Chapter Text
The last hours of the 41st millennium dawn. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Terra. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. From a thousand pulpits is proclaimed day after day the virtue of suffering, for does HE not suffer for us all? The virtue of hate is hailed from even more, for do not aliens, heretics, mutants and worse crawl in the shadows, coveting mans place in creation? The Virtue of wrath, extolled by soldier and preacher alike, for should one suffer the witch, the mutant and the heretic to live? The sin of empathy is decried from a billion throats, for is it not the work of the witch and its vile sorcery? As is the sin of thought, for did HE not send our betters to take this burden from us?
To be a human in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned out by the marching thread of iron boots. To be a noble in such times is to posses capital in such quantities that numbers cannot express it anymore. It is to live life in impossible splendour and unimaginable wealth. It is to feast while others starve. These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten and locked away, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, of common humanity and compassion, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace to be found amongst the stars, only eternities of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.