Lactea

The Milky Way Galaxy, or more commonly known as the "Milky Way", is the galaxy that Mankind and many other humanoid species call home. The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy that is part of the Local Group of galaxies. It is one of hundreds in the observable universe. Its name is a translation of the Latin term Via Lactea, in turn translated from the Greek Galaxias, referring to the pale band of light formed by stars in the galactic plane as seen in the night skies of Holy Terra.

Some sources hold that, strictly speaking, the term Milky Way should refer exclusively to the band of light that the galaxy forms in the Terran night sky and the skies of many other settled planets, while the galaxy should receive the full name Milky Way Galaxy, or alternatively the Lactea Galaxy. However, it is unclear how widespread this convention is, and the term Milky Way is routinely used in either context.

The stellar disk of the Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, and is considered to be, on average, about 1,000 light years thick. It is estimated to contain at least 20 stars and possibly up to 40 stars, the exact figure depending on the number of very low-mass, or dwarf stars. The stellar disc does not have a sharp edge, a radius beyond which there are no stars. Rather, the number of stars drops smoothly with distance from the centre of the galaxy. Beyond a radius of roughly 40,000 light years, the number of stars drops much faster with radius, for reasons that are not understood.

Extending beyond the stellar disk is a much thicker disk of gas. The gaseous disk at the centre of the Milky Way has a thickness of around 12,000 light years. The Galactic Halo extends outward, but is limited in size by the orbits of two Milky Way satellites, the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds, whose perigalacticon is at about 180,000 light years. At this distance or beyond, the orbits of most halo objects would be disrupted by the Magellanic Clouds, and the objects would likely be ejected from the vicinity of the Milky Way.

The Galaxy of Lactea was seriously jumbled by the Great War Paradox meaning planets thought to be in one galaxy by many were actually in different galaxies

## Stars of Lactea

* The Iax System
* The Thrax System
* The Catachan System
* The Prospero System
* The Caliban System
* The Sun System
* The Attila (Cthonia) System
* The Valhalla System
* The Fenris System
* The Ultmar System
* The Orask System
* The Artemis System
* The Baal System
* The Praetoria System
* The Tartarus System
* The Cadia System
* The Istavaan System
* The Armageddon System
* The Kulth System
* The Aurelia System
* The Medusa System
* The Hagia System
* The Kracis IV System
* The Damnos System
* The Khur System

## History (Post Great War Paradox)

The history of Lactea mostly follows the expansion of the imperium of man as it started on Terra or Old Earth as most of the other races remained quiet through history and only really became prominent in the galaxy during the present day with all of the universal reforms.

### Age of Terra

The Age of Terra, also sometimes called the Age of Progress in older Imperial texts, is the era of history between the 1st and 15th Millennia (1 - 14,999 AD) when Mankind advanced from a pre-industrial Iron Age culture to become a star-spanning Fusion Age civilisation. The original reason for numbering the years from this point is because it was believed to be the year of the birth of the ancient religious leader Jesus Christ, which has long been forgotten by humanity, which now possesses only one religion -- a deep faith in the God-Emperor of Mankind and his Imperial Cult. During the long years of the Age of Terra, humanity came to dominate the Earth culturally and technologically. Myriad human civilisations came and went during this long span of now mostly forgotten human history. The Solar System was ultimately colonised once humanity developed the necessary technology to leave the Earth's orbit in the late 2nd Millennium and the early 3rd Millennium. Mankind colonised Mars and lived on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Advanced fusion and anti-matter propulsion technology was developed that eventually allowed humanity to construct interstellar star ships that could colonize other star systems. At the very end of the period in the 15th Millennium and stretching into the next era in human history, the Age of Technology, humanity began to colonise the stars using these sub-light spacecraft. At first only nearby star systems could be reached and the human colonies established on them were required to survive as independent states since they were separated from Earth by up to ten human generations' time of travel. It is clear that the Emperor was alive at this time and on Earth throughout this period, disguising his true abilities and immortal nature as he moved from identity to identity, always trying to better the lot of humanity, physically, intellectually and spiritually.

### Age of Technology

The Dark Age of Technology, formally referred to by Imperial scholars simply as the Age of Technology, was the zenith of Mankind's scientific knowledge and technological power in the Milky Way Galaxy, which lasted from the 15th Millennium A.D. until the onset of the Age of Strife in the 25th Millennium. It saw the development of the first true human interstellar civilisation and the birth of a united human stellar confederation centred on the human homeworld of Terra. Even tens of millennia later, Mankind has not been able to equal or regain its former height of achievement attained in this era. This age occurred long before the current Age of the Imperium and knowledge of this time period is now incredibly sparse, and many "facts" about it are no more than legend.

Although a "golden age" for humanity in terms of scientific achievement, because of the catastrophic effects of the following Age of Strife in which so many of the technologies developed in this era were used to cause massive destruction and suffering on countless human-settled worlds, mankind has since come to regard scientific knowledge as an abhorrent and dangerous commodity. The lost Age of Technology is thus considered "dark" in the Imperium's current era. It is also considered a dark age in the minds of the priests of the Ecclesiarchy because Mankind in the Age of Technology had come to worship science as its God, and the God-Emperor had not yet revealed himself as the saviour of humanity

#### The Stellar Exodus

The Stellar Exodus is the name given to the historical period defined by humanity's earliest interstellar colonisation of other worlds beyond the Solar System, actually taking place in the millennia before the Age of Technology officially began. Humanity initially established colonies within Terra's solar system. Spacecraft were still only capable of sub-light speeds at this time. Voyages beyond the Solar System took generations and the colonies that were established were effectively isolated from each other and from Terra. Interstellar trade was therefore severely restricted. This forced the individual colonised star systems to be completely self-sufficient in all of their vital requirements (food, medicine, technology, etc.) and allowed them to develop distinctive languages and cultures.

#### The Warp Drive

The start of the Age of Technology was marked by the development of the Warp-Drive and the Gellar Field, allowing human spacecraft to make short Warp jumps through the recently discovered extradimensional realm known as the Immaterium, traveling vast interstellar distances in a relatively short amount of time. One can compare this early human form of faster-than-light travel to the way that Tau starships currently travel, described as "skimming the surface" of the Warp. The Warp-Drive's development greatly accelerated the human colonisation of the Milky Way Galaxy, and for the first time allowed interstellar trade and communications between the far-flung extrasolar human colonies and the homeworld of Mankind, Terra.

#### Navigators

The second vital development of the Age of Technology was the creation of the psychic gene and the birth of the Navigators, mildly psychic humans with a "third eye" of extrasensory perception who could see into the currents of the Warp and navigate a course through them. This allowed human spacecraft to make longer and more accurate Warp jumps than previously possible when relying wholly upon a computer for navigation in the chaotic realm of the Immaterium.

#### The STC and the Emergence of Psykers

Of major importance to the era and humanity in general during the Age of Technology was the invention of the Standard Template Construct (STC) database system. These highly advanced computer databases allowed human colonies to maintain an advanced technological level. The STCs contained all human scientific and technological knowledge of the era and provided the instructions required to build anything the colonists might need. As most colonists lived relatively simple lives and required only basic equipment and machines, the more advanced technology available in a full STC was rarely utilised. The resulting exploration of the galaxy brought Mankind new knowledge, wealth and arrogance. Science is said to have become humanity's new God in this time, replacing in importance all of the previous human religions. Humanity encountered several intelligent alien races during their expansion out into the galaxy, such as the Eldar and the warlike Orks. With these discoveries began, in time, the first human-xenos wars. With Mankind at the height of its power, the threat of aliens was viewed as trivial and eventually non-aggression pacts were signed between Terra, its colonies and many of the alien races.

At this time, after the discovery of Warp-Drive allowed interstellar transportation, commerce and communications to develop, the human colonies were politically united with Terra in some form of federated interstellar government, thus allowing the human race to remain unified and powerful. The form and nature of this unified government remains unknown in the remaining records.
It was during the Age of Technology that psykers were first scientifically verified to exist, after long millennia of legend, rumor and pseudoscience in which the scientific establishment simply could not prove the existence of psychic powers among humans. It is, however, unexplained how these early human psykers avoided the danger of daemonic possession for thousands of years, which would have led to the destruction of entire worlds as later happened during the Age of Strife. Whether daemons and the Ruinous Powers were less prevalent or potent in the Warp in this time before Slaanesh's birth is unknown.

Where at first the gift of the psychic mutation was limited to only a few individuals in every human population (who often fell victim to superstitious suppression), towards the end of the Age of Technology, psykers suddenly began appearing in unusually great numbers, on every human world. On the more progressive and technologically-advanced human colonies, these psykers -- at least until the threat of daemonic possession became apparent -- were protected by law and allowed to develop and explore their abilities. On other, less sophisticated human worlds, they were often killed in literal witch-hunts and anti-psyker pogroms.

#### The Men of Iron

One of the reasons humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy during this era was the development of the artificially intelligent humanoid constructs now only known in fragmentary pre-Imperial records as the Men of Iron . These powerful and fully autonomous robots intended for both labour and combat won many wars for humanity, but for some unknown reason turned against their masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology and unleashed a terrible war upon the human worlds. During the war both sides used fearsome weapons such as Mechanivores giant machines capable of lifting entire continents and rip open massive chasms on planets that extend to the core and absorb space time itself as data, Massive serpentine Sun-snuffers that uncoil into massive structures larger than the rings of Saturn and swarms of planet covering nano-machines.

This conflict was eventually won by an alliance of humans, but at a great cost. The damage to interstellar human society was catastrophic and shattered much of humanity's hard-won economic strength and political unity, leading into the collapse caused by the onset of the . It is as a result of this ancient conflict that it is now considered one of the greatest crimes in Imperial space to develop an artificially intelligent thinking machine. The widespread fear and revulsion towards artificial intelligence amongst the worlds of Mankind in the wake of the terrible conflict with the Men of Iron leads to the development of the first at the end of this period. Servitors were cybernetic servants lacking true sentience created from the bodies of condemned criminals or lobotomised, vat-grown humanoids whose bodies and brains were partially replaced with machine systems.

#### The End of the Golden Age

This Golden Age for humanity would not last. Warp travel became increasingly difficult and ultimately impossible due to the great Immaterium Warp Storms that would herald the violent birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh and the Fall of the Eldar that began in the 25th Millennium. The economy of the human federation had already been damaged by the terrible wars against the Men of Iron, and the growing frequency and extent of the Warp Storms caused trade and communication between the human colonies to collapse, restoring the isolation of human-settled planets and star systems. Within this relative isolation Abhumans, new human mutant subspecies like the Ogryns, Ratlings, and Squats, adapted to their environments and developed on several planets in the galaxy.

In this situation, certain high population worlds like Terra that relied heavily on trade with the rest of humanity were suddenly unable to feed their enormous populations. Hunger and starvation followed. Those human psykers who had recently developed their powers were relatively weak and inexperienced, and at constant risk of possession by daemons and other Warp entities after the great Warp Storms began. The sudden impossibility of Warp travel meant that the once-unified interstellar human federation broke apart into completely isolated star systems and worlds. Daemonic possession, widespread insanity and isolation led to inter-human conflict, utter anarchy and the regression of most human civilisations into barbarism. The 5,000 Terran years following the end of the Dark Age of Technology are thus aptly named the Age of Strife by the savants of the Imperium of Man.

### Age of Strife

The Age of Strife, also sometimes referred to as Old Night in older Imperial histories, is the name for the chaotic and highly fragmented period of human history between the 25th and 30th Millenniums AD. According to the "official" histories of the Imperium, the precise details and dates of the Age of Strife are not known. This is due to the data having been lost over vast amounts of time, the sheer chaos of the period, and censorship by various Imperial authorities who seek to prevent the people of the Imperium from learning more about the rampant uncontrolled psykers and daemonic Chaos incursions that marked many of the human worlds of the period. It was in reaction to the terrible tragedies and loss of life that befell Mankind during the Age of Strife that the Emperor of Mankind first decided to unite all of humanity beneath His enlightened rule, beginning the Age of the Imperium.

#### Causes

During the so-called "Dark Age of Technology" humanity had reached its technological peak. The Standard Template Construct database library, or STC, had been perfected by human scientists and engineers to allow rapid colonisation of new worlds using the standardised designs for a common suite of advanced technologies held within it. Its invention was followed by an unprecedented expansion of humanity throughout the galaxy.
One of the reasons humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology was the development of the artificially intelligent humanoid constructs known in ancient texts as the Men of Iron. These powerful and fully autonomous labour and combat robots won many wars for humanity, but for some reason turned against their organic masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology. The war against the thinking machines was eventually won by humanity, but at great cost. The damage to human interstellar civilisation was catastrophic and shattered much of humanity's power across the galaxy. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of mankind's misfortunes.

As humanity became widely dispersed across the galaxy during the Age of Technology, the ancient Eldar empire began its decline; the great success of the advanced Eldar race had led to decadence and hedonism on a grand scale. Within the immaterial, psychic universe of the Warp, the spiritual corruption of the Eldar civilisation was reflected in the forming of a new Chaos God, Slaanesh, which in turn caused massive disturbances in the Warp; parts of the galaxy became isolated by these Warp Storms, making Warp travel and communication impossible. This cut off many human colony worlds from one another, including those of the Solar System.

Towards the end of the Age of Technology psykers first appeared among humanity. While persecuted on many backwards, regressive human worlds as witches, in enlightened and progressive societies these psykers were at first protected and accepted. The intolerance shown towards psykers would seem prescient, as many human worlds fell to the dominance of daemons and other Warp creatures using possessed psykers as gateways into the Materium. Only those worlds which had rigorously suppressed psykers ultimately survived relatively unscathed.

The Age of Strife followed the Age of Technology, as human civilisation collapsed in widespread insanity, daemonic possession, anarchy and interstellar civil war. Terrible weapons of the golden age of technology were unleashed, devastating many human colonies and turning once-verdant worlds such as Baal and its twin moons into irradiated desert planets. Many isolated and vulnerable human-colonised worlds also became prey to hostile alien races, such as the Orks.

In a relatively short span of time, the once galaxy-spanning human civilisation was brought to its knees, and was forced to endure nearly five millennia of anarchy, terror, war, genocide and slavery. Other than tales of great suffering, little information has survived this dark time to be known to the men and women of the Imperium.

#### Terra and Mars

Earth, increasingly called by its people, and the rest of the settled worlds of the Solar System were surrounded by terrible Warp Storms, isolating the human homeworld for several thousand standard years from the rest of the galaxy. Control of the Solar System shifted constantly between the worlds of Terra and Mars during the first half of the Age of Strife. By the almost all traces of advanced technical civilisation on Terra were long gone; instead, techno-barbarians battled one another over the scraps of the ancient human interstellar society that remained on the world. Little information still exists about this dark time, but it is known that tyrants such as Kalagann of Ursh (northern Asia/Russia), Cardinal Tang, and "the half-mad, half-genius" Narthan Dume of the Panpacific Empire ruled during this era. Other known Terran nations of the time period include the Bloc, (a centre of industry), , , , , the Terrawatt Clan and . Another ethnicity mentioned in fragmented records from this time are the "Nordyc" people.

underwent a very different transformation. After a brief period of anarchy at the end of the Age of Technology that saw the destruction of the Red Planet's once pristine terraformed ecosystem, the of the emerged victorious over the psyker mutants and unified their homeworld beneath their theocratic rule. The Tech-priests then visited Terra but were appalled by the destruction and anarchy that ruled there and saw nothing worth saving. Instead, the Martians studied the and after many lifetimes learned to detect "lulls" in the raging Warp Storms. At the same time the immense robotic fighting machines known as were created to defend the Red Planet.

For over a thousand standard years the watched and waited. Whenever a break in the Warp Storms occurred, an expedition was sent, complete with a full and thousands of and Tech-priests. Some of these expeditions were lost in the Warp or died on faraway worlds. Others succeeded in establishing -- industrial replicas of Mars. Broken Astropathic messages were transmitted to Mars, but it was not until the time of the that the Forge Worlds and Mars would be reunited.

#### Rise of The Emperor

Eventually, an immensely powerful human leader and psyker known only as the Emperor of Mankind divined that the final birth of the new Chaos God Slaanesh was nearing, as well as the effect this birth would have on the turmoil afflicting the galaxy. He began to accelerate his preparations for this history-changing event. From the beginning of the Age of Strife the Emperor had no longer been content with guiding humanity from the shadows under a myriad of different historical identities, some of them quite well-known even in the 41st Millennium. The Emperor had come to believe that if His species was to survive, He would have to take charge Himself of mankind's destiny, openly and without subterfuge. Within His underground gene-labs beneath the Himalazian Mountains (Himalayas), the Emperor began to experiment on the human genetic code. Through deeds of great valour and His own personal charisma, the Emperor recruited from the techno-barbarians that wandered Terra's surface and genetically altered them, turning them into the Thunder Warriors and the other transhuman supersoldiers who would comprise his first armies. Once he had gathered sufficient military forces, he conquered Terra and later its satellite of Luna. Even before the completion of these Unification Wars, the Emperor initiated the great project of genetic engineering necessary to create the Primarchs using His own DNA as a template. From the Primarchs' genomes and the genetic blueprints of his prior super-soldiers, the Space Marine Legions were His final creations.

Upon the final birth of Slaanesh sometime in the 29th Millennium, the crippling Warp Storms ended, which allowed for easier galactic travel and astropathic communication between worlds. The Eldar race was nearly annihilated in what they termed "the Fall" and the Eldar empire's hold over much of the galaxy disintegrated. In this environment, the Emperor began to carry out His plans to reunify Mankind under His rule. With the Emperor's ascension and the creation of the Imperium of Man in a political and military alliance between Terra and the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars, the Age of Strife was finally ended and a new age, the Age of the Imperium, had begun. This age of conquest, heroism and unity began with the Emperor's Great Crusade to reunite all the scattered worlds of humanity beneath the rule of the Imperium. It would in turn be forever tainted and corrupted soon after its inception by the terrible tragedy and original sin of the massive interstellar civil war now known only as the Horus Heresy.

#### Legacy

The Age of Strife had a tremendous impact on human civilisation. Humanity barely survived the period and the knowledge of the previous golden era was lost, much of it irrevocably; in particular, the loss of the STC system is seen as a serious setback for the advancement of the Imperium. The Adeptus Mechanicus regards the STC as holy and constantly searches for remnants of STC systems. Although much lost information has been recovered by the efforts of the Mechanicus, by focussing on recovering knowledge from the ancient STC and spending little energy on basic research and development, the Imperium advances at only a snail's pace technologically. This is further compounded by the centralisation of knowledge in the hands of the Adeptus Mechanicus, preventing the dissemination of known science and technology across the galaxy that might speed up the process of innovation.

Humanity as a whole became more superstitious and distrustful because of the horrors perpetrated during the Age of Strife, something which the Imperial government goes to great lengths to encourage. In particular, the Imperium's people distrust mutants, aliens and psykers; this distrust runs so deep that the Imperium has a powerful secret police force, known collectively as the Inquisition, devoted to finding and destroying all aliens, daemons, mutants, unsanctioned psykers and "Heretics" (anyone deemed to be straying from official Imperial doctrine). Despite the general distrust of psykers, they perform many critical functions for the Imperium, most notably the maintenance of the Astronomican, so they are often rounded up by Imperial agents and forced into service. The Adeptus Ministorum, the official religious hierarchy of the Imperium, enforces a strict dogma including absolute devotion to the God-Emperor of Mankind, who is treated as the embodiment of Jehovah, Jesus Christ, Allah, the Buddha, Brahma and every other divinity ever worshipped by humanity, all rolled up into a single personage.

In short, the authoritarian, often harsh Imperium of Man possesses its unique cultural characteristics in large part as a reaction to the great suffering endured by humanity during the Age of Strife.

### The Great Crusade

The Great Crusade was the period in the early history of the Imperium of Man, lasting from approximately 798.M30 into the first decades of the 31st Millennium (approximately a little over two standard centuries), when the Imperium was expanding as it sought to bring all of human-settled space back under the control of a single ruler, the Emperor of Mankind. The Great Crusade marked a brief era in human history of rebuilding, reunification and rapid technological advancement following the complete regression of Mankind into techno-barbarism during the 5,000 years of the Age of Strife. It was a time when the Emperor of Mankind still lived in the conventional sense and led His people in person. The Great Crusade era is considered the Golden Age of the Imperium before the long, slow slide into cultural stagnation, political repression and increasing warfare that marked the ten millennia after the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy had ended.

The Emperor of Mankind sought to unite all of humanity under one banner following the Long Night of the Age of Strife, and end inter-human conflict. Once united, the Emperor intended to begin the next stage of His great plan to ensure human domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, which He judged to be necessary if humanity was to survive the never-ceasing threats to its existence embodied by Chaos, myriad xenos races and its own fragile human nature. To carry out the Great Crusade and reunite all the scattered colony worlds of Mankind beneath the single banner of the Imperium of Man, the Emperor created the Space Marine Legions that would form the core of the later Adeptus Astartes and the Imperial Army to serve as a support and garrison force for the Astartes. The use of accelerated gene-culturing of gene-seed organs to fill the need for vast numbers of Space Marines later lead to the development of genetic flaws in many of the Legions, which would be one factor in bringing on the Great Betrayal of the Horus Heresy.

These forces, with the technological and military aid of the Mechanicum as required by the Treaty of Mars, would bring the light of the Imperial Truth and enforce Imperial Compliance with the new regime on every human world encountered. At its peak in the early 31st Millennium, some 203 standard years after it began, there were 4,287 primary Expedition Fleets engaged upon the business of enforcing Imperial Compliance and extending the Imperial aegis across the galaxy as well as 60,000+ secondary deployment groups involved in regulating Compliance or Imperial occupations. A further 372 Expedition Fleets were regrouping or refitting in the Sol System or other Imperial hub star systems or resupplying as they awaited new orders. Some 4.3 million Remembrancers, official Imperial artists and journalists, were sent out with these fleets in the final days of the Great Crusade to record for posterity in pictures, words and music all that the Imperial warriors of the Crusade were accomplishing in the name of Mankind. Finally, every Imperial Expedition Fleet carried with it a corps of Iterators, Imperial philosophers, rhetoricians and propagandists who sought to spread the Imperial Truth to every human world and convince their populations of the benefits to be had from Imperial rule.

The Great Crusade was under the direct, personal command of the Emperor of Mankind until the great victory won against a massive Ork WAAAGH! during the Ullanor Crusade. After the defeat of the Orks achieved a new high point for the Great Crusade, the Emperor retired to Terra to begin work on a secret project deep within the Imperial Palace to open the labyrinthine interdimensional Eldar Webway to humanity's use so that the Imperium could be tied together as never before. The Emperor named His favorite son Horus, the Primarch of the Luna Wolves Space Marine Legion, as the Imperial Warmaster and gave him full authority to direct the Great Crusade's progression as he saw fit, including the right to command all of his fellow brother Primarchs and their Legions of Astartes. The Emperor also established the Council of Terra and the Imperial bureaucracy, the forerunners of the later Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra and the Adeptus Administratum, to begin shifting the Imperium from His personal rule to a government that more closely served the needs of the Imperium's common people. The Emperor's secrecy and willingness to hand power over to others produced enormous tensions with some of the Primarchs and ultimately became one of the weaknesses that the Ruinous Powers exploited to corrupt 9 Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions into the service of Chaos, unleashing the terrible civil war known as the Horus Heresy. This conflict ended the Great Crusade and the Golden Age of the Imperium. From that time to the present in the late 41st Millennium, the Imperium has known only stagnation, oppression, religious strife and endless war.

### The Horus Heresy

The **Horus Heresy** was a galaxy-spanning civil war that consumed the worlds of for 7 Terran years. Its outbreak marked the end of the 's to reunite the scattered colony worlds of humanity under a single government and the beginning of the current . The Horus Heresy is in many ways the founding event of the as it now exists. The conflict was fought across the in the early centuries of the 31st Millennium and resulted in more than 2.3 trillion dead, 4.6 trillion if one includes the planetary populations purged by the Imperium after the Heresy due to the taint of Chaotic corruption. The Heresy concluded with the death of the traitorous , the internment of the Emperor in the and the creation of the . The Heresy was directly responsible for the birth of the present-day structure of the following the and the Reformation of the Imperium by the ' .

### The Gathering Storm

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