Imperium of Man (Warhammer 40,000 Paradiseverse)

The Imperium of Man, also called the Imperium of Mankind and simply the Imperium, is a galaxy-spanning interstellar Human empire, the ultimate authority for the majority of the Human race in the Milky Way Galaxy in the 42nd Millennium A.D. It is ruled by the living god who is known as the Emperor of Mankind.
The founder and ruler of the Imperium is the god-like Emperor of Mankind, the most powerful Human psyker ever born. The Emperor founded the Imperium over 10,000 Terran years ago in the late 30th Millennium during the Unification Wars on Old Earth following the apocalyptic period in Human history known as the Age of Strife.
The Emperor continues, at least nominally, to rule the Imperium as both its political master and its primary religious figure. However, His badly damaged body was interred within the cybernetic life support mechanisms of the arcane device known as the Golden Throne following His mortal wounding during the ancient interstellar civil war known as the Horus Heresy.
Because of this terrible fate, the Emperor is incapable of interacting with others on a day-to-day basis and has left the basic governance of His Imperium to the Senatorum Imperialis, an oligarchic ruling council of the most powerful noble lords and adepts in the galaxy. However, an all-powerful Celestial entity would eventually ressurect and restore the Emperor to its full strength. The Emperor thanked the Celestial entity for his return and reform the Imperium. However the Emperor was forced to legalize and reform the Imperial Cult into an Imperial religion based on rationality, progress and science eventually, thus freeing Humanity from living under fear, hate and ignorance.
The reformed Imperium of Man is now less oppressive and more benevolent and is currently facing a galaxy-spanning conflict known as the Second Great Crusade with the Forces of Chaos, led by the ressurected Horus Lupercal now champion of the Gods of Chaos.
== History ==
It was the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind had sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He was the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of His inexhaustible armies. He was a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He was the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continued his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies gave battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered superhuman warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the Tech-Priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they were barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants and far, far worse.
To be a man in such a period was to be one amongst untold billions. It was to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much had been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
It is the 42nd Millennium. After the fall of Cadia at the hands of Abaddon the Despoiler and his Black Legion and the formation of the Great Rift that divided the galaxy once again. The Emperor of Mankind, however, has been miraculously revived by a cosmic entity called Emperor Alexander with the assistance of his Primarch sons, Roboute Guilliman, Rogal Dorn and Sanguinius the Great Angel. The Emperor would proceed to fully restore the original values of his Imperium. However, the Imperium of Man would eventually face a galaxy-spanning civil war between the Reformist Movement (led by the Emperor of Mankind himself) and the Traditionalist Movement (led by the High Lords of Terra) who opposes the Imperial reforms. The civil war would last a hundred years with the Reformist Movement emerging as the victors. However, while the Imperium of Man recover from the civil war, Horus Lupercal, fallen son of the Emperor, was eventually and miraculously revived by Emperor Satan, celestial ally of the Gods of Chaos. Horus Lupercal would reunifing the legions of Chaos Space Marines and the Imperium of Man would wage a perpetual military campaign against the unified Forces of Chaos that would become known as the Second Great Crusade.