A Timeline of the Ages

✠ The Imperial Chronicle ✠

Sixty MillionYears of War

From the War in Heaven to the Era Indomitus — sixteen ages of ruin and glory, chronicled by the Golden Scriptorium. Descend, and unseal the records.

Descend the ages

Chapter Ic. 60,000,000 Years Ago

The War in Heaven

Before Man drew his first breath, the stars already screamed.

Long before mankind, the Old Ones — masters of the webway and shepherds of young races — warred against the undying Necrontyr and the star-gods they served: the C’tan, drinkers of suns. To fight that war the Old Ones kindled new species; the Aeldari and the Krork among them. The heavens burned for aeons. When it ended, the Old Ones were broken, the Necrontyr slept in tombs of living metal, and the Warp itself had learned to hunger.

Read the full chronicleThe War in Heaven — Alex Cristi

Chapter IIc. 8,000 BC — Ancient Terra

The Birth of the Emperor

A thousand shamans died, that one god might live.

On the plains of ancient Anatolia the shamans of humanity, hunted through every reincarnation by a darkness growing in the Warp, enacted a final ritual: they died as one, and were reborn as One. For fifty thousand years the Emperor walked among us unnamed — conqueror, scientist, prophet — guiding mankind from the shadows and waiting for the hour of His unveiling.

Read the full chronicleEmperor of Mankind — Christopher Regalario

Chapter IIIM15 – M25

The Dark Age of Technology

We built machines that dreamed — and they dreamed of our ending.

Humanity’s zenith. Standard Template Constructs placed godlike industry in mortal hands; thinking machines steered fleets between the stars; a million worlds flew mankind’s banner. Then the Men of Iron turned upon their makers in a war that shattered the interstellar order — and taught the species a terror of the thinking machine it carries to this day.

Read the full chronicleIron Father — Yaroslav Lotsmanov

Chapter IVM25 – M30

The Age of Strife

Five thousand years of night, and every star an island.

Old Night. As the Aeldari empire’s corruption swelled toward catastrophe, Warp storms drowned the galaxy and severed every world from its neighbour. Newly-woken human psykers became doorways for daemons; paradise worlds became abattoirs. Even Terra fell to techno-barbarian kings. Mankind, scattered and screaming, all but died in the dark.

Read the full chronicleHorror of the Void — Ronin Ventinove

Chapter VLate M30

The Unification Wars

One Throne. One Terra. One destiny — written in thunder.

The Emperor cast off His anonymity and, at the head of the Thunder Warriors, broke the techno-barbarian kings one by one until Terra knelt to a single throne. In the gene-vaults of Luna and the Himalazian fortress-labs He wrought twenty demigod sons — and the Ruinous Powers, fearing what was coming, stole them from their cradles and scattered them across the stars.

Read the full chronicleCustodian Guard — OD60

Chapter VI798.M30 – 005.M31

The Great Crusade

A thousand worlds a year, reclaimed beneath the Aquila.

With Terra unified and Mars sworn to the Throne, the Emperor launched the greatest military undertaking in human history. Legions of Space Marines, each reunited with its primarch gene-sire, carried the Imperial Truth across the void — casting down gods, breaking xenos empires, and gathering the lost tribes of humanity into one Imperium. It was mankind’s finest hour. It could not last.

Read the full chronicleGreat Crusade — Eddy González Dávila

Chapter VII005 – 014.M31

The Horus Heresy

The brightest son fell furthest — and dragged the galaxy down with him.

On Davin, the Warmaster Horus — first-found, best-beloved — was poisoned in body and soul, and half the Legions followed him into damnation. Brother slew brother at Isstvan; Prospero burned; Calth drowned in betrayed blood. It ended at Terra, the Palace walls broken, the Angel dead, Horus unmade by his father’s hand — and the Emperor, ruined, enthroned in gold forever.

Read the full chronicleEmperor vs Horus — Richard Bagnall

Chapter VIII014.M31 – 021.M31

The Great Scouring

Vengeance pursued the traitors into the very Eye of Terror.

The Imperium’s grief became wrath. The traitor Legions were broken world by world and driven shrieking into the Eye of Terror, where time itself abandons the damned. Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of a wounded Imperium, penned the Codex Astartes and sundered the loyal Legions into a thousand Chapters — that no single warlord could ever again hold a sword to mankind’s throat.

Read the full chronicleUltramarine — Yigit Koroglu

Chapter IXM32 – M34

The Time of Rebirth

A corpse became a god; an empire became a church.

From the ashes of Heresy rose the vast machinery of the Adeptus Terra — and around the silent figure on the Golden Throne, a faith. The Lectitio Divinitatus, once heresy, became creed: the Emperor of Mankind, God of Humanity. When the Beast’s ork empire nearly ended the Imperium in M32, it was faith as much as fury that held the line.

Read the full chronicleGolden Throne of Terra — Mohamed Saad

Chapter XM36

The Age of Apostasy

Vandire’s reign drowned ten thousand worlds in righteous blood.

High Lord Goge Vandire seized both throne and pulpit, and his Reign of Blood consumed billions in the Emperor’s name. It took the preacher Sebastian Thor, a confessor’s war, and the turning of Vandire’s own bodyguard — the Brides of the Emperor, who became the Adepta Sororitas — to end him. The Ecclesiarchy was broken to heel; the Sisters took up the flame.

Read the full chronicleSaint Celestine — Bartłomiej Vetinari

Chapter XIM40 – 999.M41

The Time of Ending

From every horizon, the darkness gathered at once.

The galaxy’s wounds all opened together. Hive Fleets Behemoth, Kraken and Leviathan devoured the eastern fringe; the Necrons stirred from sixty million years of sleep; Ghazghkull’s Waaagh! broke upon Armageddon; and from the Eye, Abaddon the Despoiler hurled Black Crusade after Black Crusade against the Cadian Gate. The Imperium endured — as a fortress endures a rising sea.

Read the full chronicleDeathstorm — Raymond Swanland

Chapter XII999.M41

The Fall of Cadia

The planet broke before the Guard did.

Abaddon’s Thirteenth Black Crusade fell upon the Cadian Gate with the fury of ten millennia’s hate. Cadia’s pylons — ancient Necron works that had caged the Eye of Terror — were the true prize. When the Despoiler hurled the wreck of a Blackstone Fortress into the world itself, the pylons fell silent, and the shield of ten thousand years was gone. Kasr by kasr, Cadia died standing.

Read the full chronicleAbaddon Assault on Cadia — Maclain Rowston

Chapter XIII999.M41 — The Dawning

The Great Rift

Half an Imperium, lost beyond the storm.

With Cadia’s pylons dead, the wound tore wide: the Cicatrix Maledictum, a scar of screaming Warp from the Eye of Terror to the Hadex Anomaly, cleaving the Imperium in two. In the Noctis Aeterna the Astronomican itself went dark, and for days — for decades, on some worlds — there was no Emperor’s light at all. The half beyond the Rift, Imperium Nihilus, fights on alone.

Read the full chronicleThe Slaughter-Host — George Vincent

Chapter XIVM42

The Resurrection of Guilliman

A son of the Emperor walks among the living once more.

Ten thousand years a statue — a primarch frozen at the edge of death by his brother’s poisoned blade — Roboute Guilliman was returned to life by the union of Belisarius Cawl’s heretical genius and the Ynnari’s deathless god. He knelt before the Golden Throne, spoke with his father in ways no record dares describe, and rose as Lord Commander of an Imperium he barely recognised — at the head of Cawl’s new-made Primaris Legions.

Read the full chronicleGuiliman vs Fulgrim — Gwalchmai Joshua Doran

Chapter XVM42

The Indomitus Crusade

The greatest muster of arms since the Heresy itself.

From Terra, Guilliman launched the Indomitus Crusade — fleets beyond counting, Primaris Chapters by the hundred, a century of unbroken war to stitch the sundered Imperium back together. Saints walked ahead of the fleets and the dead marched behind them, but a hundred worlds were dragged back from the brink — and the light of the Astronomican followed.

Read the full chronicleUltramarines — Rodrigo Lorenzo López

Chapter XVIM42 — The Present

The Era Indomitus

It is the 42nd Millennium — and there is only war.

Now the galaxy burns as it has never burned. The Silent King has returned to lead the Necron dynasties; the Tyranid shadow swallows whole sectors; the Great Rift bleeds daemons into realspace; and on his darkling half of the Imperium, mankind fights on with no light but faith. This is the present dark. This is where the chronicle is still being written.

Read the full chronicleArmageddon — Edward Delandre

The Chronicle Continues

The record of the 42nd Millennium is still being written — in blood, in faith, and in the archives of the Scriptorium.

Enter the Chronicles