Horus Heresy - Age of Strife: Mankind's first interstellar empire would fall into bloody ruin, isolation and ignorance. The terrible period of history that followed is officially named the Age of Strife by Imperial historitoes, although it has another name, whispered only fearfully: "Old Night." During the darkness of Old Night, Humanity experienced naught but nightmare and predation for over five thousand standard years. During this time, the worlds of Mankind were isolated by searing Warp Storms that made interstellar travel and communication virtually impossible, and Old Earth was totally cut off from its colonies and allies.Across the galaxy Human worlds, bereft of central authority or protection, and with the web of support and supply that had maintained the threads of civilisation cut, fell into anarchy and war. Human civilisation was torn apart as local factions and new empires fought for control in the shattered realm while others, utterly cut off from aid, succumbed to the horrors of planet-wide famine, insanityand worse -- the perils of the Warp.The existence of Warp entities and the dangers they posed to the Human mind were then barely understood. On worlds with large concentrations of emergent Human psykers, the entities from beyond were able to breach the barrier between the Immaterium and corporeal reality, and it cannot be known or guessed how many worlds were ravaged or swallowed whole by their incursions. As Human civilisation fragmented, hundreds of xenos species and enemies unknown seized their chance for revenge on Humanity for its past conquests, or to plunder unprotected worlds and enslave their populations. Hundreds more Human-inhabited star systems were sacked and ravaged, their peoples slaughtered, mutilated or abducted. Those that survived the alien onslaught rapidly reverted to barbarism, stripped of civilisation, knowledge and culture in the raw battle to endure.Humanity stood on the brink of total extinction and endless night gathered round its children. Alone and beset by internal strife, famine and plague, under incessant attack by aliens and facing the horrors of Warp incursions, the Human worlds that survived were pitiable shadows of what they once had been. It was to become an age when Mankind's dead far outnumbered its living.Shorn of its galactic empire, Ancient Terra could not sustain itself. Protracted internecine wars emptied Old Earth's terrible arsenals of radiological weaponry, killing untold billions, destroying its ancient power structures and boiling off the last of its oceans. In their aftermath, the planet became a lawless battleground, little more than a blasted desert dotted with ruins, its people reduced to the level of brute savages fighting over the scarce water and untainted land which remained. Old Earth expired entirely, all of its ancient knowledge lost and its cities torn down, and where it once stood, instead reigned a world of savagery and horror, the equal of any brought to ruin in the Age of Strife.Long before left parlous and polluted, generations of constant warfare made Terra a wasteland punctuated by fortified holdfasts built amid the wreckage of lost civilisations, and its inhabitants a mass of degenerate, feral nomads. Insane prophets, cybernetically-augmented butcher-kings, vivisector-warlords and religious demagogues led the warring techno-barbarian tribes of Old Earth, and the world was wracked by incessant conflict as one tyrant displaced another.Petty empires rose and disintegrated; techno-barbarian 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.For those few with time enough to spare thought to such matters, it would have seemed as if there were no hope and no help -- the end times were at hand, and a slow bitter descent into destruction was all that any could see as Humanity's future. Many succumbed to despair, believing no force imaginable could save Mankind and free it from its hellish bondage. But they would be proved wrong.