Inspired by the maps of u/emwattnot, this is a work in progress map of my Unification Wars era for my 30k world building project.
I have most if not all of the canon places marked. I wanted to fill out the would more so I have filled it up with loads of other references from other scifi properties that I think might fit.
if there is a place and or faction that you think would fit in let me know.
Inspired by the maps of u/emwattnot, this is a work in progress map of my Unification Wars era for my 30k world building project.
I have most if not all of the canon places marked. I wanted to fill out the would more so I have filled it up with loads of other references from other scifi properties that I think might fit.
if there is a place and or faction that you think would fit in let me know.
The look of the desiccated miserable oceans is the most immediately striking for me. It really drives home the post apocalyptic theme.
1. Oceans:
I really like how you emphasized the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. If the water were gone, that would be an enormously long range, over 2x Andes' length and 3x Rockies. I could see groups based in the Ridge (Atlan, Draka) extracting tolls and payment for people trying to cross from the Americas to Africa/Europe.
Around the Pacific lakes, looks like the ocean around Hawaii is dried up, meaning (assuming no changes to the crust), Mauna Kea now surpasses Everest as highest mountain on 30k Terra.
I could see the mountain as a fortified stronghold for Hawaiki against groups in the wastes. Or, given its height, a site for observatories (like now), surface to orbit laser batteries, and other emplacements that would benefit from being placed above cloud level to reduce atmospheric light/laser interference. By 30k, most would be derelict. Could be techno cult pilgrimage spots, Hawaiki trying to keep the last dysfunctional few emplacements maintained or the Emperor scouting the place out before deciding to start the Unification from Everest.
2. Afrik:
- for Abyssinia, what about marking its capital as Addaba Hive around modern Addis Ababa and incorporating its heavy industry exports (it has spaceports, links offplanet to Luna/Mars/void colonies? or is the politically fractured solar system leading to no stable demand and a rust belt hive?) into worldbuilding. Also see Adedeji for more 30k Ethiopia ideas.
- is there a reason for Timbuktu near the Moroccan coast? IRL Timbuktu is farther inland, dead smack in the middle of West Africa.
3. Poles:
Perhaps take a leaf out of WarhammerFantasy and have small scale Warp rifts to enliven the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps (like the Polar Gates) - eldritch phenomena at the poles and occasional daemons making visits.
This could explain the psyker/Warp-heavy focus of near-polar Unification era states like Ursh or Maulland Sen (only full fledged daemon worshipping state in old Earth) already in lore. Orioc, Genosha and Draka could be Southern Hemisphere counterparts (succumbing to Warp influence or uniting to resist). Flesh out with ideas from Norsca or the Kurgan of Fantasy but cyberpunk, apocalyptic and sci fi themes.
That said full scale Chaos Wastes style daemon invasions may not be good for consistency with 40k lore since a lot of Unification/Great Crusade/Heresy era plot points depend on no widespread knowledge of Chaos.
4. Void space in Sol system
All the warring and intrigue on the planets is a speck in a speck in a speck next to the incredibly vast empty void.
Like @Old Guard said, Sol is the oldest and most developed star system in human history. So I expect the void to be littered with the infrastructure backing up 27,000 years of nonstop human presence in space (deepdocks, space elevators, asteroid mines, warship hulks). This post has a nice idea of tens of thousands of system wide gutted ships eventually repaired to form the IOM Crusade fleets.
So maybe a backstory for a shipwreck or debris field of historic significance fought over by space dwelling factions.
Finally, one of my favourite worldbuilding inspiration posts on SV:
The Solar System has one star, eight planets, 170 moons, hundreds of dwarf planets, hundreds of thousands of asteroids (including main belt, Jupiter and Neptune Trojans, and loners in planet-crossing orbits), and uncountable comets. There's an ocean under Europa's surface and possibly under Enceladus, Ganymede, and Callisto too. Liquid hydrocarbon seas on Titan, mountains taller than the atmosphere on Mars, hurricanes the size of Earth on Jupiter and Saturn, volcanoes on Io, and the entire crust of Venus could explode at any moment. There's room for thousands, possibly millions of cultures and languages in the Solar System and any number of options for living space for all of them--asteroid habitats, terraformed worlds and moons, orbital rings and Dyson clouds, uploaded into computers--and as many points of conflict as you could possibly want.
And if people fighting isn't interesting, there's always the environment; crushing pressure and heat on Venus, unimaginable cold on the outer system moons, radiation and strange geology and unpredictable gravity. And above all, always the vast cold deadly black of space, always waiting for your characters to relax too much or fuck up or just plain get unlucky.
@Forth Eorlingas about chaos wastes.
1. There is another impediment. Antartica and their cities there. While 1 of them was religious, but nothing was said that were like Ursh and Maulland Sen. And the other joined willingly without a fuss(that would not happen if there were southern chaos wastes).
2. The Chaos Gods would consider the Emperor the greatest threat. If there were chaos wastes no matter how small , the Chaos Gods would push non stop demon armies there so stalemate the Emperor so he can no longer get from Earth. The Emperor could not leave Earth and start the unification war without closing the collapse gates and wiping the chaos wastes. Also at the poles the Chaos Gods are said to manifest wholly in the Warhammer Fantasy World. So if there are Chaos wastes the Emperor would have to fight the Gods of Chaos themselves combined to be able to close the collapse warp gates and end the wastes so he can start the Great Crusade in full.
3. As most people on Earth were Chaos marauders or worst in temperament(at least at the soldiers and elite level) , Earth would become as soon as possible a demon world.
I didn't know about the Addaba Hive and just found out about the Adedeji dynasty a few days ago when I found a few more smaller terran nations and personalities for this project in the wikis. my word doc with all the unification era lore accurate locations is about 30 page long lol
When I posted this to reddit I got similar questions about the locations of certain modern nations. when making the map I focused first on the geography of the dryed earth. this makes it hard to put a map wiht proper boarders overtop of it for accuracy. That being said i have heard the input and will be changing the places accordingly.
Its funny you mention the poles being abit more chaos inspired as i have the mountains of madness in the Antarctica, the City of R'lyeh in the remains of the pacific and will be adding Ythil in northern Siberia after someone suggested it.
As you read I am developing the void space and I am indeed already moving in the way that you have suggested. Apart from the Canon accurate factions within the sol system I am developing a type of "catch all" bad guy faction in the way of the Blood Host. A loose alliance of Insane void pirates, mutants and cannibals, lead my powerful and twisted Navigators and perpetuals. A pre-curser of a proper chaos faction.
Along with them I have dozens of ideas and concepts planed but I am not planning to go to hog wild into it rather just to make a template for future individuals to make their own void faction. like you said there is so much space in the sol system and its full of human constructs dating back more then two thousand years.
If you yourself have any ideas and or comments please let me know.
@Forth Eorlingas about chaos wastes.
1. There is another impediment. Antartica and their cities there. While 1 of them was religious, but nothing was said that were like Ursh and Maulland Sen. And the other joined willingly without a fuss(that would not happen if there were southern chaos wastes).
2. The Chaos Gods would consider the Emperor the greatest threat. If there were chaos wastes no matter how small , the Chaos Gods would push non stop demon armies there so stalemate the Emperor so he can no longer get from Earth. The Emperor could not leave Earth and start the unification war without closing the collapse gates and wiping the chaos wastes. Also at the poles the Chaos Gods are said to manifest wholly in the Warhammer Fantasy World. So if there are Chaos wastes the Emperor would have to fight the Gods of Chaos themselves combined to be able to close the collapse warp gates and end the wastes so he can start the Great Crusade in full.
3. As most people on Earth were Chaos marauders or worst in temperament(at least at the soldiers and elite level) , Earth would become as soon as possible a demon world.
Well that's the weird thing about the lore @thor2006 , the chaos gods gave the Emperor and his fledging Imperium a lot of breathing room instead of killing it in the cradle so to speak.
It might have been the Emperors immense psychic powers that kept the gods at bay during the early days or the gods didn't care much like how they still prefer to fight each other rather then properly wiping out the Emperor.
For whatever reason there was little in the way major demon incursions and if there are people hand wave them as "Aliens" and or human psykers. much like what happened why the imperium famously took over what would be later called Necromunda.
Well that's the weird thing about the lore @thor2006 , the chaos gods gave the Emperor and his fledging Imperium a lot of breathing room instead of killing it in the cradle so to speak.
It might have been the Emperors immense psychic powers that kept the gods at bay during the early days or the gods didn't care much like how they still prefer to fight each other rather then properly wiping out the Emperor.
For whatever reason there was little in the way major demon incursions and if there are people hand wave them as "Aliens" and or human psykers. much like what happened why the imperium famously took over what would be later called Necromunda.
No I don't think the Chaos Gods give the IOM to the Emperor. At best Chaos Gods didn't have better options to deal with the Emperor and decided to go with the convoluted trap that was the Horus Heresy. If the Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Wastes appear on Earth during the unification wars Chaos Gods no longer need the Horus Heresy to deal with the Emperor and eat all humanity.
Because I think there were not so much overlap between the planets that the Emperor wanted and the warp rifts that existed on parts of worlds. Basically the Warhammer Fantasy world is unique in 40k. Most situations like that either the warp rift engulfs the planet or the demon armies invasions kill the planet.
Also Warhammer Fantasy chaos rifts and wastes are a massive boon for Chaos Gods. With them on Earth it would allow the Chaos Gods to stalemate the Emperor and easily take the rest of humanity.
Another fatal flaw in the Chaos Waste theory if the fact that the people who live in Antarctica are not said to be chaos worshipers or demon worshipers like Ursh or the Scandinavian people.
Also if the Emperor was powerful to keep the Gods away from any wastes , he is powerful to prevent the Chaos Wastes to manifest and a permanent warp rift to appear(without lot of work on his part, witness the Webway). It also in all the lore there is no permanent warp rift on Earth(outside the one they coopted from the Webway Project).
On Demons and Warp Sorcery during the Unification Wars check the excerp I posted from the Chronicles of Ursh. They knew about sorcery and whatnot at that time, its heavily implied the Ursh Empire used warp powers during Unification. The knowledge wasn't widespread suppressed until the Great Crusade.
very true @Old Guard
we are just saying for story reason the chaos gods haven't properly and fully started to mess with the Emperor. Which is weird as what we all know in hindsight.
I got a whole ton of warp baddies in mind like the corrupt Navigators and the witches of venues.
Again and open initiation for anyone with idea for factions and character set in this era
very true @Old Guard
we are just saying for story reason the chaos gods haven't properly and fully started to mess with the Emperor. Which is weird as what we all know in hindsight.
I got a whole ton of warp baddies in mind like the corrupt Navigators and the witches of venues.
Again and open initiation for anyone with idea for factions and character set in this era
Very true, the big 4 weren't pushing very hard against the Emps at the time. One fan theory I'm fond of is that the massive slaughter that was the Great Crusade actually made Chaos more powerful, and that the Chaos gods intentionally let the civilizations that worshiped them get slaughtered.
With a geography like this I'd expect what's left of civilization to mostly concentrate around that remnant of the Pacific. It'd be the nicest part of the planet by far; the only place that isn't desert (you need large bodies of water to make rain). The old continents would be very inhospitable; bits of East Asia and Sundaland and maybe the western fringe of North America might be OK-ish in a Denver to Tibetan conditions sort of way (like the old continents on Siphonia aren't that bad in parts), but most of the old land mass would be very arid desert highlands; trying to live there would be worse than trying to live in the middle of the present-day Sahara desert.
Makes me wonder what happened to the water. Any event violent enough to remove that much water through brute force would make the planet more-or-less look like Venus with more steam and lava. Somebody opened a wormhole from a city at the bottom of the ocean to deep space and then couldn't control it and it sucked away most of the water before they managed to close it?
Maybe the water is in all the closed systems of human settlements / agriculture / people. And / Or used by mankind as fuel or sold by the elites off world.
@Forth Eorlingas here are some of the space badguys I was talking about. these are kind of the canon fodder, still need to draw the more heavy hitters like the Navigator Priest.
thanks for everyone resent comments
With a geography like this I'd expect what's left of civilization to mostly concentrate around that remnant of the Pacific. It'd be the nicest part of the planet by far; the only place that isn't desert (you need large bodies of water to make rain). The old continents would be very inhospitable; bits of East Asia and Sundaland and maybe the western fringe of North America might be OK-ish in a Denver to Tibetan conditions sort of way (like the old continents on Siphonia aren't that bad in parts), but most of the old land mass would be very arid desert highlands; trying to live there would be worse than trying to live in the middle of the present-day Sahara desert.
Makes me wonder what happened to the water. Any event violent enough to remove that much water through brute force would make the planet more-or-less look like Venus with more steam and lava. Somebody opened a wormhole from a city at the bottom of the ocean to deep space and then couldn't control it and it sucked away most of the water before they managed to close it?
I think the Hive Cities make local climate almost irrelevant for most of Earth's inhabitants. Wherever they are will be the centers of civilization, be that on the pacific coast, or the deep desert of Old Albia. The Hives are life, and whoever controls the Hives, controls the surrounding wastelands. The Hives are where the majority of the "food" is, where the majority of the "clean" water is, and where the majority of the "clean" air is. Its also where all the things and stuff is made, and where what little bit of "luxury" remains is to be found. Basically, all the Hive Cities need from the wastelands is raw resources and open trade lanes.
And those Hive are mainly going to be located on the old continents.
All that said, I think your observations are pretty insightful in respect to those who live outside the Hives. I imagine permanent settlement is difficult when it can rain acid strong enough to melt flesh from bone in seconds, I'd assume most wasteland dwellers would need to be nomadic, with maybe a small minority in permanent settlements. Located in safe geographical areas, like cave systems or very sturdy ruins. I know that on Necromunda little wastelander "towns" pop up clinging to the outside shell of the Hive Cities, made of scrap metal from the Hive to shelter from the extreme weather, and they often form little trade networks outside of and with the Hive, while also providing men for the Hive Militia. Possibly some of Unification War's Earth Hives have similar shanty towns growing outside of them.
For the nomadic wastelanders, I suppose they would be following some kind of food source independent of the Hives, mutant wasteland creatures... or other tribes maybe. Now I want to run a GSRP where players each control a Hive City and compete for limited resources.
There is another impediment. Antarctica and their cities there. While 1 of them was religious, but nothing was said that were like Ursh and Maulland Sen. And the other joined willingly without a fuss(that would not happen if there were southern chaos wastes).
Thank you for pointing that out! I completely overlooked the cities in the Antarctic ice cap.
Having read your posts I agree a permanent polar portal and the resulting full-scale daemon invasion + Chaos god interference is not a good idea.
Instead, here's what I suggest:
1. A hint of warp influence especially near the Arctic Pole and Himalayas (the latter because of the hidden webway rift deep under the mountains). @Holland in practical terms for worldbuilding, this could mean e.g. every century, the infant heirs of nearby techno-barbarian states (Thule, Calbi, Ursh, Nordyc, Shambhala, Indo Polities) with most potential to be a humanity unifier disappearing in the night without a trace*. I suggest throughout all the petty human factions and wars, sprinkle eerily similar unnatural experiences spanning each your 30k cultures - something a careful reader could pick up on. Right now I feel your worldbuilding is incredibly detailed but the planets/factions lack a cohesive deeper narrative or threat. So you could hint through worldbuilding clues that the agony and struggle facing each 30k group in the Endless Night is not random, there is a conscious power shaping the universe and it is imperceptibly bending it to evil.
* except for one, you know, that one
2. Like @thor2006 said Chaos Gods intervening is just way too much.
But not all Chaos entities report to the Gods so minor warp powers intervening/influencing could work.
Drachnyen aka the End of Empires fits this well since humanity's divided, self-inflicted suffering you've defined in your worldbuilding means they are feeding his hunger on a massive scale. He has a vested interest in keeping it that way. Plus he's subtle, not a Chaos Gods style world ender.
When warp entities put in the effort, they have achieved small scale but precisely targeted effects on realspace even without a gaping warp rift (see the Chaos Gods teleporting the primarchs out of the secure lab where they were designed) so I think it's lore justifiable.
Makes me wonder what happened to the water. Any event violent enough to remove that much water through brute force would make the planet more-or-less look like Venus with more steam and lava. Somebody opened a wormhole from a city at the bottom of the ocean to deep space and then couldn't control it and it sucked away most of the water before they managed to close it?
Tidbits of 40k lore explain it as vaporization from nuclear strikes as part of 2.5k years of internecine war. Though I really don't know why Earth survived as anything vaguely inhabitable given the sheer amount of energy involved (25 million times the modern nuclear arsenal, and that's assuming they expended all the nukes to vaporize water instead of using most on land targets). I could maybe rationalize it as Terra being recolonized from space/crust hideouts and terraformed to something semi habitable without restoring oceans.
@Forth Eorlingas
There was not a webway rift in the Hymallaya. What the Emperor project did was dig a tunnel from his laboratory to the webway that passed through Sol System. And it wasn't any problems with spillover from that bypass until Magnus wrecked it. I also don't think it was even started by the Emperor during the Unification War.
Also listen Drachnyen was only present during the war in the webway and it is too greater daemon to be able to be summoned by the warlords of OTL Age of Strife Earth.
You also need to understand that the Unification War was generally smooth sailing for the Emperor and his armies. So I don't think any big names in Chaos side were present. Otherwise both the Emperor and the IOM would be alerted and more vigilant than OTL Great Crusade IOM and Emperor.
@Forth Eorlingas
There was not a webway rift in the Hymallaya. What the Emperor project did was dig a tunnel from his laboratory to the webway that passed through Sol System. And it wasn't any problems with spillover from thant bypass until Magnus wrecked it. I also don't think it was even started by the Emperor during the Unification War.
Also listen Drachnyen was only present during the war in the webway and it is too greater daemon to be able to be summoned by the warlords of OTL Age of Strife Earth.
You also need to understand that the Unification War was generally smooth sailing for the Emperor and his armies. So I don't think any big names in Chaos side were present. Otherwise both the Emperor and the IOM would be alerted and more vigilant than OTL Great Crusade IOM and Emperor.
I'm not sure the Unification Wars went all that smoothly. Mainly because it took three times as long for the big E to conquer Terra, than it did for him to conquer most of the Galaxy in the Great Crusade.
Terra being the oldest world of mankind was basically guaranteed to have some really potent super weapons, and those weapons were inevitably in the hands of insane post apocalyptic warlords.
As to awareness, the Emperor was always aware of Chaos, and his armies encountered it on Terra during the Unification Wars. He just suppressed the knowledge between then and the start of the Great Crusade.
I'm not sure the Unification Wars went all that smoothly. Mainly because it took three times as long for the big E to conquer Terra, than it did for him to conquer most of the Galaxy in the Great Crusade.
Terra being the oldest world of mankind was basically guaranteed to have some really potent super weapons, and those weapons were inevitably in the hands of insane post apocalyptic warlords.
Where do you get the time interval? There is a concrete date when the Unification War state began and ended?
Maybe it took so long because :
1. To build his first state up to stuff. Industry, people, army, tech.
2. To test new tactics, strategies, diplomacy. Emperor wanted Earth mostly intact and needed to be more careful about collateral damage than normal Great Crusade.
3. Different projects he was involved (Thunder Warriors, Custodes, Primarchs, Astartes)
4. Different off planet initiatives like with Mechanicum of Mars, Gene Guilds of Luna, finding and retrieving Horus
5. To build the initial build up for the initial phases of the Great Crusade(at least for the liberation/conquest of the Solar system and nearby stars).
6. The conquest in stages and then followed by periods of consolidation of Earth.
7. To deal with must kill threat (of both xeno, and Chaos). Like Chaos scattering the primarchs.
As far I understand the strategy employed by the Unification War was mostly diplomatic(waiting even centuries for polities to make there mind and decide to join or not the IOM), in stages followed by long periods of consolidation, during witch the Emperor withdrawn to work on his projects (Astartes, Primarchs, the beginning of Earth terraformation). And was filled of a period of experimentation when the IOM and Emperor developed the army, military strategy, tech, diplomacy for the Great Crusade.
While the Great Crusade was a race with the period of downtime planed to start shortly after Ulanor and to end before the Emperor was ready to launch the Webway conquest campaign.
The lore is vage on this however the most common understanding is the the unification wars were the 300 years before the great crusade when the emperor slowly took over the planet Terra. As @Old Guard said that's about the time it took the imperium to take over known human space which amounted to a million plus worlds and spanned the entire galaxy.
Before that terra was already embroiled in constant war with itself and other planets (mostly at the beginning of the age of strife) for 2500 years of intense war.
And the emperor and his imperium most definitely fought a war of aggression and conquest as was recounted by the priest in the last church short story.
Many of the points you made about why it took so long happen at the end of the unification wars or during what is referred to as the "solar reclamation". This as the period after the vast majority of terra conquered, when the imperium took over the solar system and Mars swore its allegiance to the emperor and they started to build the great crusade fleets. So things were really ramping up.
You also have to remember much of imperial history is propaganda. We don't know of the emperor defeats and the ones we do know are spun into setback in which he overcomes without much trouble. Even when later Horus essential kills the emperor, the imperium just deifies the emperor and makes it out to seem like the emperor and imperium became more powerful because of it. Crazy i know but that's the satire of 40k, where much of the critical thinking goes to die lol.
Where do you get the time interval? There is a concrete date when the Unification War state began and ended?
Maybe it took so long because :
1. To build his first state up to stuff. Industry, people, army, tech.
2. To test new tactics, strategies, diplomacy. Emperor wanted Earth mostly intact and needed to be more careful about collateral damage than normal Great Crusade.
3. Different projects he was involved (Thunder Warriors, Custodes, Primarchs, Astartes)
4. Different off planet initiatives like with Mechanicum of Mars, Gene Guilds of Luna, finding and retrieving Horus
5. To build the initial build up for the initial phases of the Great Crusade(at least for the liberation/conquest of the Solar system and nearby stars).
6. The conquest in stages and then followed by periods of consolidation of Earth.
7. To deal with must kill threat (of both xeno, and Chaos). Like Chaos scattering the primarchs.
As far I understand the strategy employed by the Unification War was mostly diplomatic(waiting even centuries for polities to make there mind and decide to join or not the IOM), in stages followed by long periods of consolidation, during witch the Emperor withdrawn to work on his projects (Astartes, Primarchs, the beginning of Earth terraformation). And was filled of a period of experimentation when the IOM and Emperor developed the army, military strategy, tech, diplomacy for the Great Crusade.
While the Great Crusade was a race with the period of downtime planed to start shortly after Ulanor and to end before the Emperor was ready to launch the Webway conquest campaign.
The Great Crusade started around 798.M30, while the Unification Wars began sometime around the Late 29th Millennium to 30th Millennium, even accounting the gap of the solar reclamation and the buildup before the first big push of the Great Crusade, that is a big gap of time.
1. Agreed, he had to get those initial voidships to reach Mars and the rest of the Sol System somehow, and my supposition would be that he probably had to reclaim wreaked voidships from the wastelands, and would have needed a significant amount of Industrial might to repair them. That said, Hive Cities are pretty big centers of industrial might.
2. Partially agreed, I don't think the Emperor really changed up his tactics all that much, he basically had the same organizational framework for the Space Marine Legions as he did for the Thunder Warriors with only slight differences. He didn't have to change much, as he basically just made a military framework and let his sub-commander utilize their own tactics and do their own experimenting. Fully agreed on the diplomacy angle, he wanted Terra to remain as intact as possible and didn't want any more major damage done to the planet.
3. Agreed, especially when considering he wasn't doing them all at the same time, but more sequentially. That said, I believe he had the Custodes and the core of the Thunder Warriors were prepped before he began the Unification Wars in earnest. Grain of salt however, not 100% on that.
4. Most all of that happened after or just before the end of the Unification Wars.
5. Agreed, he definitely had to move forward in carefully planned stages, while also laying the ground work for upcoming stages.
6. Consolidation following large conquest are pretty much a given I think. You can only take on so many dark age tech warp fueled post apocalypse warlord at a single time and following such a conquest you'd have to put a lot of time into fixing industry and infrastructure to make the captured territory actually useful. Not to mention the time needed to make the population useful, and motivate them to serve yourself, and not the warlord you just deposed. When considering the insane personality cults some of the terran warlords had, that probably took a long time.
7. The Scattering was after the Unification Wars, but yeah, that's what I meant by the dark ages superweapons. Terra is the oldest world of Humanity, and likely was the most advanced planet before the Age of Strife, which means a lot of nasty military tech was probably laying around, just waiting for an enterprising warlord to come along and claim it. The Emperor would have had to deal with that tech in hostile hands, which makes me think the Unification Wars were probably brutal slogs and not much of a cakewalk.
@Forth Eorlingas
There was not a webway rift in the Hymallaya. What the Emperor project did was dig a tunnel from his laboratory to the webway that passed through Sol System. And it wasn't any problems with spillover from that bypass until Magnus wrecked it. I also don't think it was even started by the Emperor during the Unification War.
Also listen Drachnyen was only present during the war in the webway and it is too greater daemon to be able to be summoned by the warlords of OTL Age of Strife Earth.
You also need to understand that the Unification War was generally smooth sailing for the Emperor and his armies. So I don't think any big names in Chaos side were present. Otherwise both the Emperor and the IOM would be alerted and more vigilant than OTL Great Crusade IOM and Emperor.
Should have been clearer in my post: when I described minor warp entities like him having a vested interest, I was imagining unexplainable disappearances, sending visions and messing with realspace from the safety of the Warp, not being physically present on Terra - as a way to create a sense of greater threat.
That's all I'll say on this topic and @Holland can decide how much Warp influence suits his worldbuilding.
@Forth Eorlingas here are some of the space badguys I was talking about. these are kind of the canon fodder, still need to draw the more heavy hitters like the Navigator Priest.
The pitch black coloring of the one in the center looks very good against the space background. I also like how he has a Space Marine aesthetic but with a more basic, pre-Astartes like touch (some kind of long barreled gun instead of a bolter/volkite weapon, what is that supposed to be?).
Is the one on the right based on the Vraks Traitor Guard with the gas mask and tan, baggy outfit?
Kinda, more of the general void suits of 40k, alot of the time they look like a haz suit then a proper space suit.
Here is what i have on them this far:
"THE BLOOD HOST" and or "Space Cannibals of the Terran Sphere"
Who they are: Space Cannibals – "the Blood Host", are semi-cult like group of Ghouls/vampires, mutants, and other evildoers. They have long lost the statues as human beings for their actions against their own species.
What they do: travels from world to world harvesting humans for food and other foul purposes. They very rarely put down planetary roots preferring void live and a nomadic livelihood. The members of the Host worship their ships navigators as a holy priests. The Priest, often the leaders of a host, have been driven mad by the warp. Sometimes fighting amongst themselves, there are actually several dozen factions the make up the host but too outsider observers; they are virtually unrecognizable.
How they came to be; legend has it that those that have entered the warp storm are driven mad by the chaos of the void. These souls are driven mad with violence. Cutting themselves and tearing away at their own flesh, they become more beast than man. The saner among them are given positions of leadership who then drive the host towards violent raiding of others.
Enemies and allies: the host are most often raiders and butchers, and thus they have many enemies and few friends. The friends they do have are allies of convenience.
where they can be found: their ships can be found throughout the Terran Sphere.
reference; firefly's Reavers, vampire counts, fallout bandits, other insane canon fodder types from SciFi and post-apocalypse settings
About the characters;
the character on the left is a raider, sadistic and cruel but sane enough to uses guns and basic tactics effectively to assault enemy positions.
The center character is a Death Knight. Chosen from the best of the host, death knights are kitted out with the best the host has which is usually refurbished Power Armed, powerful guns like the heavy stubber, and destructive melee weapons.
The last guy on the right is more of the common canon fodder, a berserker who is to insane to fear death and will throw themselves into the fight at a moments notice.
Im trying to get a solid timeline of events, what do you guys think?
Edited 7/20/2020
TimeLine (ROUGH)
Correction The A.I. Wars ca.M23: "Perpetual", audio drama ''This golden age would not last. By M22 to M25, large numbers of Psykers began to appear, many inadvertently heralding Daemonic possession and incursions. As anarchy reigned, some accounts state that a great war with the machines erupted in M23. Faced with these calamities and the sudden appearance of perilous Warp Storms, trade between the human colonies collapsed.'': Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition Rulebook, pg. 167
Ca.M25 End of the Age of Technology, beginning of the Age of Strife
I think Ca.M25 the sol system is cut off by warp storms
"Control of the Sol System shifted constantly between the worlds of Terra and Mars during the first half of the Age of Strife. By the 28th Millennium almost all traces of advanced technical civilisation on Terra were long gone; instead, techno-barbarians battled one another over the scraps of the ancient Human interstellar society that remained on the world."Warhammer40k.fandom.com
I believe Sometime before this Earth and Mars destroy one another in a long range WMD attack the cripple both parties.
"Continuous warfare raged across the surface of Terra for 2500 standard years, beginning in the middle centuries of the 27th Millennium." Warhammer40k.fandom.com
The Cognoscynths are an ancient order of Psykers that once lived on Terra thousands of years ago in a devastating period of Human history known as The Psi-Wars.
The Unspeakable King was a terrifying warlord of Terra during the Age of Strife, possibly in M27. The horror of his rule became the subject of legend for generations to come. He was served by the Hollow Ones, an order of pariahs analogous to the Silent Sisterhood, and was according to some legends a powerful psychic null himself. He ruled Albia and defeated the Panpacific Empire, assuming the titles "Magna Albia" and "Archtyrant of Panpacifica". wh40k.lexicanum.com
"Mars Expands (M25-M30) - Mars overcomes strife and disaster to unite beneath the Cult Mechanicus. As lulls between the waves of Warp Storms allow, the fleets of Mars travel outwards, raiding for lost technology and establishing new colonies of Tech-adepts. With a few exceptions, such travels remain limited in scope and stay within the confines of what will later become known as the Segmentum Solar."Warhammer40k.fandom.com
Going to say the Cult Mechanicus emerged around ca.M28
"By M29, Terra had been engulfed in the chaos and anarchy of the Age of Strife for several thousand years. Terra was a violent cauldron divided between city-states, Techno-Barbarian warlords, and various other polities. However, as Slaanesh was close to its birth at the epicenter of the Eldar Empire, the Warp Storms plaguing humanity's homeworld becalmed themselves. Sensing the time was right, a being known as The Emperor finally began his campaign to reclaim Earth."Warhammer40k.fandom.com
"Appearing openly for the first time, The Emperor led his Thunder Warriors, genetically engineered super soldiers created in secret laboratories, in a series of campaigns against all other warlords and Techno-barbarians of Old Earth. His forces included not only the Thunder Warriors but also the Custodian Guard, formations that would become the early Imperial Army including Geno Five-Two Chiliad and the Inferallti Hussars, and eventually the proto-Astartes. His forces utilized the advanced weapons of the Terrawatt Clan after he secured an alliance with them. Thus did the Emperor make his move on the major powers of Terra." wh40k.lexicanum.com
"The Unification Wars, also known as the Wars of Unification, the Unity Wars, The Unification or just The Unity, were a series of conflicts fought on Terra beginning in the 29th Millennium at the end of the Age of Strife and lasting into the middle-to-late centuries of the 30th Millennium." Warhammer40k.fandom.com
The Unification Wars beginning in the 29th Millennium, CA.100 M29
550.M30, "The Primordial Strain, The Emperor of Man begins his Space Marine project beneath the mountains of the Himalayas, creating the Primordial Strain of prototype Legionaries. These warriors are unstable and imperfect, but form the foundation for his future work building the Space Marine legions."wh40k.lexicanum.com
703.M30 "The First Pacification of Luna"wh40k.lexicanum.com
"End of the Unification Wars" 712.M30
739.M30 "The Treaty of Olympus is signed between the Imperium and Mechanicum"Warhammer40k.fandom.com
AFTER THE STORM "CA. 750.M30 Fall of the Eldar - The Eye of Terror erupts in the heart of the eldar empire as Slaanesh is born. She Who Thirsts tears billion of eldar souls from their bodies. Only the Exodite and craftworlds far from the empire and webway domains such as Commoragh survive. The eruption of psychic energy blows away the warp storms that had made interstellar travel impossible for thousands of years."Warhammer40k.fandom.com
Maybe the water is in all the closed systems of human settlements / agriculture / people. And / Or used by mankind as fuel or sold by the elites off world.
Tidbits of 40k lore explain it as vaporization from nuclear strikes as part of 2.5k years of internecine war. Though I really don't know why Earth survived as anything vaguely inhabitable given the sheer amount of energy involved (25 million times the modern nuclear arsenal, and that's assuming they expended all the nukes to vaporize water instead of using most on land targets). I could maybe rationalize it as Terra being recolonized from space/crust hideouts and terraformed to something semi habitable without restoring oceans.
Also, just vaporizing the water would result in it becoming a very thick atmosphere of water vapor, which would trap heat and make the planet less habitable than Venus (at least at the surface, there'd be a water cloud zone in the upper atmosphere that might be relatively pleasant). To actually get rid of the water you'd need to accelerate it to escape velocity, or at least orbital velocity.
Very true @Memphet'ran, but you have to remember 40k isn't a hard SciFi setting although it tries at times. The writers go straight for grimmist of darkness even when it doesn't make sense like in the case of Terra in the setting.
Cheers
