Setting:Brighthammer 40,000/2nd edition

In the Noble Brightness of the 40th millennium, the Emperor of Mankind has ruled over ten millenia of peace.

Brighthammer 40k is a mirror universe of Warhammer 40k. In this setting, the incredibly GRIMDARKness of regular 40k is replaced by NOBLEBRIGHTness and instead of war, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!

The second edition of Brighthammer was developed as a reconstruction of the underlying pulp sci-fi basics that make up Warhammer40k and were largely lost as the editions advanced.

Background

Noble/Bright games are often misunderstood as “happy, bright, everyone gets along”. This is quite untrue. “Noble/Bright” games are characterized by the juxtaposition of two distinct themes – the Mythological, or Noble, and Pulp, the Bright.

In terms of mythology, particularly Greek and Norse, the characters are almost invariably “noble” - individuals of great skill and power who are heroes. However; they are not necessarily nice. Most mythological heroes were utter bastards, in their own way, and during the bronze age nobility was characterized by unyielding courage, incredible personal power, and utter brutality. In a noble/bright game, society is a lot more like the Bronze age. Worlds are often not unlike city states unto themselves, with unity only loosely enforced by the Imperium's navy – a symbol of the Emperor of Man's divine strength and will. Raiding alien territory and being raided is considered a fact of life – although actual acts of genocide are considered great atrocities. Because of this, there is always conflict without open war. Every faction seeks to gain the upper hand in these raids, or to prevent and defeat enemy raids. Most of all, they rely on heroes – those men of “nobility” (whether or not they were born as nobles) who have great strength, power, and a wealth of courage to defeat their foes.

The Bright aspect is characterized by aspects of Pulp Fiction – vivid, often contradictory backdrops with wildly inconsistent technology, setting, and theme, set to fast paced action with many twists and turns in the story. Warhammer 40k is especially well suited to this, as it's normally a kind of “dark” pulp fiction in the first place. Some soldiers ride dinosaurs into battle – some are knights in space, there are robots, and lasers, and primitive worlds filled with savage and strange creatures. This aspect is what's focused on – the strange, interesting, and wide divergence of the setting. The players are like those pulp fiction characters from the serials – proud heroes facing down great danger and going through the purest of HIGH ADVENTURE!

It is the combination of these two things – a mythological, bronze age setting, and a Pulp Fiction type of feel, that creates the true feeling of Noble/Bright.

So what is War in Brighthammer, then? It's what defines Warhammer 40k, after all – eternal war by all factions against all other factions.

Is there peace between all the factions in Brighthammer, then? No. As has already been explained, Brighthammer is like a Bronze Age setting. Each faction is internally divided, each functioning as it's own form of city-state, ruled over by their own Tyrant or noble Philosopher-King. Each “faction” is in fact a loose coalition of such groups, all united by one unique, overarching philosophy. Humanity is widely divergent and often in conflict with itself, but it's uniting factor is the Emperor of Man – the one living God and Lord of Order who truly cares about humanity. For the Orks, it is Gork and Mork. For the Initiates of Order, it is an ideal (even if it is not often maintained) of Order United. The Bright Eldar believe in the doctrines of Ascension, and teaching it to “lesser” races. The Eldar believe in Eldrad, and in a doctrine of power gained from the resurrection and control of the Old Ones. The Tau believe in the Lesser Evil and the Etherials. The Necrons believe in a doctrine of transhumanism, and so on.

These factions, however, DO fight. And it is these conflicts – unending but never flaring into true war – that define Brighthammer and give rise to the High Adventure that calls to the heroes. Every group will conduct endless raids on the other factions, minor skirmishes and conflicts with the other factions that MAY flare up into war, but only briefly and almost never to the extent of Genocide. The actual destruction of a world or extermination of a race is considered an atrocity, and although it DOES happen, it's extremely rare and avoided as often as possible by all but the most insane races. Even the Eldar, Slaan and Tau, the biggest “villains” of Brighthammer, seek to dominate rather than exterminate. Of the major factions, only the Tyranids seek to totally destroy everything else – and because of this, every single race in the galaxy is united against them.

Because all the different groups are fighting unending low-level conflicts, and because all the factions are so deeply internally divided, the single most vital faction for any group are their equivalent to an intelligence agency, or elite special forces. For the Imperium, it's the Emperor's Secret Service – Brighthammer's equivalent to the Inquisition. Each race has it's own equivalent (the Eldar are almost nothing BUT special forces of one variety or another) and they do most of the fighting, most of the scouting, and most of the maneuvering that protects their people from other factions raids – often by conducting their own low level, covert raiding operations. They build superweapons in secret, try to destroy the enemies superweapons in secret, raise armies in secret, fight in secret, and when there are wars, they are usually brief, small-scale affairs that are over well before they've begun – because of the efforts of a few, brave and heroic individuals who quietly do most of the work of fighting the other factions.

Most worlds, despite being city-states, base a lot of their power and interests off-world as well. A ship manufacturing world may have interests on a dozen other worlds – interests the other groups (not uncommonly other city-states in the same faction) may well want to see destroyed. Because of this, the intelligence services of various worlds may find themselves going to dozens of planets, often wildly different. They might find themselves fighting the Slaan on a jungle world, Transhumanist cultists on a gleaming Metropolitan Planet, Orks on a world of lava, and Space Pirates on floating cities on a gas giant, all in the same adventure, all pursuing the same goal – and a group may pursue far more than one goal at a time. In Brighthammer, the most brave, bold, manipulative group of magnificent bastards win.

Brighthammer isn't just a setting for the Emperor's Secret Service to play around in, either. Every world is, on every level, very much a bronze age society with a pulp feel. Each corporation is a city-state unto itself; every sector on a metropolitan world has it's own interests and society, and different places on the same world can have wildly divergent culture and technology. A mere Arbites policing the streets of a city-sector on a Metropolitan world can see just as much action and variety of setting as a special agent, and his job is often not much different.

History

Unknown: => The first sapient species start appearing in the galaxy. Among them are the C'Tan, the Star Children who live within suns. => The terrible Great Old Ones roam space, enslaving and modifying species on their whim. Their evil spawns the first Warp Horrors. => The Necrontyr make contact with the C'Tan and become a transhuman species. => The Great Old Ones, bolstered by their mastership of the material universe begin to turn their attention towards the Warp. They begin to exercise control over the various Horrors, forming corrupt Warp Gods that thrive on harshly enforced worship of the slave races. => The War in Heaven: The Necrontyr and C'Tan fight the Great Old Ones. The C'Tan flee into hibernation and the Necrontyr are likewise scattered and beaten. => Critically weakened, the Great Old Ones are subject to a massive slave uprising. Siding with the slaves are some of their own Warp gods, who later take on the identity of the Lords of Order. => Lord Kroak, their Enlightened Supervisor, sends the last handful of his species into the darkest corner of the galaxy before he, too, is forced into hibernation. The Great Old Ones are finally defeated in the Materium. => The Immaterium, bristling with the hatred of the dead Old Ones and the slaves that perished, forms one last Warp Horror out of the loyalist Warp Gods, The Universal Destroyer, against which even the assembled armies are helpless. Only the ascension of the Ork brainboyz Gork and Mork stops the Destroyer from outright collapsing the entire galaxy.

=> The War of Souls: The Destroyer and his adversaries wage war in the Warp for millenia. Spacetravel becomes nearly impossible. => During the long darkness in the galaxy, the Initates of Order - originally a warrior brotherhood during the rebellion - reform on countless worlds. => The Enslavers, minor manifestations of the many-bodied Destroyer, burst forth through into the galaxy and kill entire worlds. => Three Lords of Order begin to take their modern form as result of the work of the Initiates. Eventually, as the Enslavers that had crossed into the Materium are thought annihilated the warp becomes usable again (although still dangerous). => The Eldar Ascendancy forms.

12000 BC => The Universal Destroyer begins harvesting the souls of unprotected Psychers. => The first Ork Empires form.

8000 BC => At the end of the last Ice Age, the Emperor of Mankind is born in central Anatolia.

M2 => A ruinous global wars leaves the human nation states in ruins. Humanity creates one united government, the Terran Alliance, to prevent the divisions of the past from resurfacing.=> Terraforming of Mars begins under a multinational conglomerate which eventually evolves into the first truly global corporation.

M15 => Age of Exodus: The Terran Alliance begins colonising distant worlds via sleeper ships. => Mars begins its specialisation into a purely industrial world. Eventually, it evolves into the vital point for manufacture to support outlying colonies further out into the solar system.

M18 => The Emperor of Mankind defeats the C'Tan known as the Void Dragon on Mars, forcing technological secrets out of him. => Thusly, humanity develops the Warp Drive and the Geller field. => Drained by the battle, the Emperor falls into a regenerative coma that will last 10,000 years. => After countless millenia, human Psychers are being born again.

M19 => The Dark Age of Technology: Unguided by the Emperor, whisperings of the Void Dragon drag humanity into the abyss of transhuman advancements.

M25 => The Golden Men (the followers of abstract transhumanism) declare An End to Flesh and starts a civil war that destroys the Terran Alliance. Opposing them, the Iron Men take up the flag of humanity. Thus begins the Human Age of Strife. => The Universal Destroyer, bloated on the spirits of countless Psychers, tears into the Materium again. Spacetravel is again rendered impossible, starting the Galactic Age of Strife. An entire sector of space is destroyed outright; it has since been known as the Void.* => The Elder Ascendancy begins a concerted effort to create a fourth Lord of Order, the Lord of Passion. While some Eldar only join the effort to finally get rid of the Destroyer, most are genuine about bringing peace to the galaxy.

M26 => Large parts of the the Initiates of Order reforge themselves into the Adepts of Unified Order and begin a crusade to convert whole worlds to their worship of the three Lords.

M28 => The Emperor reawakens on destroyed Terra. He sheds a manly tear before bringing the local civil war to an end. => Next, the sends the Void Dragon into hibernation. => The Emperor's rule begins to slowly extend to the closest solar systems, those reachable with slower FTL methods than direct warp travel.

M30 => The Eldar create the Lord of Passion, Slaanesh. Most of them ascend, except for the Bright Eldar (who are rejected as being too impure, but continue to study the means of ascension) and the Exodite Elder (who never liked the idea to begin with). => The Universal Destroyer is finally overwhelmed by his opponents and its composite Warp Gods are forced apart and sealed. Most succumb to lack of worship, but some endure. => The Exodie Eldar make it their mission to subdue pieces of the Destroyer to gain power in the Materium. => As the Warp calms, botht he Adepts of Unified Order and the new Imperium of Man begin to integrate the wayward human colonies into their respective realms. => The Emperor begins his Primarch project, creating 20 superhumans with his genes. Thanks to sabotage by immaterial sources, they are spread throughout the galaxy. => While searching for one of the missing Primarchs, first contact occurs between the Adepts and the Imperium. While the Primarch Sanguinius is recovered, the encounter ends in bloodshed, war is declared soon afterwards. => The Adeptus Maximus declares the Imperium of Man a heretical abomination, the Imperium in response starts fielding the first Space Marine legions during The Great Crusade.

M31 => After many long and difficult battles, the fleets and armies of the Adepts are decimated, but the Lords of Order themselves begin to affect the Materium to support their worshippers. => Sensing a solution that will not require untold millenia of bloodshed, Horus the Great and several of his fellow primarches ritually sacrifice themselves to ascend into the warp. => While himself an atheist, the Emperor declares the Initiates of Order an accepted religion. Many more religions follow. => The last remaining Adepts are reintegrated into the Initiates. The Great Crusade ends.

M32 => Due to many outside forces acting upon the Imperium, the disparate nature of many of it's worlds often acting against one another, and endless low level conflict with the many aliens and remaining Initiate dissenters, the Emperor's Secret Service is formed to deal with matters before they flare into war. They are granted great power and authority due to their position, and the importance of their job.

M36 => The Imperial Secret Service records the first known conflict between the Exodite Eldar and a species of amphibians called the Slaan. Further battles between these two adversaries continue with disturbing regularity over a selected few worlds. Further search of local archives point to conflicts leading back before humanity's recorded history. The Secret Service is tasked with disrupting such engagements and collecting whatever is fought over. Most of what they recover is ordered sealed.

M39 => The Slaan track down some of the Great Old Ones and reawaken them. Soon, covert operations to reassure galactic control are begun.

M40 => Rise of the Tau Empire. Declaring the Elder, Imperium, Orks, and Initiates a great evil on the galaxy, the Tau (led by the Ethereal Caste, which suddenly appeared several centuries prior) embark on a mission of enforcing The Lesser Evil, a unification under their rule.

M41 => First contact with an extragalactic species. The Zoanthropes raid the Klendathans' (a semi-indepedant human civilisation) worlds for genetic material. Contact ends as suddenly as it began. It is only realized why when a Klendathan scout makes contact with a pursuing species above the world of Tyran. => The conflicts with the Tyranids shocks most galactic powers into an uneasy alliance, as the sheer scale of the threat becomes known.

Races

Orks

During the age before history, war raged between the Old Ones and the Necrons. The Old ones, pressed hard in their fight against their foes, raised up several races as soldier/slaves in their conflict.

Two of the most notable were the Eldar and the Orks. During the war they formed a team of power that complimented each other excellently; the Eldar were cunning tricksters, misdirecting their foes and striking as a scalpal, and the Orks were the implacable, strong and unstoppable foe.

Not all orks were satisfied with this life of eternal oppression and bloodlust, however, and wanted more - and two Orks changed the path of the universe.

The Orks were two brainboyz, leaders of the Orks, who combined the innate abilities of all the classes of the boyz; the powerful Warbosses physical size, the Madboyz incredible powers as psychers, and above all, the Mekboyz capabilities with building and using powerful Kustom Meks and Gargants.

Even as the war was waged in the heavens above, the two Orks, starting as mere Grots, started by hijacking the War Meks of their oppressor taskmasters, traitor orks.

Taking these Meks, Gork and Mork waged a campaign of unstoppable power and capability, drawing many others to their cause. Eventually their WAAAGH covered the entire surface of their homeworld, and the climactic battle came between the great Warboss Krorkome.

Together, Gork and Mork faced their foe and won, channeling the spirit and belief of the entire planetary WAAAGH behind them, they could not be stopped.

Upon their victory, the Old Ones attempted to stop the rebellion by throwing the planet's moon at the surface of their world, stopping them forever.

Undaunted, Gork and Mork called upon the power of the planetary WAAAGH and built the greatest Gargant ever seen, and blew the moon up. Though their world was still battered, they did not hesitate in striking out and continuing their rebellion, taking world after world and constructing bigger and bigger Gargants, not satisfied until they won their freedom from the Old Ones.

The Eldar took the opportunity the weakening of the Old One's power presented, and used their intelligent and cunning schemes to now strike down the Old Ones, at their weakest. They threw their full might in with the Orks and Necrons, turning full-on the Old Ones.

Eventually, the sheer power of the Necrons, the Cunning schemes of the Eldar, and the unrelenting tenacity of the Orks led them to face the great armies of the Old Ones in a final climactic battle.

It was here the Orks showed their true power, for the Eldar cunningly maneuvered their forces so that the Orks could make a final and fatal strike against the Old Ones most powerful champion; the universal destroyer, and with a single blow end the war.

In that conflict, the greatest Gargant ever to exist, piloted by Gork and Mork themselves, struck out and fought the leader of the Old Ones in a galaxy shaking battle.

In the end, Gork and Mork sacrificed themselves, sealing the Old Ones away and rising to godhood to become Lords of Order in the warp.

Orks today retain the fighting spirit of Gork and Mork, and although considered savages by many, Orks live for nothing less than facing great challenges, leading great WAAAGH's against the foes of all that is good in the galaxy, and building the biggest, shootiest, choppiest, orkiest Gargants there is.

To this day, no Ork has ever reached the power of Gork or Mork, but the time is soon coming when the Old Ones will awaken, and they must stand ready to face their old foes again.

Gameplay

This is a setting best adapted for Dark Heresy games and for Kill-Team scenarios in regular tabletop 40k, due to its emphasis on adventure and heroics.