The Age of Strife
A thousand years of darkness where humanity nearly went extinct before the Emperor rose.
The Age of Strife, whispered in the annals of history as the Old Night, remains humanity's most harrowing descent into madness—a millennium-long epoch where the golden dawn of the Dark Age of Technology shattered into a billion jagged shards. With the Webway severed by daemonic incursions and Warp travel rendered hazardous due to rising Chaos corruption, the stars turned cold and distant, leaving countless colonies to rot in isolation. Cut off from Terra and one another, human civilization fractured into warring fiefdoms, besieged not only by xenos hordes but by the very fabric of reality unraveling as daemons poured through thinning veils of sanity.
- Era Predecessor
- Dark Age of Technology
- Era Successor
- Unification Wars (leading to the Great Crusade)
- Primary Threats
- Xenos Empires, Daemon Incursions, Civil War
- Key Event Conclusion
- Rise of the First Emperor and Unification of Terra
- Humanity Status
- Fragmented, Regressive, Isolated
- Technology Level
- Severe Decline (Lost Tech)
- Navigation Method
- Sub-space travel impossible due to Warp corruption and failed Webway
Lore & Background
In this chaotic interregnum, the human species teetered on the precipice of total annihilation. The power vacuum allowed xenos races like the Orks and Eldar to flourish in the void between stars, while daemon worlds bloomed across the galaxy where psychic turbulence tore the material realm asunder. It was a time when forgotten gods were worshipped in blood-soaked cathedrals and survival meant sacrificing one's soul for a breath of clean air. Hope flickered only when a singular, enigmatic figure rose from the radioactive ruins of Terra to unite the warring city-states—a desperate necessity that would later forge the grim, totalitarian spine of the Imperium, justified by the memory of trillions lost in the dark.
In Their Own Story
Above the shattered spire, the sky was not merely black but a bruised, sickly purple, choked by the perpetual smoke of cities that had been burning for centuries. A lone survivor huddled in the shadows, clutching a rusted cogitator he no longer understood, his ears ringing with the guttural screams of things that defied natural law. There were no starships to carry him home, no distant beacon of the Astronomican to guide his soul—only an endless night where the stars had gone dead and monsters, both alien and daemonic, stalked the ruins of a forgotten glory.
Reader's Guide
The era finally broke when a powerful entity, later revered as the Emperor of Mankind, emerged from Terra's ashes. Through a brutal synthesis of force and enlightened diplomacy, He crushed the petty warlords, purged the daemonic incursions, and forced humanity back into a single, unbroken chain of command. This Great Unification marked the abrupt end of the Old Night and the dawn of the Age of Terra, setting the stage for the Great Crusade that would reclaim the stars and forge the Imperium of Man.
Did You Know?
- The term 'Old Night' is often used interchangeably with the Age of Strife to emphasize the darkness that fell over humanity.
- During this era, many human worlds regressed so far technologically that they forgot how to build starships entirely.
- The collapse of the Webway during this time was caused by Chaos corruption entering through construction gates and the Fall of the Eldar, not external xenos sabotage.
- It is estimated that trillions of humans perished during this millennium-long period of chaos.