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 [[Wikipedia: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 who could possibly threaten or influence humanity. 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 just based on the law of large numbers alone. The [[Horus Heresy]] novels expanded on this, showing a number of examples like the Interex of humans getting along with xenos just fine, not to mention reasonably peaceful civilizations that just wanted to be left alone, while [[Rogue Trader (RPG)|Rogue Trader]] features a planet called Traynor's Rest where it's confirmed the Imperial missionary who found the place had to do a lot of lying to get the local humans to turn on their xenos buddies and purge the alien properly. This is the part where GW remembered 40k was once in part a dig at real-life conservative politics, then promptly forgot it again to sell more Space Marines.

''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. Perhaps more pragmatically, those civilizations also 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 ''really'' needed those STCs. Then again, [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|Aaron "Daddy Issues" Dembski-Bowden]] wrote all this. Keep in mind that the Great Crusade also found a ''lot'' of "Hell Worlds" and "Nightmare Worlds" where the local xenos had descended on the human population and did [[FATAL|some seriously fucked up shit]] to them, whether out of revenge, because they worshipped [[Chaos]] under the table and saw the Age of Strife as a chance to cut loose, or because it was just [[Tuesday]] to their inhuman psychology.

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 powers 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. Well, them and the Orks, but Orks are pretty much kudzu with guns so they arguably don't count.