Unification Wars - Rise of the Emperor: During the Age of Strife, Terra, the birth world of Humanity, had descended into savagery and horror the equal of any. Little remained of the once sophisticated civilisation of Old Earth's glorious past as the centre of a growing Human interstellar civilisation marked by advanced science, high culture and wondrous technologies.Techno-barbarian warlords and their warrior hordes continuously fought over the planet, which had become little more than a massive battleground for their wars of attrition. They made use of chemical, biological and even thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction, and slowly transformed the cradle of Mankind into a battered, post-apocalyptic wasteland across most of its scarred surface.Long before left parlous and polluted, generations of war made the planet a wasteland punctuated by fortified holdfasts built amid the wreckage of lost civilisations, and its inhabitants a mass of degenerate, feral nomads.Insane prophets, cyber-augmented butcher-kings, vivisector-warlords and religious demagogues led the warring tribes of Old Earth, and the world was wracked by never-ending conflict as one tyrant displaced another.Petty empires rose and disintegrated; tribes formed, were destroyed and re-formed as diminishing, brutalised shadows of lost glories and forgotten triumphs. Uncounted billions died unknown and unremembered, while whispered names such as the "Unspeakable King" and the "Seven Neverborn" left legends to terrify generations to come. Anarchy and bloodshed was lord over all.It was against this backdrop of oppression, violence and casual brutality that the Emperor of Mankind first revealed Himself to the people of Terra beginning in the 29th Millennium as a warlord more powerful than any other. In secret, He had been planning for this moment in history for millennia, ever since the Age of Strife had fractured what remained of the ancient Human federation which had once stretched across the galaxy.With His massive army of genetically-enhanced warriors who comprised the first units of the Imperial Army and would serve as the prototypes for the later development of the Space Marines, the Emperor began His conquest of Terra with the intent to reunite the warring techno-barbarian nations into a unified planetary government.But the Emperor's true power lay in His rationality and foresight, and His mastery of science was as unequalled as His might as a warrior, although few suspected the true range of His powers and abilities. The Emperor conquered great swathes of Old Earth and those that would not join Him He destroyed, but His was a conquest not merely born of blood and ambition, His was a higher calling. Where His dominion reigned the idols of fear and blind faith were cast down, and order and rationality were raised up in their place.He intended to use the unified Terra as the springboard from which to begin His reconquest of the galaxy under the aegis of an Imperium of Man dedicated to the Imperial Truth of progress and reason.Brutal rulers such as the warlord Kalagann of Ursh, Cardinal Tang of the Yndonesic Bloc, and the most infamous of all, the half-mad, half-genius Narthan Dume, the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, would all fall by the wayside.Of particular note was the Ninth Battle of Xozer fought by the Emperor's armies against Ursh in 992.M29. In the Nordafrik Conclaves inexplicable ephemeral phenomenon of psychic origin were encountered during the battle where Kalagann, the techno-barbarian warlord of Ursh, was finally slain. The kingdom of Ursh was then brought to heel by the Emperor's forces.Once unleashed, the armies of the Emperor swept all before them like wheat before the harvester's scythe until all the techno-barbarian warlords had either been conquered outright or had agreed through diplomacy to become subservient to the Emperor's will.