Editing Warhammer 40,000 (section)

==Background==
[[Image:Warhammer Canon.png|300px|righ|thumb|Just keep in mind before the internet slap fight starts about which Smurf is the Captain in which battle that the creators care about less than you.]]


'''Important Note:''' In 40K there is a parallel dimension where the gods of Chaos (the grimdark supervillains) and other Pantheons exist and where all psykers - the setting's equivalent of wizards - draw their power from, known as the Warp. It is also Warp navigation that forms the 40K take on FTL (Faster-Than-Light) travel. The Warp is a batshit insane place, full of things that want to fuck you and your brain inside out, and as such, being a psyker is very dangerous. Basically everybody but the Emperor are under the danger of having their head explode every time they channel Warp powers. It goes without saying that using the Warp as FTL-travel will also result in a grade A clusterfucking, if the ship is not protected with some sort of shielding (the [[Gellar_Field|Gellar Field]]). The Warp affects every race in 40K in some major or minor way (except the Tau, who are too young as a species to produce psykers (this is a [[skub]], though), the Necrons, who are the ANTI-Warp race, and the Tyranids, who by some unexplained means block out the Warp). The Warp is the very source of Chaos itself, as it is the dimension of feelings and spontaneity, creation and destruction.
[[Image:Promethean_Sun.jpg|300px|left|thumb|Space elves riding dinosaurs with heatlances is a part of this setting. Just like that. Your [[Star Trek]]s wouldn't do that shit now would it?]]
'''Settle down, kids and elders, grab your favorite snack and beverage, because it's now time for some TL;DR!:'''

Once upon a time, humanity had a much more [[Dark Age of Technology|optimistic and peaceful interstellar empire]] that got [[Age of Strife|royally fucked]] thanks to [[Men of Iron|a bunch]] [[Fall of the Eldar|of assholes]]. That was the main reason of humanity's distrust of xenos and artificial intelligence. But all was not lost: there came the [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|EMPRAH]]. There are no words in the human language that can describe his radiant levels of awesome, but basically he told the human race to do his will and they did (<s>millions</s>billions died in the process, but that's a "hush-hush subject"). He started the tedious task of re-conquering planets and systems that mankind had lost in the distant past and discovering many thousands of new ones, with the aid of the Emperor's loyal Army (now [[Imperial Guard]]), the machines of the allied Mechanicum and 20 [[SPESS MEHREENS|SPESS MEHREEN]] Legions composed of up to 250,000 superhuman soldiers ''each'' (before 2 went missing, then half of the remainder turned heretic, and then the remaining loyalists were decentralized and re-organized into Chapters of 1,000 warriors each), personally led by His 20 [[Primarch|demigod sons]] as generals with each specific role in his Empire. In the process, they destroyed countless alien races and civilizations for the crime of not wanting to embrace the human way of life (well, there were some actual assholes in the bunch, but the Emprah took a "better safe than sorry" approach), as well as killing millions of humans for the crime of not being "Terran" enough. This period of history, this time of many moronic misunderstandings, would be additionally remembered as The Time of Scarlet Foreheads, due to the near-endless amount of facepalms produced by the population. But the Emperor did all this for great justice, so that makes it okay.

The Space Marine Legions, 20 of them in total, were the main specialist force during this Great Crusade, lasting 200 years. Despite their minuscule numbers comparatively to the human Army Corps, they were, however, the manliest skullfuckers in the galaxy at the time. The only thing that could beat the Space Marines were other Space Marines. That jinx. It's kind of like when the ''Titanic'' began it's maiden voyage and some fucktard said: "God himself could not sink this ship". And so it happened of course.

[[Image:Drive_me_Closer.jpg|right|thumb|300px|40K: Never letting practicality get in the way of manliness.]]

A guy named Horus, the Primarch chosen "Warmaster" by the Emperor to lead the closing decenniums of Great Crusade, while the Emperor went back to Terra to work on some super secret pwn-the-galaxy scheme, accidentally fucked everything up. [[Horus Heresy|Succumbing to the whispers of the Chaos gods]] (& his own deep seated "Daddy Issues"), he led a third of the Imperium's armies straight to Terra where he attempted to fuck up the Emperor's Palace and obviously the Empra himself. The siege took too long and in an attempt to end it quickly, the Emperor teleported to Horus's flagship for some glorious hand-to-face face-to-hand close combat. The Emperor won, but was seven levels of "fucked up" by the fight and had to be attached to a life-support machine known as the Golden Throne, where he has remained for ten millennia as a super-psychic vegetable.

'''Cue atmospheric lights, deep ambient music and [[grimdark]].'''

[[Image:Warhammer.jpg|left|thumb|350px|"GOD HIMSELF COULD NOT SINK THIS GAME!" (note: they said the same about the Titanic, [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|where is the Titanic now]]?) Alt: No, [[Slaanesh]]! back! Not that kind of mansauce!]]

During this time, the confused and stressed out humanity did everything in their power to fuck up the Emperor's vision of the [[Imperium of Man]]. With the Emperor no longer in charge, the total IQ of the Imperium's leadership dropped by about 99%. The Imperium has now become a nightmarishly bureaucratic, totalitarian militaristic state, governed by unforgiving commanders and extremistic religious fundamentalists, while all of this is fueled by some good ol' fashioned ignorance. At some point, the term "heresy" was reinvented by the Imperium as a blanket term to cover every single act a human being could possibly commit for good or for worse, that any amoral Imperial Official subjectively deems as countering the interests of the Imperium or whoever else in charge. Disagreeing with this treatment of heresy is itself heresy.

Even though we are humans, and this universe is created by us, far from everything revolves around the Imperium, however. Which is pretty awesome and makes the setting just a bunch more nuanced and richer.

After the Horus Heresy, the armies of Chaos fled into a section of disturbed warp-space known as the Eye of Terror, where they are pretty much safe from the Imperium until they leave ''en masse'' in what is known as "Black Crusades". There have been 13 so far, and most Imperial scholars are confused as to what every of these Crusades had a goal to accomplish, because they all seemed to aim high, failed low, but somehow succeeded in helping Chaos to establish a minor foothold in the Imperium. [[Just As Planned]].

The [[Eldar]], one of the most ancient races in the galaxy and literally space-elves, are the source of the aforementioned Eye of Terror. Back in the old days, like ''millions of years'', the Eldar had a galaxy-spanning empire too. Except instead of enjoying themselves the classical way of constantly fighting for their own existence and accusing each other of heresy, they indulged in fuckhueg amounts of hedonism. After one too many cocaine-and-alcohol-fueled underage orgies, the fabric of the material universe tore open and created the unstable warp-realspace phenomenon known as the Eye of Terror. I know it sounds completely bizarre and childishly hilarious, but what do you expect of a dumbed down and shortened version of the event? The sex-fueled explosion also wiped out like 80% of the Eldar race and birthed the fourth major Chaos god, [[Slaanesh]], the Prince of Pleasure and Excess. Created by <s>their own desires</s>sexing it into being, the Eldar race basically now "belongs" to Slaanesh and so when they die, their souls go to his little section of the Warp to be tormented for all eternity (unless they store their own souls in living gems called Spirit Stones). Whoops. despite all of this, some (Dark) Eldar kept being decadent fucks and pissed off to the dark hidden city of Commorragh, but most became very [[Serious Business|srs bsns]] mopey living-in-the-past elves, consumed with manipulating the future for their own ends, to preserve their dying race, now that and all the alcohol, sex and cocaine belongs to Slaanesh.

[[Ork]]ses iz da biggest 'n' da strongest, and they have been around for as long as the Eldar. They are somewhat more numerous these days, that with their method of reproduction consists of an Ork scratching himself and by shedding some of his skin, seeding a few more Orks in the ground (Egghead tip: Orks are alien mixotrophs with a reproduction cycle similar to fungi). Basic understanding of technology, medicine and warp manipulation is genetically-encoded within them and occasionally express themselves in certain breeds of Orks, creating mechanics, doctors, natural leaders and a slew of other "oddboy" Orks. Occasionally they throw a [[WAAAGH]]! and blow away big chunks of the galaxy and anything that lives there.

The [[Necron]]s are so old and pissed off that even your grandma wouldn't fuck with them. They started the first (and still biggest) [[War in Heaven|galactic war]] and kicked so much ass that it created the Warp. ''The Eldar and Orks were created to stop the advance of these skeletal nihilists.'' They eradicated most part of intelligent life in the galaxy and then decided to take a lil' nap. Now that they've given the intelligent races a somewhat 60 million year fighting chance, they're back and more pissed than ever. Their goal is to cleanse the galaxy of all life, though the Tyranids may have something to say about that (NOT. Tyranids are avoiding Necrons like an over-sized gonad. Primarily because they realized that Necrodermis isn't a very good nom-nom. Also, [[Games Workshop|geedubs]] realised that having the 'nids face off against these immortal metal skeletons would actually be a decent fight...so obviously they didn't do anything). The future plans, goals and "wishes" of the Necrons seem to be in a constant state of [[skub]], both within the lore, the fans, the writers and the Necrons themselves. Look, it's fucking complicated and i'd advise you to read all their past codices if you want to know more. Nevertheless, it's still an interesting read.

The [[Tyranid]]s have been around for nobody-knows how long, as they come from another galaxy. There's like, a fuckton of them. As much as you can count at any given time. Yes, even if you're a mathematician or a physics student. There is speculation that they might be running for their lives from something even more scary. It has been theorized by Imperial scholars that the Tyranids will eventually bring forth a massive Hive fleet that would consume everything, however, this is said to be kept back by something more powerful than the Emperor and Chaos combined: [[GW]]'s refusal to [[Advancing the Storyline|move the WH40K storyline forward]]."[[Warhammer 40,000 8th edition|At least with any races but the human ones]]."

The [[Tau]] are a five thousand years old civilization and have advanced from spears and loincloths to a technological level slightly beyond that of Imperium (and constantly upgrading just like the Steam-app) although since their world was engulfed by a Warp storm and those tend to fuck over time, they may be five million years old for all anyone knows. They expand symmetrically in all directions with their home-world T'au in the center, but don't have warp drives yet, and thus rely on FTL travel (they hadn't even had FTL tech at all until the 3rd Sphere Expansion). The Tau have a real penchant for advancing their society rapidly, however, they are Space Communists and as such have no future. In the grim darkness of far future, Tau are the only ones who prefer to talk before shooting and aren't xenophobic, because they recognize the advantages of creating an empire of mixed species. They often give aliens assimilated into their society citizenship and tech, and even claim to treat them as equals, though in fact aliens are always second-class citizens (and brainwashed by pheromones and re-socialization camps). Despite this, their standard of life sucks much less in comparison to Imperium of Man (unless you live on a Civilized World of the Imperium like some humans do, then your life is quite good and generally quite advanced). Their empire is too small to have an impact on the grand scheme of things, but survives and thrives despite Chaos incursions, Necron forces, Hive Fleets, and encounters with the Eldar thanks to all factions not caring enough to put in true effort into wiping them out beyond a token gesture or just the dregs of a far larger force stumbling across the Tau. Sometimes the Imperium accidentally saves them from real threats by destroying those threats from behind without realizing if they'd just waited a little on that then they'd have one less enemy plaguing them.