It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. 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. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and far, far worse. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
These are not the tales of those times, nor of mankind's triumphant rise and subsequent fall, nor of the eldar's unquestioned primacy and desolate despair in the wake of near-annihilation, nor of the numberless orkoid's wanton slaughter and perpetual mirth. Rather, these are the tales of a lesser, stranger race, in older days going onward, and the struggles and sagas known, perhaps, to them and them alone. The whims of fate paired with the breadth of their wisdom will determine whether they survive the horrors that await, if not intact, alive and untainted, while the narrowest of branching paths promises they be vaunted and exalted to an empire that may bring the galaxy to shake.
Such thoughts are as far from the present as the rise of man from the first rising of algal murk on Terra's cradle. In this distant era, the most fundamental questions are to be answered and they, more than any other, will determine the future course.
In the infancy of the Milky Way Galaxy, where did the star system soon to be home to this struggling race coalesce?
The Galactic North: In the here and the now distant yet not absent, the system can take solace in idyllic isolation but in time, the story of the eldar will be told and the prospect of enduring its ending is slim to none.
The Galactic East: Only one system amid a sea of nameless stars, the potential for life arising is great indeed, as is the progress that such pitched competition will force on nascent species.
The Galactic West: Farflung and sparse in density, the teeming dark is broken only by the light of nebulae which clog its ranges and give rise to esoteric superstitions among the rare few reared and raised within their embrace.
The Galactic South: Ancient beyond reckoning and bearing thin soil for lively seed, of no consequence to the reaches beyond, its scarcity could be argued as a purchase of precious time to the desperate.
The Galactic Center: Silent now, yet treacherous and terrible in the times to come, any risen here would face man at its grandest height of mercy and wonder, and suffer along their side, legacies of the past forgotten in favour of rabid zeal upon the onset of its dreaded fall.