In preparation for Thursday’s one-shot: what you need to know about the Dark Heresy/40K setting!
Generally, ignorance is a theme of the setting, so not knowing much isn’t a big problem…
Here are some links, they are very optional and not really needed unless you really want to know loads:
Timeline of the 40K setting:
warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Warhammer_40,000_Universe
Map of the Calixis sector (Dark Heresy location):
app.fantasyflightgames.com/dark-heresy/images/40K-maps/calixis-map-big.jpg
Timeline of the Calixis sector:
www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/dark-heresy/pdf/timeline.pdf
Here’s my more general intro:
It is the 41st millennium. The Imperium of Man stretches across the galaxy, a rock holding humanity together. For ten thousand years the Emperor has sat on his Golden Throne on Terra. The most powerful human psyker ever, he guides the silver ships of war and commerce through Warp space using the power of his mind. Humanity is united in worship of him. An array of forces protects humankind:
• The Space Marines, mighty genofixed armoured heroes
• The Imperial Guard, human, but uncountably numberless
• The Imperial Navy, sending battlefleets across the stars
• The Adeptus Mechanicus, guardians of machine technology
• The Inquisition, rooting out heresy and deviance
It is a golden age of hope and prosperity for mankind.
That is what we are told.
It is a lie.
If the Imperium is a rock, it is a crumbling one, riven with fissures, and continually attacked: from within, without and beyond:
• From within, traitors, rebels, secessionists, mutants, Warp cults and pirates – heretics all – strive to break the Imperium’s unity
• From without, the bestial Xenos – aliens like the war-loving Orks, the onrushing Tyranids or the devious Eldar, all seeking to enslave, destroy or consume
• From beyond – the daemons of the Warp strive to spill their Chaos into real-space: our emotions fuel them, as mankind’s hate and terror stirs the resonant Warp.
For the majority of humanity, life is grinding, polluted and poor. A lucky few live in comfort and wealth – most live in massive city-hives, or on a huge variety of worlds: feral worlds, war worlds, agro planets, industrial planets, forge worlds. And yet for every settled planet, there are a dozen where Warp things, Xenos or worse run free.
Everywhere mutation is rife: bodily mutation is foul enough, but a psychic mutant can doom a planet if he is powerful enough. Mutants are burned at worst, and at best tolerated and forced into the dirtiest most dangerous jobs. Psykers are a total anathema, except for those useful enough to be put into service. And yet unsanctioned psykers are a peril everywhere, acting as a door to real-space for daemons.
There is no progress. Scientific advance is anathema – there can be no return to the Dark Age of Technology. Machines and Tech are jealously guarded by the Adeptus Mechanicus, and even the simplest actions are bound up in ritual and superstition. And yet there are always hereteks willing to bring forth products of monstrous uncontrolled deviant experimentation.
The church of the Emperor promotes and enforces the Imperial Creed. If you oppose or question the Emperor’s divinity or the power of his church, you are a heretic, and must be purified through death. And yet cults exist everywhere, worshipping and even summoning daemons into our reality.
Grim, dark. A future with little hope. And yet, what is the alternative? Only the power of the Emperor can hold humanity together. Without the Imperium, mankind would be consumed. Xenos, Chaos, disunity – all would result in extinction. Humanity is at a final, bloody crossroads.
The Inquisition knows this.
The Inquisition – loathed by their enemies, feared by all.
The Inquisition – undercover, spying and snooping, monitoring everyone.
The Inquisition – in public, leading armies, cleansing and purging entire planets
The Inquisition – answerable to no-one but the Emperor.
The Inquisition – diversely zealots, philosophers, warriors, witches, puritans, borderline heretics – but all possessing an iron will and a surety about what is right
You are acolytes, in the service of an Inquisitor who you have never seen and whose name you do not even know. You are a team, sometimes working covertly, sometimes out in the open. You are a white blood cell, fighting cancers everywhere.
You are cunning. You are brutal. You are dangerous. You are without mercy.
You are Inquisition.
You are humanity’s only hope.
Forum 
