Right, besides outlaying various factions and heroes of the 41st Millenium, we need to look at a few key aspects of the Lore to understand what is happening and changing in the advancing narrative of Warhammer 40,000 storyline in 2023.
So let's look directly at the maddening swirl of a permanent Chaos Rift that is the Eye of Terror!
So in essence, we have mentioned the existence of Warp Storms before. This is when the Immaterium of the Warp spills out into real space and messes things up a bit. This is when real space and the Warp intersect.
Warp travel is to use a stable gate from real space through warp space and come out the other side in a Faster than Light travel time. To jump through warp space near any warp storm is to invite doom or just random chance. Chaos worshippers are keen to do so because they believe it is the will of the Gods to bring them to their enemies.
In reality, both Chaos and other forces who do a warp jump risk jumping to virtually anywhere and anywhen depending on how the laws of reality and the non-laws of the Immaterium interact.
The Eye of Terror was and is a permanent Warp Storm that was created during the birth of Slaanesh. We covered that in some detail already.
Slaanesh is a young God. Only around 11,000 Terran Years and a LOT of things intersected at this point and happened all at once!
- Slaanesh was born, bringing about the end of the Aeldari Empire and a prominent split between the Asuryani and the Drukhari widened.
- The Eldar Gods died, except for the Fractured Khaine, Cemorch, and Isha (who I will discuss in an upcoming lore post)
- Besides the Eye of Terror, the Galaxy was engulfed in many temporary Warp Storms one covering Earth(Terra) during which time it was the Age of Strife and the Unification Wars where the Emperor united Earth.
- After the Unification Wars the Warp Storms abated and the Great Crusade of the Emperor began. The Aeldari were but a fraction of their former power and humans and other nations began growing and taking over places that the Aeldari had held in practical stability for Millennia.
Right so this was a pretty massive event in the history of the setting and put things into motion the establishment of the Imperium of Man. Without a united Eldar Empire to deal with, the Emperor and his Space Marines set forth across the galaxy to unite all the worlds of humanity under his rule... until the big Heresy.
The Cadian Gate
So after the initial warp storms subsided, the Eye of Terror remained. In it, there was a tract of clear space that is quite stable and allows easier passage by far between the two realities. There is a world centered in this aventue of somewhat stable passage and it is called Cadia.
In no time at all and especially after the Horus Heresy finished, the Imperium of Man fortified the world of Cadia to stand as a door to keep Chaos forces out. Thus it is known... was known as the Cadian Gate.
The fact that Cadia stood there in this stable space was no coincidence for there existed Necron pylons that were built to keep psychic things and the Immaterium at bay. These were relics of a much older conflict in the War in Heaven, something that predated the rise of the Aeldari Empire!
During the 13th Black Crusade, Abbadon the Despoiler, the Chaos Lord who inherited the Black Legion from his Primarch - Horus, destroyed Cadia by ramming another Necron artifact into the planet.
The destruction of Cadia and the pylons tore the fabric of reality across the entire Milkyway Galaxy. The Eye of Terror was still there, but a much larger rlift was torn from it to another permanent rift called Hadex Anomaly in the Eastern Fringes of the Galaxy.
So from the Eye in the West to the Anomaly in the East the Great Rift was torn through. Other tears and warp-spawned space anomalies also appeared because of this cataclysmic event.
This the Imperium of Man is split into two. The one side still within the light of the Astronomicon - the Beacon of the Emperor that guides ships through Warp travel and the other side, cut off from that light, known as the Dark Imperium.
There is more history to delve into this, but this is all new to me. When I previously played warhammer, Abbadon was attempting to attack Cadia once more and it was an ongoing war. He had not yet won.
There is now an entire chapter of history of the Imperium that happened AFTER the destruction of Cadia, the appearance of the Great Rift and how this affected each faction.
And the story is right now, in 2023, progressing once more as Abbadon and his allies further their invasion of the Imperium!
Thank you for reading!
