Horus Heresy, M31

The Horus Heresy was fought across the galaxy for more than nine Terran years,
beginning in ca. 005.M31 with the terrible Istvaan III Atrocity where Horus
cleansed four of the Traitor Legions under his command of their remaining Loyalist
elements and the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V, where Horus and his Traitor
Legions nearly decimated three entire Loyalist Space Marine Legions through the
most base of treacheries.

Horus sought to achieve a swift and decisive victory over the Emperor after
pledging his soul to the service of the Ruinous Powers of the Warp, leading his
Traitor forces directly to Terra seven standard years after the battles in the
Isstvan System, slaughtering tens of billions of people and destroying much of what
the Emperor had built over the last two centuries.

In a final decisive battle between the Emperor and Horus at the end of the great
Siege of Terra in 014.M31, the Warmaster was slain, leading to the end of the
rebellion when the forces of Chaos naturally began to turn on one another without
Horus' ambition, titanic charisma and influence to keep them united in pursuit of a
single goal.

Over the next several years, the Traitor Legions and their Chaos allies slowly
withdrew from Human space, eventually fleeing Imperial pursuit into the great Warp
rift in the Segmentum Obscurus known as the Eye of Terror.

However, the Master of Mankind was Himself mortally wounded during the battle,
which took place on Horus' Chaos-twisted Battle Barge, the Vengeful Spirit, in
orbit above Terra. The Emperor's body was recovered by the Primarch Rogal Dorn of
the Imperial Fists Legion and according to His last instructions, the Emperor was
placed on the life-preserving Golden Throne, an arcane artefact dating from the
Dark Age of Technology that served as both a psychic amplifier and a potent
cybernetic life-support system that the Emperor had originally intended to use to
create his portal into the Webway.

For over 10,000 Terran years now, the Emperor has remained immobile on the Golden
Throne. Though physically a broken, dying carcass incapable of movement and unable
to communicate normally with the outside world save through the rare telepathic
contact and the Emperor's Tarot, the Emperor's psychic will, almost omnipotent,
extends through the Immaterium across the million worlds of the Imperium.

It produces the psychic beacon of the Astronomican that is used by all Imperial
starships to travel through the Warp, soul-binds weaker psychic Humans to make them
useful Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperium while leeching the lives from 1,000 other
psykers every solar day to sustain His psychic presence, and struggles against the
encroaching Daemons of the Warp, protecting Mankind from their realspace
predations.

In all this, the Emperor endures the constant agony of His dying body only through
a sheer exercise of will, and the sustenance that the life forces of the sacrificed
psykers provide. Yet the masses of Humanity worship the Emperor as both a god and
their only saviour. It is an article of faith in the Imperial Cult that against all
the threats faced by the Human species, only the Emperor protects...
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Great Scouring

In the wake of the Horus Heresy, the Imperium was a dismal, shattered thing. As the
beauty and grandeur of the Imperial Palace had been burned black in the flames of
betrayal, so great swathes of the Emperor's star-spanning realm had suffered a
similar fate.
The Master of Mankind was a broken husk, and His dream of unity erased forever. Yet
for all this, the Imperium retained might enough to exact a bloody revenge upon its
foes. There could be no forgiveness for the crimes of the Traitor Legions -- those
who now ruled in the Emperor's name had neither the ability nor the desire to
prevent a war of reciprocity. So began the time known in the histories of the
Imperium as the Great Scouring.

Before actually being confined for all time within the life-support mechanisms of
the Golden Throne, the Emperor had pronounced judgment on the Traitors: he declared
them Excommunicate Traitoris, and determined that they were to be driven into the
hellish region of the Warp rift called the Eye of Terror, which would hold them for
all eternity.

All records and memory of the Traitor Legions were to be expunged from the Imperial
archives. Worlds such as Istvaan V, the Traitor Legion homeworlds and Davin would
be scoured clean of all life because of their corruption by Chaos.

The Traitor Legions' associated troops from the Dark Mechanicum, the Titan Legions
or the regiments and starships of the Imperial Army that had turned to Chaos were
to be destroyed or also driven into the Eye of Terror. It would be as if the
Traitor Legions had never existed to sully the Imperium with their betrayal.

This was a period of monumental violence, of confusion and darkness. Though the
newly founded Imperium fought to root out corruption and expose wrong-doers to the
cold light of Imperial justice, the galaxy's sheer scope and dark, shadowed reaches
worked against them.

With new betrayals and cries for vengeance emerging daily, a great many bloody-
handed deeds went unseen. The ravaged Space Marine Legions were no exception to
this, with many striving to cover up their own misdemeanours or exact their pound
of flesh from those who had wronged them.

The Dark Angels, the Space Wolves, Iron Hands and even the Ultramarines, all
followed their own agendas as the wars of the Great Scouring gathered pace.
Fighting continued for years after the Heresy had ended with Horus' death on the
bridge of his great flagship before the Traitor forces were wholly destroyed or
exiled into the Eye of Terror.

Many Chaos-corrupted star systems were cleansed and placed under the watch of the
newborn Inquisition. Horus' death had not ended the fighting, but it had renewed
the resolve of the Loyalists to destroy the Traitors.

Many Imperial worlds during the Heresy had refused to commit their forces to either
side, or seceded entirely from the Imperium to regain their independence. Such
indecision was punished by Loyalist and Traitor forces alike. These forces were
often bled white attacking the rebel strongholds of worlds that only wanted to be
free of the Imperium entirely, whether it swore allegiance to the Emperor or to the
Dark Gods.

Changes swept both the Imperial military and the offices of government. The Space
Marine Legions, the vast fighting formations so instrumental in Mankind's victories
during the Great Crusade, were broken down into many smaller Chapters comprised of
1,000 Astartes. Overseen by Roboute Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines
Legion and the lord commander of the Imperium in the wake of the Emperor's
"ascension," he penned his magnum opus, the Codex Astartes -- a great and sacred
tome which covered every conceivable topic of military organisation, strategy and
tactics.
This transition allowed for greater tactical flexibility without placing the
command of an entire Space Marine Legion into the hands of one individual -- never
again would the awesome power of one hundred thousand Space Marines be misused.

The Loyalist Space Marine Legions called the Shattered Legions that had been
decimated during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V -- the Raven Guard, Iron Hands
and Salamanders -- were slowly reestablished using what little gene-seed the
survivors had managed to escape with.

The original First Founding Space Marine Legions were divided into smaller
Successor Chapters -- one Chapter maintained their parent Legion's original name,
badge and colours, while the remaining Chapters took new names and heraldry. These
original Chapters are known as the Second Founding Chapters, an event which
occurred in the early 31st Millennium and coincided with the beginning of what was
known as the Reformation of the Imperium.

Another vast change wrought upon the Imperium's mighty military redefined the
nature of the Imperial Army. Once including both the great battleships that plied
the stars and the countless mortal soldiers that landed to fight planetside, now
the two were divided into the Imperial Navy and Astra Militarum, colloquially known
as the "Imperial Guard."

Across all the agencies of the Imperium, offices and institutions were split, their
previous responsibilities fractionalised into separate functions and departments.
Many of the countless branches within the sprawling Adeptus Administratum were
spawned at this time.

With the instigation of these changes, it was not unusual for two separate
organisations, each unaware of the other, to be tasked with the same jobs, such as
verificator scribes and tithe enumerators poring over the same data, each producing
the same reports.

These byzantine systems were put in place as fail-safe measures, which have since
spiralled out of control into administrative excess.

Beyond any such bureaucracies, and standing watch over all, was the newly formed
Inquisition, a secretive paramilitary police organisation outside the established
hierarchies. Ever vigilant, its role was to question everything in the constant
search for threats to Humanity. None save the Emperor Himself escape the
Inquisition's uncompromising and watchful gaze.
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Imperial Stagnation

"Mankind stands upon the brink; on the one hand lies a realm of unimaginable
power, on the other awaits darkness, death and utter damnation. Only those that
follow the guiding light of the Emperor may save their souls."

— Inquisitor Damarn, Ordo Malleus

The Imperium of Man at the end of the 41st Millennium is a dystopic society by the
standards of the people of the 21st century. The unexpected horrors of the Horus
Heresy fatally weakened the nascent Imperium, but more importantly, starting with
the Emperor Himself, claimed some of its best warriors, technocrats, administrators
and diplomats -- who fell either in battle with the Traitor Legions or were
corrupted by Chaos themselves.

But perhaps the most significant consequence seems to have been that like the
Emperor, the Imperium itself entered a slowly decaying stasis, while Chaos and the
Imperium's myriad xenos enemies are ascendant.
It is known that the period immediately following the Heresy was one of near-
anarchy, and that the continuity of the Imperium was not assured. Roboute
Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines, was one of those credited with taking
decisive action that kept the Imperium together as its ruling Lord Commander,
possibly with the help of other Loyalist forces and of new Imperial organisations
such as the Inquisition and the Officio Assassinorum (the Assassin Temples had been
secretly established during the Great Crusade by Malcador the Sigillite, and a
Callidus Assassin had successfully assassinated Konrad Curze, the primarch of the
Night Lords Traitor Legion).

Ironically, while the Imperium survived its first time of testing, it also seems to
be fulfilling predictions or prophesies made about its future by a variety of Chaos
enemies, Traitors, and more neutral or potentially sympathetic observers like the
Craftworld Aeldari.

Supreme among such ironic twists is the deification of the Emperor and the
attendant creation of the Ecclesiarchy, the galaxy-wide state church dedicated to
the Imperial Creed that teaches that the Emperor is the god of Mankind. The
Emperor's express purpose and one of the pillars of the pre-Heresy Imperial
doctrine known as the Imperial Truth that was spread by the Imperial forces during
the Great Crusade was the elimination of superstition and of belief in supernatural
powers, gods, and religion and the promotion of reason and science.

It is worth noting that among the ploys used by the Ruinous Powers to turn Horus to
their service were uncannily accurate visions of the post-Heresy Imperium in which
the Emperor and His Loyalist primarchs were worshiped by the Imperial masses as a
god and his saints, respectively. Of course, unknown to Horus, this was a future
caused by his actions, not prevented by them.

Another measure of the Imperium's stagnation has been the lack of real
technological progress over the last 10,000 Terran years and a fear of unknown or
ancient technology that sometimes borders on irrational superstition. It seems that
the last era of major Human technological advancement was the era of discoveries
and technological applications made during the planning and execution of the Great
Crusade.

In short, the Imperium has become a repressive regime marked by extreme levels of
superstition, political repression, religious intolerance, bureaucratisation,
economic stagnation, technological regression and inequality. Corruption and
injustice are rampant and Human life is increasingly worth very little in a galaxy
teeming with trillions of people.

But though the Imperium is repressive and stagnant, it is also the only thing
holding the enemies of Humanity at bay. Many in the highest levels of the Imperium
know that it must reform if it is to survive, but they fear that the cure might
very well kill the patient.

And in small pockets of the Imperium there are men and women willing to shoulder
the burden of making their small corner of the universe a better place for all by
shouldering the responsibilities and the burdens of heroes.