WanderingWind said:
Guess I'll start there. I guess there is no Warhammer 40K: Year One type thing? I understood the general idea of the universe from the Dawn of War games, but I assumed there were books explaining the start of all that. Like, Orks. Are they aliens from space, or a mythological race that are alien to mankind? Same with the Chaos Marines and Daemons. Eldar are obviously alien. Who is the Emperor? (thanks TvTropes!) Why are they actually warring?
Basically, the "why" of WH40K. I guess it boils down to "cause explosions are cool?"
short version
-old ones, long time ago created a lot of shit
-the C'tan (Gods, said to be the oldest things in existance) find the Necrontyr, give them immortality by transforming them all into space robot zombies, they are now called necrons
-old ones vs necrons + C'than, why? Beacose they can and something about souls, C'than eating them or something in that way
-old ones start loosing create the Eldar (space elves) to help
-old ones still loosing, create the Orks to help
-doesn't realy help old ones dead, necrons purge the galaxy of allmost everything, elslavers emerge and force them to go to sleep
-eldar and ork defeat the enslavers
-fast forward a bit and we come to around NOW (2010) them emperor* is somewhere in the world guiding mankind
-the first 3 Chaos Gods also emerge somewhere around now, give or take
-golden age, humanity begins to expand, colonize the starts, is preaty down with the aliens, all is peachy
-Eldar fuck everything up, quite literary, due to their constant fucking (again, quite literary) they awaken the 4th Chaos God, who causes the Eye of Terror to open, thus fucking over warp travel (primary method of humans moving around the galaxy, communication etc), which causes human colonies to be lost, everything goes to shit, earth looses all contact, dissolves into a lot of small states rules by warlords yadayadyada [insert grim dark]
-emperor comes out from behind the scenes, starts building an army, get followers and starts kicking ass all around Earth (lets call it terra, better that way), build the first Space Marines, unites Terra, signs a treaty with mars (basicly our solar systems forge) and starts building a lot of military shit and I mean A LOT, since well, there is a Crusade he has to lead
-at this point he also gives his own genes to build the first Primarchs (20 of them), his sons, who are suposed to become the leaders of his armies, but they scatered by the Chaos gods all around the galxy, he finds them all, some sooner than others
-great Crusade, yay, warp calms down and humans start to kick ass all over the galaxy, they are preaty shocked when they see that a lot of human colonies have been enlsaved by aliens while earth was cut off, so they start a radical policy called fucking genocide of everything that isn't human-ish (note: applies more to some species than others)
-humanity conquers almost the whole galxy, but given that this is WH40k we are talking about the GRIMDARK ins't far away, so there is the horus heresy, Horus, the first and most beloved son of the Emperor rebels against him, takes half of the forces of the imperium with him and starts a civil war, he looses is killed and the remaining forces retreat through they Eye of terror into the warp
-which brings us to now in the 40k universe, tyranids invading, necrons wakin up, motherfucking tau, well there was another civil war thingy in betwen, but that one wans't realy that important
why they fight:
-Orks, beacose they want to, seriously, they love a good fight
-Eldar, beacose they are racist xenohobic dicks, who would rather kill a trillion humans than let one Eldar 1 month old die
-Chaos, well they are chaos, total destruction etc etc
-Necrons, destroy all living in order to destroy the warp
-Tau, beacose they are fucking space communist, they don't fight as much as they get beaten down by everyone and then saved by a fucking deus ex machina in the form of "oh shit we have a bigger fish to fry, see you latter"
-Tyranids, well space locust, they don't fight, they just want to eat and it's easyer to eat thigs when they are dead
-Dark eldar, meh space pirates, not realy a threath to anyone
-Imperium, beacose everyone above wants them dead for the above mentioned reasons, well that isn't to say that the IoM doens't start war of agressions, they are quite good at them given that they are also racist xenophobic dicks
half of this is probably wrong
*the Emperor (emprah :lol ) is the greatest human ever, he was created somewhere around 10000 BC in modern day Turkey when some shamans sacrificed their souls and gave all their powers to him, beacose they forsaw the chalanges manking will face, in the ultimate irony he was preaty anti religion, destroying all religious buildings, monuments etc on earth when he took over, promoting science and reason, but in the 41st millenium he is worshiped as a God
luxarific said:
What's the bolt thing in their heads? Control device?
you get one when you have 100 years (iirc) of service as a SM under your belt
no seriously, I am not kidding