| abstract | - During the Age of Strife the great Warp Storms that heralded the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh following the Fall of the Eldar had separated Terra from its interstellar colonies and plunged all the human civilisations across the Milky Way Galaxy into disarray and chaos. When the storms abated with the emergence of Slaanesh in the Warp, a new leader for humanity known only as the Emperor of Mankind emerged on Terra, the ancient homeworld of Mankind. To carry out the Unification of Terra the Emperor creates the first of his genetically-enhanced warriors who are known as Thunder Warriors and later the nascent Legiones Astartes, the precursors to the present-day Adeptus Astartes. Wrought to be living weapons, the Thunder Warriors were known to be physically stronger, more savage and more potent in combat than the later Astartes, though they were not as long-lived. With his legions of Thunder Warriors, the Emperor cast down the remaining tyrants of Ancient Earth -- bloody-handed warlords of the late Age of Strife-era Terra in a series of great campaigns later called the Unification Wars. Alongside this ascendency would come a rebirth of civilisation and government with the Emperor founding an all-embracing civil administration to order and rebuilt His world, and concentrate such learning and knowledge that could be salvaged from the dust of ages in houses of learning and education. The unification of Terra would only be the start. The Emperor then sought a negotiated alliance with the Mechanicum Parliament on the red planet of Mars. The Emperor entered a military and political alliance with the Lords of the Red Planet, known as the Treaty of Mars, which was also known as the Treaty of Olympus Mons to the Mechanicum, the formal name given to the binding agreements that regulate the coexistence of the Imperium of Man and the Cult Mechanicus. This gave formal rise to the nascent Imperium of Man in the late 30th Millennium. The Treaty of Mars granted political autonomony to the Mechanicum of Mars and its Forge Worlds scattered across the galaxy as well as an exception to the Imperial Truth so that the Cult Mechanicus' adherents could continue to practice their faith. The Imperium would provide Navigators and Astropaths to the Mechanicum so that it could unite its far-flung empire of lost Forge Worlds and continue its sacred Quest for Knowledge across the galaxy. In exchange, the Mechanicum would supply the Imperium of Man with the weapons, starships, materiel and technicians required to initiate the Emperor's Great Crusade to reunite all of the human-settled galaxy beneath the banner of the Imperium. To symbolise the alliance created between Terra and Mars that marked the true birth of the new Imperium, the Emperor changed his personal sigil from one of a lightning bolt to the Aquila, a two-headed eagle whose heads represented the twin foundations of the new human interstellar government -- Terra and Mars, Imperium and Mechanicum. During Old Earth's isolation in the Age of Strife, the Emperor had for long years furthered his plans and worked to make the future Imperium possible. In preparation for the re-conquest of the galaxy He conceived of and created the twenty Primarchs to be his agents of change and lords of war, long before the understanding of any save the Emperor Himself, were to be his generals and the executors of his will -- great leaders who would conquer millions of worlds in his name. Each of these genetically-engineered superhumans would have powers and skulls beyond those of any other human -- abilities possibly rivalling those of the Emperor Himself. Furthermore, no two would be alike; each would embody a different facet of war and generalship and make it his own. Together, united with the Emperor and with the Legions at his command, they would make for a force unseen and unequalled in all creation. But the Emperor's ambitions for the Primarchs appeared to be thwarted by a cataclysmic event, the true nature and scope of which has never been revealed. The Primarchs were somehow snatched away whilst still in their gestation capsules from the Emperor's gene-laboratories deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains and cast in scattered disarray across the galaxy. But all was not lost. The Emperor had managed to keep a small sample of each Primarch's genetic material and use it to create gene-seed which was implanted into the first Terran volunteers, which genetically-enhanced these elite soldiers into the first true Space Marines. It is from these soldiers that the Emperor forged the original 20 First Founding Space Marine Legions. With his Legiones Astartes, the Emperor planned to unleash a Great Crusade intended to reunite all of Mankind across the galaxy beneath his benevolent rule, banishing the violence, superstition and injustice that had ruled humanity throughout the five millennia of the Age of Strife.
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