So, this is going to be continued once I finish some stuff I have to do. It's going to end in the post-war Imperium, during which every major power other then the Imperium is more or less spent instead of outright dead. So, yeah. This is probably terrible and edgy, what with my potentially unhealthy obsession with overly-dramatic prose, but still. It's here.
Once upon a time, there was war. Only war could be found amongst the stars. The marching feet of trillions and the endless raging of guns could be heard on the horizon of every world as the fury and courage of man was tested time after time, in battle after battle. Holy crusades were brought against those unholy and unworthy, the blood of the righteous mixing with the damned in pursuit of a vengeance 10,000 years old. The Great Evils of the universe, the Heretic, the Daemon and the Xenos, were fought and defeated and lost to in a terrible, beautiful dance that cracked open skies and stars and the lives of mortal men.
At the center of the maelstrom lied a dying empire, thrashing out at its enemies. It had been beaten and whipped for its entire existence, every second dedicated to perpetuating itself for just one more moment, every resource used to continue the fight against inevitability.
And still it was losing.
Worlds were melted down to create weapons, given to the billions taken from their homes to fight on forsaken battlefields across the galaxy. God Machines that could crush armies with but a wave of their hands were carried by ships that could rain down hellfire upon the enemies of man. Angels of Death, the tip of the spear, would fall from the heavens to purge that which knew not the Emperor's glory. I am Ozymandias, cried them all, king of kings and all of you shall look upon my works and despair.
It would never have been enough. The foes surrounding this empire, this Imperium, were too many. It would fall. But then, with a terrible cry of havoc and a letting loose of war's dogs, a clamor of trumpets announced that which would be Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.
From beyond the edge came The Devourer, its numbers uncountable, its maw untamable and its face that of doom. It had come to destroy all of mans works and to wipe away all trace, to take the glories of this Imperium and out of them create itself once more. Hope was surely lost.
Until the impossible happened
The Old Children, of the self-made worlds, were the first to come forward. They came to castles and keeps of the Imperium with a message, one that had rarely been heard of in this time of blood and fire and laughing gods. A message like this had not been heard like this for many millennia, for it would not have been necessary. It went like this:
We stand together.
Then came The Young Ones, who only ever wanted peace, and then The Old Kings, who had lived too long to die, and then the Great Horde, who were led by their Prophet to a wonderful, terrible war. They all of them came together, each of them for their own reasons, to fight this Devourer. The Lost and the Damned refused, instead going to fight on their own, while the corrupted of the Old Children locked themselves away, to avoid the coming onslaught and what retribution may one day find them.
And so, with an alliance forged and old grudges thrown away, the end of days began. There would be no peace among the stars, for the apocalypse would be fought:
and it would be killed.
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