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Age of Strife ("Old Night") (M25-M30)

During the Age of Technology Humanity had reached its scientific and technological peak, enjoying a golden age of prosperity and advancement. The "Standard Template Construct," or STC, an artificially intelligent computer database of schematics for all known advanced Human technologies, had been perfected by Human scientists and engineers and allowed an unprecedented expansion of Humanity throughout the galaxy.

As already noted, one of the reasons Humanity was so successful at conquering a large part of the galaxy was the development of the artificially-intelligent constructs now only known in Imperial legend as the "Men of Iron." These powerful and fully intelligent combat robots won many wars for Humanity, but for some reason turned against their masters at the end of the Dark Age of Technology in the great conflict called the "Cybernetic Revolt." This war was eventually won by Humanity, but at a great cost and only through the intervention of other factions. The damage of this conflict proved catastrophic and shattered much of Humanity's power. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of Mankind's misfortunes as the Age of Technology came to its end.

As Humanity became widely dispersed across the galaxy during the Age of Technology, the ancient Aeldari Empire began its decline; the great success of the advanced Aeldari species had led to decadence and hedonism on a grand scale in their empire's final millennia. Within the immaterial, psychic universe of the Warp, the spiritual corruption of the Aeldari civilisation was reflected in the forming of a new potent, psychic gestalt entity or "Chaos God," Slaanesh, which in turn caused massive disturbances in the Warp; parts of the galaxy became isolated by these "Warp storms," making Warp travel and astrotelepathic interstellar communication increasingly impossible as the years passed, cutting off many Human colony worlds from one another, including those of the Sol System.

Towards the end of the Age of Technology psykers first appeared among Humanity. While persecuted on many backwards, regressive Human worlds as witches, in enlightened and progressive societies these psykers were at first protected and accepted. Yet the initial intolerance for the emergence of psykers among Humanity would later seem prescient, as many Human worlds fell to the dominance of Daemons and other Warp creatures using possessed, weak-willed psykers as gateways into the physical world. Only worlds which had rigorously suppressed psykers survived the Age of Strife.

The Age of Strife followed the Age of Technology, as the interstellar Human civilisation collapsed in widespread insanity, Daemonic possession, anarchy and inter-Human civil war. Terrible weapons of the golden age of technology were unleashed, devastating many Human colonies and turning once-verdant worlds such as Baal Secundus into irradiated desert planets. Many isolated and vulnerable Human-colonised worlds also became prey to hostile alien species, such as the Orks.

In a relatively short span of time, the once galaxy-spanning Human civilisation was brought to its knees, and was forced to endure nearly five Terran millennia of anarchy, terror, war, genocide and slavery. Other than tales of great suffering, little information concerning these long years survived this dark time to be known to the men and women of the Imperium.

Fall of the Aeldari (M25-M30)

Ancient Aeldari lead their people aboard the craftworlds to salvation before the Fall of the Aeldari.

Before the Fall of their potent interstellar empire, the Aeldari were a technologically and psychically-advanced humanoid species, generally considered the most powerful intelligent species in the entire galaxy. Their technology had advanced so far that little or no labour was required by individual Aeldari to provide the daily necessities of life. As a result of the sheer boredom and ennui that resulted, at some point during the 25th Millennium A.D. by the Terran calendar, groups of Aeldari began forming what were known as "Pleasure Cults" dedicated to the pursuit of every pleasure and sensation that life had to offer their kind.

Despite the prediction of the reclusive Aeldari Seers that warned of impending doom if the Aeldari did not change their hedonistic ways, government within the Aeldari Empire soon collapsed and the moral degeneration of their homeworlds and various colony worlds continued unimpeded. As the pursuit of ever more extreme experiences reached its height, death reigned in the streets of Aeldari cities, hunter and hunted each being part of a twisted ritual of destruction that consumed millions in orgies of savage bloodlust and excess.

Some Aeldari were able to see that their now-corrupt society was destroying itself, and fled in disgust; these refugees would settle in the distant, rural colonies of their empire, and would later be known as the Exodites or take to the massive, continent-sized Aeldari craftworlds and sail amidst the stars as merchants and explorers, far from the scenes of hedonistic excess that were destroying the heart of the Aeldari Empire in the galactic northwest.

Upon death, the souls of all deceased, self-aware beings traverse the bounds of the physical realm and go to rest within the hyperdimensional realm of psychically-reactive energy that undergirds all of reality known as the Immaterium or Warp. As more and more corrupt Aeldari died, their souls began to coalesce into a larger entity within the Warp, a living representation of the hedonistic corruption that had defined their lives. This growing presence in the Warp caused massive Warp storms to aggregate across the galaxy, eventually making interstellar travel and communications impossible for the colonies of Humanity, bringing on Mankind's Age of Strife.

This gestalt collection of corrupt Aeldari souls gained self-awareness sometime in the late 30th Millennium, creating the powerful new Warp entity known as the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure, named "She Who Thirsts" by the Aeldari. When Slaanesh came to be, an ethereal explosion occurred that spanned the extent of Warpspace within the Milky Way Galaxy, with the epicentre being located within the Aeldari core homeworlds of the galactic northwest. All Aeldari caught in the immense psychic blast were instantly killed, their souls consumed by Slaanesh, and the surrounding region of space was transformed into a massive, permanent Warp rift later known as the "Eye of Terror" to Humanity. The core Aeldari homeworlds were transformed into the ruined hellscapes today known as "Crone Worlds."

The Eye of Terror, once the heart of the Aeldari Empire in the Segmentum Obscurus, seen from several thousand light years away.

Most of the remaining Aeldari gods who themselves existed as entities within the Warp were destroyed by Slaanesh after its cataclysmic birth. Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Aeldari god of war, attempted to combat the new Chaos God, but Khaine's form was shattered and exiled to the mortal realm where it came to rest in the Infinity Circuits of the Asuryani craftworlds but could be embodied in the form of animated constructs called "Avatars", which rested in the hearts of the various craftworlds during times of grave peril.

The only other Aeldari gods to survive the Fall were the trickster god Cegorach (also called the "Laughing God"), who hid himself within the Webway, and Isha, who was ripped from the jaws of Slaanesh by the Chaos God Nurgle, who now keeps her as a slave within its hideous garden home within the Realm of Chaos.

The Fall utterly destroyed the once vast interstellar Aeldari Empire, leaving scattered bands of Aeldari fighting for survival. Before the Fall, vast voidcraft called craftworlds were constructed, enabling those wishing to escape the degeneration of the Aeldari homeworlds to flee, along with samples of their lost worlds' flora and fauna. When the Fall occurred, the various craftworlds rode out the ethereal shockwave in the Warp, some being destroyed in the process.

The Exodite worlds, far from the epicentre of the terrible catastrophe, were largely untouched by the birth-scream of Slaanesh. In order to prevent the events of the Fall from ever recurring, the Aeldari of the craftworlds, who now called themselves the "Asuryani" but were long known as the "Eldar" to outsiders, devised the Asuryani Path system, by which every Craftworld Aeldari would follow a strict, almost fanatical life path pursuing a specific activity, such as crafting or war, for a portion of their long lifespans, before switching to another Path when the previous one grew stale. In this way, the Asuryani hoped to control the extreme emotional and psychic sensitivity that had left them open to corruption by Chaos in the first place.

However, some corrupted Aeldari did survive the birth of Slaanesh by taking refuge within the Webway itself. The Webway had long been home to a nearly infinite cavalcade of hyperdimensional sub-realms that were protected from Slaanesh's predations by the psychic wards erected within the Labyrinth Dimension to keep the dangers of the Warp at bay. These sadistic beings became known as the Drukhari or "Dark Eldar" to outsiders, the inhabitants of the vast Dark City within the Webway called Commorragh. The Drukhari later preyed on Humans and Asuryani alike to find souls whose torment and anguish they could psychically devour to keep their own tainted souls from being consumed by Slaanesh.