Imperium of Mankind

Cant Mechanicus

Adeptus Astartas

Adeptus Mechanicus

The **Imperium of Mankind** is a growing interstellar human empire, the ultimate authority for a majority of mankind in the milky way galaxy. It was formed after the **Unification Wars,** which unified the ruined world of Terra underneath the benevolent rule of the **Emperor of Mankind.** The **Emperor** then proceeded to rebuild Terra, and then conduct negotiations with the Tech-Priests of Mars for their greatly needed support for the upcoming **Great Crusade** that would be launched at the helm of **20 Astartas Legions,** supersoldiers that would replace the Thunder Warriors and the genetic sons of the **Primarchs**.

The **Emperor of Mankind** does not rule the Imperium alone, for he relays on the advise of his greatest ally and closest friend **Malcador the Sigilite** and the martial prowess of his sons, the **Primarchs.** Starting around 798.M30, the Great Crusade launched from Terra and Mars and inducted hundreds of human worlds underneath the Imperial hegemony. During the earliest stages of the crusade, the Primarchs were found one by one and given command of their respective **Space Marine Legion,** or ***Legiones Astartes*** in high gothic.

## History

### Prehistory

By the 29th Millennium, Terra was a devastated world. The lack of resources and authority during the **Old Night** (also known as the **Age of Strife)** saw the glorious cradle of Mankind to be squandered by the inter-fighting between various human nations, now becoming feudal techno-barbarian states by modern Imperial historians. The calming of the Warp Storms that had fractured the galaxy, and mankind with it was a signal for the **Emperor of Mankind** to reveal himself from the shadows and launch the **Unification War** to unify Terra under his benevolent rule, for both personal and species reasons. He began experimenting in now-secret genetic techniques that resulted in the creation of the **Thunder Warriors,** supersoldiers that were superior then anything on Terra. But during the final phases of the Unification War, the **Thunder Warriors** were ended up being slaughtered to a man after the **Emperor** saw no further use for them, and sent the earliest **Legiones Astartes** to wipe out his faithful warriors. After the betrayal, the **Legiones Astartes** subjected the remaining nations and instigated the **Imperium of Mankind** across the Throneworld.

The **Emperor of Mankind** then launched his plans for the galaxy, knowing that the **Imperium of Mankind** will need reliable equipment and massive starships to take his **Imperial Army** and the **Legiones Astartes** to begin the **Great Crusade,** he would need to unite **Mars** with his goals. Luckily, by the time the **Emperor** made contact with the Tech-Priests, they were more then willing to offer their massive forges and shipyards to the cause of the Imperium, with the conditions being listed in the **Treaty of Mars.** The Treaty of Mars married the Terran military might of the Emperor with the industrial strength of Mars and the Mechanicum. Now possessed of the needed manpower and materiel to make His dream a reality, the Emperor mobilized the resources of Terra and Mars to launch a vast new military campaign intended to reunite the whole of Mankind, dispersed across the galaxy, under His rule.

### The Great Crusade

Beginning around 798.M30, the **Emperor of Mankind** declared the Great Crusade unleashed. The **Legiones Astartes** would be sent out in the thousands, followed by hundreds more Imperial soldiers upon the massive ships of the Imperial Navy. However, he launched his plans prematurely due to interference from a threat that he believed he was destined to defeat, **Chaos.** The **Primarchs** were stolen from him by the **Chaos Gods,** launching all 20 of his children across the warp to planets across the galaxy. While he had sustainable amounts of gene stock for the **Legiones Astartes,** he was robbed of a critical asset. Because of this, and the lack of a better alternative, he lead the Imperium Forces personally for the beginning of the Great Crusade.

### Discovery of the Primarchs

The Discovery of the **Primarchs** one by one, beginning with *Anax* began on the world of Uris. The planet was among the first to be approached by the incoming Imperial armada, but avoided the threat of invasion by force of arms as the Emperor of Mankind felt the presence of one of his long-lost son on the planet and would take a shuttle and the Custodians to land on the planet and welcome his son into the Imperium.

## The Adeptus Terra

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Governing and establishing a stellar empire is a tremendous task, even for a being such as the **Emperor of Mankind.** As the Great Crusade continued its course, and the worlds brought under the banner of the Imperium brought upon new questions that the Emperor had to answer. Questions such as 'Who rules?', the Space Marines that fought and died in the name of the Crusade were soldiers, not caretakers. They had no merit in state building, something that the **Regent of Terra,** was determined to remedy. It was **Malcador the Sigilite** that suggested the formation of the **Adeptus Terra,** and the **Senatorum Imperialis** (**High Lords of Terra)** to act as the civilian power that would govern the Imperium at large, collect taxes and make laws, essentially transferring the daily activities to a cabinet containing the most powerful humans in the Imperium.

Beyond the **Senatorum Imperialis,** other organizations existed that were critical to maintain the Imperium of Mankind.

* **Adeptus Administratum**
* **Adeptus Munitorum**
* **Adeptus Astra Telepathica**
* **Adeptus Astronomica**
* **Adeptus Mechanicus**
* **Adeptus Arbites**
* **Adeptus Custodes**

## Imperial Military Forces

The **Imperium of Mankind** is a massive stellar empire, forged from the heat of battle and the desires of millions to see the dreams of unification complete. The strength of Mankind supplies the Imperium with some of its greatest fighting forces that serve the **Emperor of Mankind** in the eternal war against the discord and anarchy that has consumed the Milky Way. The following military forces consist the largest and most important forces in the Imperial arsenal

* ***Imperialis Auxilia -*** The ***Imperialis Auxilia*** represents the rank-and-file soldiers in the Imperium. They are the backbone of the Imperium's military might. Millions upon millions of well-trained men and women fill the ranks of the ***Auxilia.*** The Auxilia is formed to serve in a supporting role, to occupy planets conquered or reclaimed by the ***Legiones Astartes***. The Auxilia follows orders from High Command, which relays orders from the War Council. All for one, the Imperialis Auxilia is seen on the front of every major campaign fought in the name of the Emperor.

* ***Legiones Astartes -*** The **Legiones Astartes,** better known as Space Marines, are the elite, transhuman warriors of the Imperium. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands (abit outnumbered by the ***Auxilia***), the Space Marines are the greatest creations of the Emperor, forging these few in mighty power armour and equipped with the best weapons of war. The **Legiones Astartes** are the public face of the Great Crusade, and better yet, the **Legiones Astartes** (all 20) are lead individually by a living demi-god, the **Primarchs**. The **Primarchs** are the genetic sons of the Emperor, forged to be perfect generals, politicians, and so forth to serve Mankind. In the Great Crusade, the Astartes are found on every battlefield fighting back the darkness that seeks to consume Mankind and usher in the **Age of the Imperium.**

* **Collegia Titanica -**The ***Collegia Titanica*** is the division of the ***Adeptus Mechanicus*** that includes the Legions composed of Titans, the colossal Imperial robotic war machines that are the most powerful engines of war in the Imperium of Man. The Collegia is also more rarely known as the Adeptus Titanicus (a contraction of "Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica").
* ***Imperial Navy -*** The **Imperial Navy** is the stellar star-fleet of the **Imperium of Mankind.** Representing every warship that fights against discord and threats against Mankind, the Imperial Navy is easily a force to be reckoned. Massive Starships such as the **Emperor Battlecruiser** are a glimpse of the sheer firepower at the disposal of the **Legiones Astartes** or **Imperialis Auxilia.** The Navy recieves its orders via the War Council, and is split into smaller expeditionary fleets that serve individual **Legiones Astartes** in supporting roles, such as orbital support and transporting them from one battlefield to another.
* ***Legio Cybernetica -*** The **Legio Cybernetica** is one of the oldest sub-branches of the Adeptus Mechanicus and is responsible for deploying fully autonomous Battle-Automata for both combat duties and support tasks intended to aid Imperial armed forces in the field.

## Imperial Faith

### Imperial Truth

The **Imperial Truth** is the name given to the secular, rationalist ideology promulgated by the Emperor of Mankind during his Great Crusade to reunite all the worlds of Mankind beneath the umbrella of the newborn Imperium of Man in the late 30th Millennium. The Imperial Truth was pioneered by the Emperor on Terra even before the Great Crusade began, and is a collection of ideologies that upholds the core values of reason, science and secular progress over the older traditions of religion, superstition and faith that had long defined many of the human worlds that had fallen into darkness during the Age of Strife after the fall of humanity's first interstellar civilization. The Emperor Himself declared that Mankind would never be free to progress and advance to its destined position as the pre-eminent intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy until "the last stone from the last church was cast down onto the last priest." He purged ancient Terra of all its ancient religions and superstitious beliefs, even going so far as to personally witness the destruction of the final church on Terra's ancient soil after engaging its resident holy man, Uriah Olathaire, in a battle of ideas, wit and dogma. The Imperial Truth also held that humanity was the species which should rightfully rule the galaxy since its physical form was the most pure and all of the other intelligent alien races, such as the Eldar, had already tried and failed to maintain galaxy-spanning civilization. An important element of the Imperial Truth's ideology was the belief that it was now Mankind's turn to find a place in the sun and come to dominance in the Milky Way -- and that humanity was more deserving of such a position than other species.

At the beginning of the Great Crusade, with each world brought back underneath the banner of the Imperium. The Imperial Truth was brought to its populace to be embraced and loved, first by diplomacy then by war if required. The Imperial Truth embodied the Emperor's belief that a unified human populace could defeat any threat to it, such as **Chaos**

### Cult Mechanicus

The **Treaty of Mars** established that all forgeworlds would fall underneath the Mechanicus jurisdiction, able to practice their arcane faith despite the Imperial Truth. Technology and its mysteries are the preserve of the followers of the Machine God, the Tech-priests of the Cult Mechanicus. For they believe that machines are imbued with a life-force of their own, a soul granted to them by the Machine God who governs the universe -- a will and a personality. The more ancient a piece of technology, the greater reverence it will elicit from these robed followers, who will spend many hours anointing a machine with the correct unguents before pressing the sigils of activation to coax its animistic Machine Spirit into life. The God-Emperor of Mankind is the Omnissiah in this view, the physical embodiment of the Machine God in realspace.

## The Imperial Demesne

The Imperium of Mankind expresses a huge portion of the Milky Way, as the Great Crusade continues on its course and the Primarchs lead the transhuman warriors from one battle to another. Worlds in the hundreds were thrust underneath the caretaking of the Emperor of Mankind. With such an addition to the Interstellar civilization, Segmentums were formed to catalog planets in a certain part of the galaxy.

* Segmentum Solar, the galactic "center," with the Sol System at its heart.
* Segmentum Pacificus, the sparsely-settled galactic "west."
* Segmentum Obscurus, a region to the galactic "north" of Terra that has been heavily fortified by the Imperial Navy and the Astra Militarum due to the dangers posed by this Segmentum's most infamous element, the Eye of Terror. This is a vast Warp rift where the Immaterium actually intrudes upon material space -- as do the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions and the daemons of the Ruinous Powers themselves.
* Segmentum Tempestus, the galactic "south."
* Segmentum Ultima, the largest province of all in the Imperium, located to the galactic "east" of Terra; its furthest extents are beyond even the range of the Astronomican in Wilderness Space still unexplored by humanity.

The Segmentae are the primary administrative divisions of the Imperium. Each is divided into sectors, which are areas of three-dimensional space. The sectors in turn consist of sub-sectors, each containing a number of individual star systems. These spatial divisions and subdivisions are also levels of the administrative hierarchy.

Each Segmentum Governor (or Segmentum Commander, the term used when the governor is acting in his military capacity) oversees his Sector Governors (or Sector Commanders), who in turn oversee Sub-sector Governors (or Sub-sector Commanders), who in their turn oversee the individual Planetary Governors, who are also known as Imperial Commanders. The higher ranks in this administrative system are usually combined with a basic planetary governorship as well as interstellar duties. Each of these governors is usually a member of the Imperial nobility and it is rare, but not impossible, for a man or woman born in the lowest ranks of Imperial society to rise to the rank of an Imperial Governor on his or her own merits or abilities rather than inherit the role. This neo-feudal system is the means by which the Imperium maintains control of the separate planets that comprise it.

### Planetary Administration

Because of the distances involved and the unstable nature of Warp communication, Planetary Governors generally operate very autonomously. This allows quite a lot of variation in the regional governments of the Imperium. Some governorships are hereditary, but it is also possible for a planet to have an elected Planetary Governor, a tyrant Governor who rules solely by force of his personal arms, or anything in between. So long as the Governor fulfills his duties to the broader Imperium, his rule will generally be accepted by the higher authorities with little or no interference.

However, should a Governor fail to do his duties to the broader Imperium. A replacement follows along with an accident or formal displacement of the previous Governor to ensure a safe transfer of power between elected officials. But for the most part, planetary adminstrations operate freely with limited influence from the Imperium's central goverment on Terra.

### Human Variability

The peoples of the Imperium vary in their form and appearances just as their homeworlds do. Whilst there is a generally agreed baseline human standard, consisting of four limbs, one head, twenty digits and so on, the local environment and genetic stock have caused all manner of interesting anomalies, evolutionary adaptations and fashions. These differences are usually cosmetic in effect; however, the more radical alterations walk the line between accepted variation and outright mutation.

### Rebellion

The Imperial Creed maintains that all of humanity must be brought and kept within the Imperium where men and women can benefit from the rule of the Emperor. Several Imperial organisations are permanently occupied with suppressing any possibility of rebellion before it has a chance of developing. The common worship of the God-Emperor holds Mankind together and instills loyalty towards the Imperium. Rebellions and uprisings on Imperial planets nonetheless remain a constant problem. The nature and causes of a rebellion can fall into several categories: the government of an Imperial world may decide to secede from the Imperium; a popular uprising may attempt to overthrow the local Imperial government; in the most insidious of cases the rebellion may be brought about by alien or Chaos influence. In the more prosaic cases however, a new planetary government established through rebellion is not necessarily opposed by the Imperium, so long as it accedes fully to Imperial authority and pays its tithes to Terra. Besides the pursuit of outright war, there are many ways a rebellious world may be brought back into the Imperium. With the existence of its more secretive organs like the Inquisition, the Imperium is fully capable of carrying out covert methods of restoring Imperial rule, including assassination, popular agitation, economic sabotage and terrorism. Sometimes a rebellion can be subdued by the removal of a single individual. Pro-Imperial groups or other anti-government forces can be infiltrated or supported as required.

## Imperial Languages

* ***Low Gothic -*** Low Gothic is the common tongue of the Imperium, spoken on most Imperial planets as a first or second language. Imperial worlds have inevitably developed their own, often highly variant, dialects of Low Gothic over time.
* ***High Gothic -***  High Gothic(fictionally represented as a form of Latinised English) dates from the last time humanity was united across interstellar distances in an ancient confederation that existed during the Dark Age of Technology (long before the Age of the Imperium), and is used solely as a hieratic tongue by the divisions of the Adeptus Terra.

## Psykers in the Imperium

Humans with psychic powers, known colloquially as psykers, who possess abilities ranging from telepathy to pyrokenesis, have existed since the dawn of Mankind's existence as a species during the Paleolithic Age on Old Earth, but their position in the Imperium is an uncomfortable one at best. An untrained psyker is an unguarded gateway to the Warp, through which psychic predators like daemons and Enslavers can enter realspace and wreak havoc. It is said that whole worlds have been lost to hideous monsters of the Empyrean, while rogue psykers have committed horrible crimes with their powers or led dangerous and destructive cults.

## Travel in the Imperium

Interstellar travel between the worlds of the Imperium is rare and dangerous. The vast majority of civilians will never know the roaring tedium of shuttle flight, the sickening plummet of a Drop Pod or the unnerving silence of deep space. Given the huge size of the Imperium, it is impossible to cross it in the fleeting span of time given to ordinary men. Colonists, pilgrims and refugees spend many generations in the vastness of space, and many starships never survive the vagaries of travel to reach their destination.

### Sub-Light Travel

Used mostly for journeys between planets or closely neighbouring star systems, sub-light travel involves speeds that confound mortal imagination and yet are still nothing when measured against the sheer size of the galaxy. Those attempting to use slower-than-light drives to travel any appreciable distance condemn themselves and their descendants to a shipboard life, endlessly whittling away the Terran years until they arrive at the distant star they set out to reach. The average Imperial citizen is unlikely to experience slower-than-light space travel. Even those individuals living within a star system with plentiful voidships for interplanetary travel are likely to prefer the world of their birth over distant places with strange customs, odd food and "funny-looking" people.

### Warp Travel

To move any appreciable distance within the Imperium, voyagers must make use of Warp travel. This method of faster-than-light travel is rare, expensive and dangerous, as it requires the use of the unpredictable realm known as the Warp, or the Immaterium. Vessels equipped with a functional Warp-Drive are able to translate themselves into this other dimension of being that coexists with the material universe by generating an envelope of protective Gellar Fields. The Warp-Drive "bends" the starship through the veil of realspace into the Immaterium. Once within this strange hyperdimensional realm, the starship is able to ride the currents and eddies that flow within the Warp, frequently dropping back into realspace to check its positioning.

## Imperial Communications

Just as travel within the Imperium is a complicated and inexact science, so too is the business of exchanging messages between the many and varied planets that make up the Imperium. Planetary communications systems such as radio-based Vox-casters, hardwired telegraph and telephony lines and the more advanced Vox-communicators suffice to pass messages amongst the nations of a world, yet have almost no use beyond the bounds of the planet's surface. Such devices can require many Terran years for their signal to reach even the nearest planet of a star system and have no surety of even being detected when they arrive. The perils of travel ensure that human or Servitor messengers are just as unreliable and potentially as slow as radio or other energy wave communications.

## Imperial Calendar

The Imperium of Man uses a special Imperial Dating System derived from the original Gregorian Calendar of Old Earth that denotes the current year by the notation *<year of the millennium>*.M*<millennium>*