| abstract | - The Coronid Deeps' roots lie deep within the Dark Age of Technology, when Mankind first took to the stars and began its sojourn into the wider galaxy beyond the Sol System. Many worlds in the various regions of the Coronid Deeps were settled at this time, as the human settlers transformed their worlds into habitable and industrious centres of human civilisation. Then this region of the galaxy was cut off from the rest of humanity by massive Warp Storms which raged for thousands of standard years. Each world was forced to fend for itself to survive the horrors of Old Night. This tumultuous period of history came to be known as the Age of Strife. Before the coming of the Great Crusade, many regions within the Coronid Deeps suffered under the inhuman overlordship of the Mitu Conglomerate. The Conglomerate, whose core worlds would eventually be purged by the fires of Exterminatus, was a cabal of several psychically-empowered pseudo-actinaric xenos species believed to have evolved from a common stock. Warp-capable and with advanced biologic and arcane technologies, the Mitu Conglomerate had forged a pocket empire, forbidding any attempts at space flight and ruthlessly purging any psyker within their domains. They periodically demanded a culling of the population and a tribute of flesh to provide them, it was believed, with the basic components to construct their technologies. Contact with Mankind was reestablished with many of these human remnant civilisations when Imperial Expeditionary Fleets of the Great Crusade first began to explore the Coronid Deeps in the early 800's of the 30th Millennium, at a time when much of the Coronid Deeps were still entirely uncharted and under the Conglomerate's control. In answer to the existence of such creatures there could be no response but total annihilation, and the war the Imperium fought to end the Mitu Conglomerate was protracted and bloody. The conflict itself was fought largely in the void as a series of brutal close-quarters boarding engagements, interspersed with sudden and world-shattering planetary assaults by both sides, which involved the forces of several different Expeditionary Fleets, and would require no fewer than three Space Marine Legions and hundreds of Solar Auxilia cohorts to successfully prosecute. The liberation of many of these star systems was a turning point for humanity, and for the masses who had lived so long under the oppression of inhuman intelligences and the constant threat of death, Imperial Compliance was accepted with open arms. The various regions were soon put under the rulership of an Imperial Commander or the custodianship of the Mechanicum. The Coronid Deeps became a highly productive and vital strategic region during the latter years of the Great Crusade, becoming a shining beacon of Imperial civilisation and all the Great Crusade had set out to achieve.
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