Editing Xenos (section)

==Xenos and the Great Crusade== 

However, with the Fall of the Eldar and the calming of the Warp storms that had up until then isolated the many human colonies that were spread across the galaxy, the Emperor took advantage of the newly created galactic power vacuum to launch his [[Great Crusade]]. During the Great Crusade the Emperor announced that Humanity had a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_Destiny preordained destiny] to rule the stars and was the one to pen the phrase "Suffer not the alien to live", giving orders for the extermination of all sapient Xenos. So stringent were his orders that when [[Primarchs]] like [[Horus]] and [[Fulgrim]] did seek to interact with Xenos, their men protested that it was against the standing orders of the Emperor to do so.

The Emperor's reasoning for this rampant xenophobia was that during the Age of Strife humanity was uniformly turned on by every single one of its xenos allies, who proceeded to enslave, rape, and kill human worlds, and therefore xenos couldn't be trusted and must all be killed. However, it's implied that this claim should be taken with a grain of salt. While no one is going to argue that the [[Orks]], [[Nephilim]] or [[Slaugth]] are really nice and cuddly, the idea that every single one of humanity's xenos allies, without exception, turned on us is a bit unlikely (from a math perspective if nothing else). Not to mention that the [[Great Crusade]] encountered many examples of humans enslaving humans, humans enslaving xenos, humans and xenos existing in harmony, and peaceful xenos civilizations that just wanted to be left alone. And killed most of them. If a xenos race were doing to a pocket of humanity what the [[Imperium]] does to its own people, the [[Great Crusade]] would have [[Exterminatus]]ed the fuck out of them, humans are dicks to other humans just as much as xenos are. Additionally, the only human who actually has first-hand knowledge of this xenos betrayal are the Emperor and his cronies, and the Emperor [[Imperial Truth|would never lie to people about something important in the name of getting the reaction he wants]]. Not to mention the Imperium's justification for xenocide is almost word-for-word the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth stab-in-the-back-myth] the Nazis used to try and justify their treatment of Jews and the Holocaust, only replace "Aryan" with "human" and "Jew" with "xenos". Even canon has implied on the ''very'' few times it's come up that this story might be a load of bull; the Interex and Disaporex were both human/alien alliances who were thriving in harmony until the Imperium wiped them out, and the planet of Traynor's Rest from the [[Rogue Trader]] TRPG was inhabited by a human/alien alliance that hadn't had any major conflicts or arguments for '''twenty thousand years''', forcing the Imperial missionary who found the place to literally fabricate a bunch of BS to get the humans to genocide their alien partners in what is probably an homage to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

''Master of Mankind'' also implies that the reason the Emperor wanted the xenos dead was not out of simple xenophobia, but because he couldn't control them like he did humanity and because xenos showed humanity that there were other ways of living than his design. All the while the Emperor used xenotech to create ''his'' better future for humanity. The same was true of non-Imperial humans, but at least the Emperor was willing to give them a chance to submit to his rule before wiping them out utterly. And, perhaps more pragmatically, because those civilizations may have had [[STC]] fragments and he couldn't afford to have those destroyed. Having a policy of absolute genocide towards all non-Terran ''humans'' in addition to xenos might have actually been more reasonable from the Emperor's standpoint, because it would have wiped out all those nascent [[Chaos]]-tainted civilizations and those who genetically deviated from the Imperial standard, but the Emperor needed those STCs. Ironically, the [[Age of Strife]] may have ended up saving a lot of lives in that respect.

The armies of the Emperor of Man spread across the width and breadth of the galaxy [[Rip and Tear|butchering]] all that stood in their way, including many human civilizations that had survived the horrors of Old Night and refused to bend the knee in submission to this man that claimed the title of Master of Mankind. The resulting genocides led to the extinction of hundreds of species, including many of the older races that had existed since before humanity had first looked up at the stars. Hundreds of alien races were wiped out, although barring Orks the majority of the Great Crusade seems to have been spent fighting against other human empires, as Xenos forces were comparatively rarer, indicating that they had perhaps fared even worse during the Age of Strife. Even groups such as the Diasporex, a combination of humans and Xenos living in harmony, were exterminated simply for their pluralistic ideologies, their human members slain as well for refusing to consign their Xenos compatriots to extermination.

By the end of the Great Crusade all major non-human powers and Empires had been broken, with only small and insignificant states, or weaker polities outside the Imperium's borders remaining. Ironically, the Craftworld (due to not needing planets), Exodite (due to Craftworld protection and simple obscurity) and the soon-to-be Dark (Webway) Eldar were likely the best off despite the fact that their main power was completely broken before the Crusade, besides the Orks who aren't a polity so much as a self propagating sentient (in the loosest terms) bio-weapon.