vestiges of the Eldar go forth to seek out the secrets of ascension, found too impure to ascend with their brethren 10,000 years ago. Theirs is a desperate race against time, and a struggle to claim their place among their people as lords in the Warp. Opposing them are the dark forces of Eldrad, who leads the Exodite Eldar; those who have turned their back on ascension to seek the power of the ancient and terrible Old Ones, sealed away before the rise of mankind. To this day Eldrad's convoluted schemes are a constant source of pain and discontent for all the people of the galaxy.

Across the galaxy the brutal but noble Orks seek the limit of their own strength, pushing themselves to new limits and beyond, but held back by their own brutal culture.

In the distant galactic east the battle cry "For the Lesser Evil!" echos through the worlds of the eastern galaxy. The dark and chaotic forces known as the Tau have formed a brutal fascist empire utilizing mind control, genocide, and cannibalistic Kroot slave-soldiers on all the worlds they invade. Despite the amoral and often savage methods used to expand their domain, the Emperor believes they can be stopped by means other than open warfare.

Hidden beneath the surface of countless worlds, the immortal Necrontyr awaken to spread the knowledge of ancient technologies to man. They spread the unheard of message that prosperity is possible without the Lords of Order, and whisper again the secrets of godhood through technology that almost destroyed mankind once already. And yet wherever they are found, once-dead worlds are renewed and filled with new life.

The Zoanthropes flee into the galaxy followed by a hungry horde of their own creation – the Tyranids. In their pursuit to create the perfect slave race through genetic engineering, they doomed their own galaxy and two others they have fled to before this. The races of the galaxy stand together, united to face the Tyranids and ensure they are not the fourth. But will the Zoanthropes truly turn out to be helpful – or will their inhuman experiments create even more terrible abominations?

In the Warp, the Lords of Order are the god of hope and compassion, Nurgle, who builds civilizations and yet stifles them under his crushing grip, Tzeentch, god of knowledge and magic, who plays trickster, giving hope and taking it away at a whim, Khorne, the noble warrior king, who is the newest form of the former god of the Eldar, the savage Khaine. He is a merciless warrior god, sitting upon his throne of relics, rewarding the strong and crushing the weak. Finally, the newest and for now most powerful of the gods, Slaanesh, god of passion, art, and possessed of a capricious and cruel nature.

Across the Imperium not all is well, however. It is a vast empire, and planets fall out of the sight of the Emperor. Corrupt politicians seek to subvert the Democratic order and ways of the Imperium. Dark tyrants seek to rise up and rebel, oppressing their people brutally. Though the Lords and Princes of Order work with the Emperor to bring civilization to all mankind, the universe remains a strange and beautiful place, filled with HIGH ADVENTURE!