Millennium 36
The 36th Millennium. A time etched in the galactic calendar as an age of simmering faith, ossified bureaucracy, and a long, slow decay masked by the Emperor's eternal watch. The fires of the Horus Heresy had long since sputtered out, leaving behind an Imperium crippled, paranoid, and deeply entrenched in its own rigid dogma. While outwardly stable, a cosmic eye, observing from the terrible, uncaring void of the greater universe, might discern the subtle, sickening tremors beneath the surface.
Across the unfathomable expanse of the galaxy, stars burned with the cold, indifferent light of eons. Yet, in the screaming, swirling chaos of the Immaterium—where reality flexed and broke like brittle glass—something was shifting. Forgotten eddies of Warp current, long stagnant and choked with the detritus of shattered dreams and violent deaths, began to flow again. Daemons, creatures of pure emotion and concept, stirred in the forgotten corners of their masters' realms.
In the labyrinthine domain of Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate, crystalline fortresses shifted, rearranging themselves on currents of raw possibility. Plans within plans, layers deep and complex beyond mortal comprehension, began to resonate with a terrifying new energy. Tongues of fire and whispered truths, laced with lies, slithered across the psychic ether. The air—if such a thing could be said to exist in the Warp—grew thick with anticipation, a noxious perfume of change and insidious hope. The Architect was watching.
In the endless halls of sensation, where screams were music and flesh was canvas, Slaanesh arched their perfect neck in amusement. The Warp's winds carried a flavor long-missed—ecstasy tainted with absurdity, pain gilded in irony. A chord plucked ages ago now vibrated again, promising a crescendo yet to come. The Prince of Excess felt it stir and smiled: The Fool dances once more.
Nurgle, the Lord of Decay and Rebirth, stirred as well, but not with joy. The rot pulsed, not with familiar affection, but with unease. There was laughter again—foul, contagious laughter—not born of his touch, but echoing something ancient and wrong. It carried mockery, not endurance; derision, not comfort. He watched with curiosity, letting no pestilence bloom in answer. This was not his doing. It was something... other.
The very fabric of the void seemed to acknowledge the change. Astropaths aboard lonely voidships, navigating the unpredictable tides of the Warp, reported constellations subtly out of alignment, stars that should have been fixed twinkling with an unsettling, erratic pulse. Divinations—both sanctioned and forbidden—yielded fractured, disturbing results. Prophecy, a thing often derided as madness or daemon trickery, began to bloom across the galaxy like a toxic, fast-growing weed.
From the chittering maws of minor daemons trapped in sorcerous circles, from the gibbering whispers of those touched too deeply by the Warp, from the cryptic visions granted to unwitting dreamers, the same themes began to emerge, echoing in disquieting harmony:
> "The Fool shall return."
A simple phrase, yet heavy with potential meaning. Was it a jester, a disruption, or something far more ancient and terrible, cloaked in simplicity?
> "The sword shall rise against the false throne."
This resonated across the galaxy, finding purchase in rebellious hearts and loyalist nightmares alike. The Golden Throne, the heart of the Imperium, symbol of its faith and power—was it truly false? And what sword could possibly challenge such a monument?
> "The Black Sun shall awaken."
A cosmic omen, perhaps, or a symbol of ultimate darkness. Was it tied to a physical star, or a terrifying phenomenon of the Warp—a negation of light and hope?
On Terra, the Throne World, the heart of the Imperium beat a slow, measured rhythm of ritual and administration. The High Lords, ensconced in their vast, echoing chambers, surrounded by mountains of parchment and the stale air of centuries of unyielding dogma, paid the whispers no heed. Prophecy was superstition. Psychic disturbances were common, a result of the galaxy's inherent spiritual turbulence. Daemon dreams were just that—dreams, best purged by the Ecclesiarchy or the lesser Inquisitors. Their focus was on the endless struggle for political advantage, the maintenance of the status quo, the crushing weight of tradition. The galaxy beyond their immediate concerns was a problem for others: for the Fleet, for the Guard, for the lower echelons of the Inquisition.
The idea that the foundational terrors of the previous millennium might be stirring anew was simply too disruptive, too unthinkable to entertain. They were the guardians of stability—and instability, even in prophecy, was heresy.
But in the shadowed cloisters and hidden archives of the Imperium's more esoteric organisations, restlessness grew.
The Ordo Malleus, tireless hunters of daemons and custodians of forbidden lore, felt the shift like a chilling wind through the Warp. Their scrying bowls grew cloudy with unusual patterns; their daemon-detecting wards reacted with subtle unease. Ancient texts, long dismissed as allegories of the Heresy, seemed to gain new relevance, speaking of cycles and returns. Inquisitors—veterans of countless battles against the denizens of the Warp—noted the quality of the disturbances: not random incursions, but something orchestrated, building toward a purpose. Quiet, unsanctioned investigations began, following faint psychic trails left by the echoing prophecies.
The Ordo Chronos, the most secretive and enigmatic of the Inquisition's branches, concerned with the flow of time and the prevention of paradoxes, was perhaps the most disturbed. Their intricate calculations and observations of causality showed ripples originating from points that defied explanation within the established timeline. Potential futures diverged, collapsed, and reformed around strange, prophetic nodes. The whispers of daemons and the readings from ancient temporal artefacts seemed to converge on a single, terrifying possibility:
The cataclysmic Age of Chaos had not truly ended.
It had merely gone quiet—like a predator, waiting in ambush.
Caught between the cosmic machinations of newly invigorated Chaos and the blind inertia of its own hierarchy, the Imperium seemed poised on the brink of something terrible, yet largely unaware. But there was another player—one whose actions were not confined to the physical galaxy or even the structured madness of the Warp, but existed in the liminal space between life and death, consciousness and dream.
Upon the Golden Throne, the Emperor of Mankind endured. A living god, a psychic sun, a skeletal ruin sustained by the faith of trillions and the arcane technology of the Age of Darkness. His physical form was shattered, his voice silenced to the material world for millennia. Yet, his consciousness, expanded to encompass the psychic might of humanity, remained a colossal force.
Trapped in his eternal vigil, battling the tides of the Warp that threatened to engulf Terra itself, he was also reaching out.
Through the intricate pathways of the Astronomican, through the collective unconscious of humanity, through the fragile minds of psykers and the deep, resonant dreams of those sensitive enough, he began to send out echoes of his will—fragments of vision. Not clear commands, for that power was diminished, but deeply encoded symbols, disturbing images, intuitive flashes of warning.
To an Astropath maintaining the psychic beacon: a sudden, overwhelming image of a broken blade and a star bleeding black light.
To a Navigator guiding a ship through the Warp: a fleeting, terrifying glimpse of a monstrous figure cloaked as a beggar, leading a throng of the damned.
To a young, untested psyker: a dream of a golden figure weeping tears that solidified into lead, while a distant, silent sword was forged in shadow.
These visions were fragmented, terrifying—often dismissed as psychic feedback or Warp-induced madness. But for the few who understood, for the dedicated Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus deciphering cryptic portents, for the Chronos savants trying to chart the flow of doom, these were confirmation. The whispers were real. The prophecies were real. The Emperor, from his silent throne, was acknowledging the coming storm, sending out his own desperate, mythic counter-signals into the gathering darkness.
M36. It was not just an age where prophecies were heard. It was an age where the grand, cosmic players of the galaxy—the fundamental forces of order and chaos—were beginning to move their pieces once more, acknowledging the terrible, inevitable return of ancient powers and archetypes.
The Fool was stirring.
The Sword was being forged in shadow.
The Black Sun was beginning its ominous ascent.
And the galaxy, largely blind, lay utterly unaware of the mythic game being played out upon its vast, uncaring stage. The Long War had merely entered a period of brooding silence.
That silence was about to break.