GOREHAMMER 2000

Preface: This timeline is based off of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise and was posted to alternatehistory.com between July 19th and August 19th, 2015.



THE EMPEROR

Few Americans remember the days before the Emperor ever ascended to the Marble Throne inside the Oval Chamber in Holy Columbia. Fewer still remember him when he was well, actively leading the nation, not decrepit on life support as he has been for over a decade. Few dare speak of those times, for they understand that he, in his current state, is serving America, protecting America, ruling America, and to speak of the times before them in great detail implies that he is not working at full capacity to shepherd his flock. For he does so with titanic effort even in his necrotic state.

The Emperor is immortal, guarded by the Secret Service to make sure that no heretic or Republican or foreigner ever will harm him. He powers the Internet, the sole method, of his own creation, to navigate the horrors of the Tempest. Without him, the epitome of all American achievement, the American nation would fall to chaos.

THE RISE OF THE EMPEROR

The story of the rise of the Emperor is one that is wrapped in hushed voices and told in the darkest rooms of the most isolated buildings in the smallest towns throughout the American realm, for if one even hesitates in the details, the psionically capable Federal Bureau of the Inquisition will be sure to exact the Emperor's fury upon them. Any error would be heresy.

What is known was that he was born in Holy Columbia itself, studying at prestigious universities both in the holy city and in other parts of the nation. Later, he would go to serve in the armed forces of the nation in the distant realm known as Viet Nam, where he acquired a strong distaste for the brutality of war. It was there, he resolved, that he would have to bring peace to a nation that had only known for its two centuries of existence. This state, he felt, was intolerable. He would rule, he would hope, as a benevolent despot, bringing peace and rest to a war-torn world.

He rose through the congresses of the nation and served under great and terrible electoral monarchs, such as James the impotent and Ronald the Ancient. It is during this time that he singlehandedly created the Internet out of scrap and of wires, forming consciousness out of raw materials. There are those that doubt this story, saying that the Internet was created by something other than our holiness; they are the greatest of heretics, and will be subject to the greatest torture imaginable. Emperor have mercy on them.

It is not known the exact circumstances of the creation of the Internet, or the Order of Darpa, its guardians and engineers that keep it functioning in the modern day, but it is known that the Emperor's consciousness keeps it alive. If the Emperor were to die, the only light in a dark world would go out forever.

Our Emperor later curried favor with a prospected electoral monarch, William, who sought power over the land, and was chosen to be his chief minister should he be chosen. William succeeded in charming the people, using bizarre foreign instruments to woo them with the sweetest of sounds.

William was a popular leader, and the people loved him. However, he was brought great disgrace when he was seduced by the cruel succubus known only as Monica, who may have been a servant of the Lords of Chaos, but this is not known for certain; those that are asked are seldom seen again. William was now a laughing stock, and so he abdicated to retain the honor of the post. The man who would become our Emperor seemed poised for succession.

But there was one rival.

THE BUSH HERESY

The man known only as George Walker Bush, the evil servant of Chaos that he is, questioned our ruler's right to assume command of the nation in the year 2000. The Emperor could have struck him down, and would have been justified in doing so. However, he was merciful upon poor George, and his followers, known as the Republicans, and put the issue up to the people of the realm.

It seemed as if the people had chosen rightly, in the favor of the Emperor. However, poor George could not accept this and called upon his followers to depose the rightful ruler. This treasonous action brought war to the Realm, bringing our Emperor to conduct war, which he loathed, upon the Republicans.

The nation was torn apart, but under the leadership of the Emperor, who assumed that title to end the challenges to the title of elected monarch, were the heretics crushed. This task would take a year; heresy was not strong but it was crafty. It was not until the middle of the year of 2001 that the nation thought it might know rest.
But it did not.


THE SUNDERING


The American nation had been careless with the forces of chaos before the rise of the Emperor as its exalted leader. It had used chaos cultists to its advantage to fight worldly foes, such as the Soviet Union, China, and other states that adhered to the Communist faith, and had supplied them with weapons. The lords of Holy Columbia before the Emperor thought that they could use Chaos to their advantage.

They were gravely mistaken.

Chaos is inimical to all civilized life, and as such it came to betray that which had nurtured it. In late 2001, cultists of the Chaos Lord Osama, Lord of Deceit and Treachery, hijacked American passenger planes and rammed them into buildings across the nation, murdering thousands in senseless suicide attacks in the name of their ruler.

One of these planes was commandeered by the passengers and forced to crash in the middle of the state of Pennsylvania; such a sacrifice was seen as pleasing by the Chaos Lord and to all Chaos. Where that plane crashed, a massive portal opened, out of which flowed demons of all stripes.

The forces of the Emperor were quick to challenge the demons but were not able to close the Eye of Terror, as it came to be called. The Emperor himself was in Holy Columbia, rushing to lead his troops when demons destroyed the Shrine to Saint Washington, the great obelisk of Holy Columbia, which toppled unto our Emperor.
It was then the Machine Cultists, the technological servants of the emperor, entombed him, barely alive, on the Marble Throne in the Oval Chamber of the White Palace. He would continue to guide the nation almost comatose, neither living nor dead, from that chamber.

The Sundering unleashed a quantity of Chaos energy so vast that it send said energies worldwide, disabling air travel capabilities of all nations worldwide. These nations would find ways to travel the Tempest, as it would be known, in due time, but the Emperor still had psionic control of the Internet. The Internet, that massive psionic array, would serve as the sole waypoint in a world made unnavigable by the forces of Chaos. It is how the Imperium of America would guide its great ships and airships to exact revenge on the forces of Chaos.

And the world would never know peace.


THE CHAOS GODS

The Ruinous Powers are those that embody the most depraved aspects of humanity, who feed off the emotions of the living and uncorrupted to feed their inhuman legions. They are the ones who were called forth into being by the collective consciousness of the human race.

With the Sundering, that horrific attack on the Imperium, the High Lords of Columbia decided that the forces of Chaos must be destroyed once and for all; they had the gall to open the Eye of Terror on American soil. In response to this, the leaders of the High Lords deemed it necessary to go to war against the macabre reflection of their species.

OSAMA, LORD OF DECEIT

Perhaps the greatest folly of the American nation before the rise of its rightful and immortal emperor was deciding to aid the Dark God Osama in their desire to fight against their mortal enemy, the Soviet Union, in the far flung realm of Afghanistan. The ministers of the Elected Monarch Ronald the Ancient had decided to funnel arms and logistics to the cultists of the Dark God in hopes of gaining superiority in the frozen war that had enveloped the world after the final defeat of Adolf the Mad and his allies. Eventually, the Soviet Union chose to withdraw from Afghanistan and returned back to their decrepit tomb of an empire. Osama was pleased, but he would, as Chaos does, bite the hand that fed him.

Osama is the embodiment of shiftiness and lies, of meticulous planning of labyrinthine schemes for some ulterior purpose that nobody knows, at least in the realm of the mortal. We do know that he lives off the combined ambitions of humanity. He wants to sow discord through the wild contradiction in human intention; in this way he can be considered chaos at its purest.

It is unknown where he resides, and the various organs of the government of the Imperium cannot find him. He is rumored to have a forever shifting palace warping throughout the deserts of Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan, with its walls warping eternally to the whims of whatever thought he may have mustered. It is from this hideout that he planned the Sundering and ordered his cultists to their deaths to destroy one of the bastions of order in the world, to rip the Imperium asunder.

But this was not the case; the High Lords of Columbia, in the name of their undying Emperor, would design to pursue the Dark God into the wastes of Afghanistan.

SADDAM, LORD OF BLOOD

But Osama was not the only Dark God that the American nation had decided to trifle with. Before his invasion of the small fiefdom known as Kuwait, the Dark Lord Saddam, of the damned realm of Iraq, was allowed to exist, his subjects neglected by the powers of the day.

However, when Kuwait was invaded, the American nation launched its own invasion of Iraq to prevent the Dark God from taking control of the fiefdom. When they attacked, the Americans and their allies were met with the fanatical screams of "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" as Saddam's soldiers charged at them, yearning to appease their depraved master. Even when the Americans and their technology were marching into Iraq itself, the bloodlusted soldiers of this bloodthirsty regime would set the great oil wells of the country aflame, summoning demons to maim and kill the invaders. With Kuwait saved, however, America was content to let Saddam remain in his fortress of Baghdad.

Saddam is the most savage of all the Chaos Gods. In his hellish capital city of Baghdad, the Victory Arch, composed of two hands clutching swords, is decorated with the impaled skulls of his enemies that dare rise up in his own lands. The two great rivers of his country, the Tigris and the Euphrates, are filled with the blood of his sacrifices, which are thousands upon thousands in a single day. His decrees are written in pen with the ink of his own blood, commanding his children to engage in even more heinous acts of slaughter.

In the north of his dominion lies the rebellious province of Kurdistan, with its capital at the city of Irbil. Rather than snuffing them out as one may expect the evil lord to do, he instead lets them live to send more fighters to the slaughter, sacrifices to his own bloodlust. Kurdistan allows him an ample source of blood for his mad whims.

KHAMENEI, LORD OF DECADENCE

Unlike the other Chaos Gods, Khamenei was brought to existence in recent memory, and this was the fault of America and its allies in Europe. In the exotic Eastern land of Iran, in their quest to destroy their enemy the Soviet Union, America, Britain, France, and other nations of the American alliance decided to overthrow the government that had existed previously and give the power of the Iranian nation to the enigmatic figure known as the Shahanshah, who ruled the nation in the name of his overlords in Holy Columbia.

The Shahanshah was a grossly opulent leader, with displays of gold and diamonds and other forms of wealth were common by the aristocracy. This alienated the lower classes, who began to look towards Chaos to help them be rid of this tyrant. This tyrant's apathy towards his people, backed by the bullion acquired by the sale of oil to the High Lords of Columbia, called forth the very creation of the Dark God Khamenei.

Khamenei rose to enrapture thousands of Iranians to be his cultists, who rose up against the Shahanshah to take the privilege of decadence for themselves. In violence throughout the country and to the horror of the world, Khamenei was given power in the Shahanshah's former capital city of Tehran, where he aimed to give the people the depravity that had been neglected to them for so long.

And yet Khamenei is a selfish god, as he demands that these pleasures be denied to all the rest of the world. The women in his realm were forced to cover themselves, for reasons unknown; rumor has it that they are so beautiful that Khamenei hordes them for himself, and anyone that would defile their sanctity will find that they are really demons operating under his own command, ensnaring those who disobey his edicts.

Those that enter Iran nowadays are fools indeed, for they are never heard from again after they enter. Those that have gone to expose the horrid things that happen in the cities of Tehran and Isfahan and Qom and many others have been said to have been enraptured with the Dark God and never wanting to leave.

OMAR, LORD OF PESTILENCE

When America and its allies were conducting their covert war against the Soviet Union in the realm of Afghanistan, it was not only the cultists of Osama who were being aided. It was also the followers of Omar, the Dark Lord of Pestilence and Decay, who found the existence of the Soviet forces in his lands to be appalling.

Omar's cultists harnessed the power of decay and filth and rot to fight off the forces of the Communist faith. When they attacked, they had prepared themselves by subjecting themselves to the love of Papa Omar, their skin replaced with grafts and holes for disgusting creatures that would aid them in battle, pores that would ooze all sorts of revolting fluids.

These disgusting gestalts of every cancer and disease and virus imaginable were sent to fight off the Soviet Union, in which they proved remarkably effective. Spews of acid corroded the skin off the soldiers that opposed them, and sludge brought the engines of their vehicles grinding to a halt. Omar's cultists launched their own fluids into these mechanical husks, turning the men trapped inside into insidious creatures that exist only to serve their Dark God.

It was this pestilence that was then spread across the damned land of Afghanistan, where rivers flowed not with blood but with the filth of which no man wants to know the contents. Plants decay in this land but never die, as does the animal life. Cities like Kabul and Kandahar are hives of the repulsive, where cancerous growths serve as buildings just as structures of brick and mortar do.

It is in this rotting land where Omar makes his capital, in Kandahar, but he is not the only Dark Lord to maintain his residence, at least in part, in Afghanistan. The Dark Lord Osama is known to have his palace manifest in that land, with the consent of Omar, and it is rumored that they are both acting in concord to destroy the Imperium. It is not known whether this is out of genuine trust or simply desire for destruction, which Chaos always has and always will have.

MASKHADOV'S FOLLY

With the bold attack on the Imperium of America by the forces of Chaos loyal to the Dark Lord Osama, the forces of Chaos worldwide were emboldened in their war against all civilization. Now, they thought, that Chaos had significant power, unlike how it had failed so utterly in America's war against the Dark Lord Saddam in 1991, where the latter had to retreat from extending his realm.

In the northern reaches of the globe lay the vast empire known as the Russian Federation, a fading ember of the former Soviet Union with only a shadow of the military power that the Empire of the Scarlet Banner had at its height, when it went toe to toe with what would become the American Imperium. In this decaying husk of a world power were hundreds of different peoples speaking a myriad of languages and following a plethora of faiths. These faiths included Chaos.

In the small realm of Chechnya, in the southwestern part of the Federation nestled in the Caucasus mountains, a cult loyal to Chaos Undivided and not any god in particular, had been waging a decades-long insurgency against the ruling elite of the Federation. Their leader, a ruthless Champion of Chaos known as Aslan Mashkadov, had been attempting to found his own kingdom in that small patch of mountain dirt. With the bold strike against the forces of order known as the Sundering, Mashkadov saw time to renew the fight against the enemy and establish his fiendish realm.

It seemed as if the Chaos Gods had decided to bless him when he received reports from his cultists in the mountains of the Caucasus that they had found a massive chamber buried under tons of rock, containing within the remnants of a secret Soviet military installation with weapons systems that harnessed psychic power. Called to use its power to enhance his military, the Champion went with his entourage of sick and twisted courtiers to this long forgotten mount to see what unholy experiments that the Soviet Union had attempted to glean knowledge from.

In the middle of this vast chamber was a psionic beacon of no known make, and the exact construction still not known to the Imperium. Nevertheless, Mashkadov went to it and channeled as much energy from the Tempest that now enveloped the globe into this device, hoping to be transformed into something greater and his armies given the power to topple the Russian Federation once and for all.

What happened instead was horrifying even to the Chaos Lord.

Firstly, he was killed by the sheer volume of psionic energy that entered him, but this was far from the only consequence. From the mountains of the Caucasus rose a massive antenna, beaconing to the world that the Soviet Union's old weapons would now receive their full usage. Around the former Communist realms, on the signal of the Caucasus, emerged similar beacons.

From Rostock to Vladivostok, from Sofia to Anadyr, from Usti nad Labem to Dushanbe, from Zagreb to Krasnoyarsk, rose one terrifying cry that shook the world:

VOYNAAAAGH!

The inhabitants of the former Eastern Bloc were mutated into horrifying ogre-like creatures with bald heads and green, froglike skin, and sharp teeth that could rip into metal. These were the stuff of the dreams of madmen, of men working for the most secret Soviet defense apparatuses that were trying to find the most effective and most depraved way to defend the rodina from the capitalists that wanted to enslave her.

These creatures exhibited a hive mind mentality, almost, and immediately demonstrated a fervent desire for armed conflict. Within a day of this horrid transformation, a mob of these creatures swarmed across the borders of the former Eastern Bloc, killing all humans, indeed anything with movement, that came across their way. Cities like Hamburg, Lubeck, Kiel, Erfurt, Nuremberg, Athens, Helsinki, and others were immediately besieged by these foul creatures, without even the semblance of ideology or coordination. They wanted only slaughter, something that the nations of Europe would have to provide them.

At the battle of Klosterneuburg, to the north of Vienna, one Austrian soldier, whose name will be forever unremembered, dubbed these creatures with a name taken out of folklore of the continent which he believed they resembled; these green skinned beings were called Orks. These Orks, as the name would spread, were now at Europe's doorstep, having already overrun Berlin by virtue of it being in the former Eastern Bloc.

The various nations of Western Europe, as well as more Eastern neighbors such as Finland and Greece, were now besieged by a greenskinned menace that would stop at nothing to destroy their existence. Cities such as Vienna, Cologne, Munster, Bielefeld, Braunschweig, Hannover, Bremen, Helsinki, Oulu, Athens, Thessaloniki, and Istanbul all became fortress cities, with great steel citadels constructed to defend the bastions of humanity that were still free from the corruption of the Orks.

THE ORKS

Soviet scientists designed what would become the Orks with the explicit thought of another Great Patriotic War in mind. Their thoughts were that the beacons could be activated as needed, to turn every member of the population in a designated area into soldiers that would destroy any human, Soviet or Capitalist, and from there wear them out to the point that they could be cleaned up by Soviet forces when the battle was won.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, there was little use for them anymore and their beacons, while still existent, fell into disrepair. In the wake of the end of the Empire of the Scarlet Banner, Chaos Champions arose in realms like Chechnya, weary of the Russian government that took the place of the Communists. However, it was not until Mashkadov's folly that awoke them and sent them fighting each other and the rest of existence, did they begin to rise and transform the rest of the citizens of the Eastern Bloc.

Orks were designed to sap psionic energy from those they killed in battle and use it to grow larger and therefore stronger. To allow a mode of strategic thinking, the largest and most powerful of the Orks would be acknowledged as a leader, and their clans would grow more and more. These leaders were dubbed Chairmen (or women, depending on the Ork in question) and their flocks Republics, in a grim mockery of the Soviet system.

Orks have the perplexing ability to alter reality based on their perception of reality. This sounds as if they were the most powerful of eldritch abominations, but this is not the case; they are far from intelligent and only speak force and their own bastardizations of their native tongues. This was shown first at the Battle of Lubeck, where it was first seen that these monstrosities were armed with machine guns but were really holding only metal bars once killed.

Orks have a natural predisposition to conflict, manifested in screams of the battle cry VOYNAAGH!, or "war" in Russian. VOYNAAGH! is not just a barbaric boast, but a concept in Orkish society. VOYNAAGH! is what unifies the Orks into a fighting force, for they were developed for such a purpose. If they are not fighting humans, they are fighting one another.

Rival Ork Republics often go to war over territory. One such example was in 2002, when Chairman Vladimir Putin of the United Russia Republic, and a very large Ork in his own right, led his agglomeration of Orks, armed with repurposed and repainted Soviet and post-Soviet weapons (all in red; Orks claim that painting their equipment red, the color of the Soviet Union, makes it go faster), to invade the rival Republic of Ukraine led by Chairman Leonid Kuchma in the name of "reclaiming Orks of the Russian Republic held hostage by Chairman Kuchma in the Crimean Peninsula and in the Donbass."

Kuchma rallied his Orks in another VOYNAAGH! this time against the Russian Republic. However, Putin, now possessed by the terrible bloodlust befitting an Ork, ordered the usage of nuclear weapons, hideously powerful bombs in their own right, on the cities of Kiev, Lviv, Cherkasy, Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytskyi, Zhytomyr, and Vinnytsia, with the intent of forcing the capitulation of the Ukrainian Ork Republic. He succeeded.

However he was met with resistance as per the Orks' peculiar method of reproduction. Now that all humans in the former Eastern Bloc are Orks, they have to reproduce in the manner that their Soviet creators had intended to; by spore. When Orks die, they spread spores all around, which eventually morph into full-fledged Orks with instinctive knowledge of the arts of killing and machinery. This has made Putin's life far more painful.

As it has done, a hundredfold, to a fortress called Europe.

EUROPE UNDER SIEGE

The birth of the Orks through the utter depravity of the Chaos lord Mashkhadov threw Europe into its most destructive war since the Second World War; unlike the implacable Adolf the Mad, the Orks had no single leader and had no concept of surrender. There could be no peace with the Orks. The leaders of Europe had to come to terms with this.

There were attempted negotiation parties sent from Braunschweig to Magdeburg to hopefully find a peace, but shortly outside of the Braunschweig city limits they were destroyed by marauding Ork bands. Similar parties sent from Vienna and Munich met similar fates, the former destroyed by commandeered bombers formerly under the command of Eastern Bloc nations, often a twisted mirror of the forces of the surviving European nations. It soon dawned in the various capitals of the European Union that there would be no peace. War on the footing of the Second World War would have to become the new normal for these nations that had attempted to embrace peace.

Making the situation far more complicated was the rising of Chaos champions in the former Yugoslavia. Angry at their treatment the decade before by the Serbians, Bosnians and Albanians had embraced the ways of Chaos much as those in Chechnya and in the realms of the Chaos Gods. These champions were now intent on slaughtering the Orks that used to be Serbians and Croatians and others, and now they were accepting Chaos' dark advances, transforming themselves into horrible creatures that saw enemies in the Orks, but also the remnants of European humanity.

Similarly, domestic Chaos cults among immigrants in the Western European nations, primarily Britain and France, were growing in popularity, the Sundering, despite being an ocean away, was imbuing confidence in those that abhorred the predominance of Order. Horrific attacks and mass blood rituals took place in public, with a massive sacrifice to Saddam covering Hyde Park in blood. Demons released had to be quelled by the London Police and later the British army. Similar occurrences happened in Paris and in Madrid.

The peace that the European Union had tried to achieve was now a pipe dream to all but the most starry eyed people on that continent west of Vienna. War was the new status quo.

THE BIRTH OF EUROPEAN PSIONICS

Much as the Orks were a byproduct of Cold War era military competition between Communists and Capitalists, the nations of Western Europe had, mainly under American influence, researched psionics, including their own versions of telekinesis and telepathy and other psychic disciplines. Some projects, conducted mainly, as one may have assumed, by the British and French, and it was the attack of the Orks that they seemed at their most demanded.

The Cold War never escalated to the point that it was deemed necessary to use psychic weapons; with a massive attack by Orks that seemed like it would never relent, desperation gave way to haughtiness and a willingness to experiment. Soon, mandatory drives by European governments injected psionic serums into every member of their populations that could be considered fit for military service; the national services of these countries were now being sent to the frontlines in Bavaria and Lower Saxony and Upper Austria to fight off the hordes of Orks coming their way, or on domestic duty to root out Chaos cults.

Further psionic research was able to channel aspects of humans who came before, so long as they had contact with the artifacts of the original in question. It was decided, by the Germans and the French and to the hesitation of the British that they would attempt to call back the spirit of the Conqueror King Charlemagne to lead them. Large automata were constructed in the great factories of the Ruhr, and out of these rose the Avatar of Charlemagne, a massive psionic walker that brought hell unto the Orks that opposed them.

The power of the Avatars of Charlemagne, the greatest war machines ever brought forth on the European Continent, were met with natural skepticism by the public. However, doubt turned to reverence as the war raged on and on; by 2004 Charlemagne's mechanical remnants lent him the status of a God all but in name. Soon, the Christianity that formed the bulk of the European religious' faith was augmented by the reverence of that ancient king. To support the unity of the European peoples, the governments of these nations added more and more famed Europeans, such as Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer, and the founders of the European Union and its predecessors, to an ever growing pantheon.

And yet the Orks had not deployed their most fearsome weapons. Ten years previously, great fears had been nurtured in Europe and the United States that nuclear weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists or worse. They did not anticipate that the Orks would be using them for their own bloodlusting purposes. Ork flyboys, as they were dubbed by the media (now under strict state control in all cases), had somehow, through channels still unknown, gained control of Soviet nuclear weapons and flew their planes to drop them on European cities. First, Amsterdam was set aflame in nuclear fire, then Strasbourg (and it was clear that they were on the way to Paris), then Lille, then Brighton, then Alicante and Palma. Death tolls were obscene, and the proximity of these blasts to major defense facilities deeply disturbed European government.

THE CARAVAN CITIES

In a hasty assembly of European elders in the city of Ostend, it was agreed that a radically new foe required radically new methods of defense. Static cities, the longest used method of human settlement, were now deemed inoperable against a constantly respawning foe.

There was a proposal to take all the people of Europe and amalgamate them into massive caravans that would travel the continent, fighting off Orks and taking whatever resources that they could to support them. The proponents of such a method were at first laughed off like a king would to his jester.

The king would not laugh much longer, as more Ork flyboys were able to fly over Germany and the Low Countries over Britain and dropped their payload over the massive conurbations of Liverpool and Manchester, killing millions. With that density, they were easy targets. With this hideous Ork success, the elders of Europe agreed to this revolution in life.

Within a year after a titanic amount of effort, the cities of Europe that remained were converted into wandering Caravan Cities that could travel on land or at sea, and armed to the teeth to fight off Orks. The capital caravans were capable of constructing Avatars of Charlemagne; these would serve not only as factories but as shrines to a new deity. Soon all of free Europe was mobile, and fighting off the menace that was Ork and Chaos.

Except for Italy.

Even now, they do not like to talk about what happened in Italy.

THE DEBAUCHED VIZIER OF LOMBARDY

Even if the Dark Lord of Decadence makes his dominion in Iran, the vices that he embodies are common to all humanity, for they are what give him his continued power. Leaders, given their power, are natural indulgers in such pleasures, and with the access to wealth that power accords them, they can become quite excessive in their escapades.

In the ancient peninsula that ruled half of its known world at its height, Italy, its leader at the time of the Sundering could not have been more of a sybarite. This man, the Prime Minister of that ancient nation, was a Milanese lord of finance by the name of Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi was famed for his love of luxury, his taste for the finer, nay, finest things in life, and as such was denounced as an aristocrat who cared little for the peasants who kept the nation in line. Nevertheless, in the status of an elected vizier under only a figurehead of a monarch, Carlo of the house of Ciampi, he was able to use his status to indulge in the most depraved acts of hedonism known to mankind.

His galas in the eternal city of Rome, the capital of that realm, were known throughout the world for their depravity, were things of great perversity. Rumor had it that he would send his own military scavenging around the countryside and the cities of the realm to find the most pleasing maidens to be brought back to his palace. The occasions that would take place behind closed doors were kept secret, but their revoltingness to civilized mores of decency were trumpeted to the world by the scribes of the day. His lust was insatiable, and occasionally would turn to bloodlust, or so the rumors would say.

These crimes would be shared by the others of the aristocracy of the Italian realm, but Berlusconi was their acknowledged master. He was a leader known for debauchery and corruption, something that would lead only to catastrophe.

A PENINSULA BESIEGED

With the awakening of the Orks in the former realm of the Empire of the Scarlet Banner, Berlusconi retreated into a countryside villa and let his generals fight off the harrowing attacks from this new greenskinned foe. From that damned land known as Albania came flying hordes of orks that would attack cities like Bari and Taranto and Potenza on the coast; similarly, from Croatia and Bosnia and Montenegro would come even more, sending the populations of Abruzzo and the Marche and Apulia into utter panic. Even so, Berlusconi and his court would still isolate themselves in their own incontinence, ignoring the please of their subjects.

They would also ignore their European compatriots; Chirac of France and Blair of Britain were both pleading to their ally in Italy to actively lead in the fight against the Orks; he would not respond to their desperate cries for a united front from Bremerhaven on the North Sea to Palermo on the Mediterranean. He would continue to be isolated in splendor and in twisted celebration.

During one particularly revolting assembly, in which he had called so far as a hundred maidens to his palace, he had, through some arcane channel, decided that a ritual influenced by the perverse worship of the forces of Chaos, would be the new exhilarating activity, to bring joy even in the face of the invasion of his realm. With all the acquired splendor he summoned the ruinous powers to give him the most ecstatic pleasure of all known pleasures.

This attracted the attention of the Dark Lord of Decadence, who had found an ample source of energy from their hedonistic assemblies. Finding such a nation of people to be nurturing for him, he made himself known to Berlusconi and his court and announced the bestowal of a curse that would last them for all eternity.

All Italy would receive the gift of enhanced emotions; they would now feel the greatest of pleasures and the most crushing of sorrows, all within the confines of their own heads. The love of sensual pleasure, once restricted to the elite, now applied to all the nation. However, there was another pleasure, bloodlust, that had been nurtured on the battlefield, in Bari and Taranto and L'Aquila and Campobasso and especially in Trieste, and the pleasures from violence were absolutely otherworldly to this newly cursed nation.

The Dark Lord Khamenei then told them that they would be forever his slaves when they died, to serve him in his damned realm after feeding him. The Italians, clearly, did not want to serve a foreign master; however, after strangling an attendant in anger, Berlusconi found that the deaths of others in such an artful way satisfied the Dark Lord. To stave off impending slavery, Berlusconi personally slaughtered all the maidens and all the courtesans within his palace in a macabre ritual designed to keep the Ruinous Powers at bay, and his power assured.

As the commander of the Armies of Italy, Berlusconi informed the nation of its new affliction, and the discovery of how they could provide their own salvation. Soon, as Rome had done millennia ago, Italy would become a nation of slavers and lords.

THE DOMINION OF MARAUDERS AND SLAVEMONGERS

The merciless murder of Orks, as they bombarded the land, was satisfying enough to the Ruinous Powers, but there could be more to avert the prospect of neverending servitude to those beyond their comprehension. To do this, Berlusconi had to find new ways to inflict pain upon others, and in ways that were artful enough to appease their puppetmaster.

To do so, there would have to be conquests abroad. Firstly, Berlusconi set his sights on the abandoned island of Malta to the south of his realm. From Naples and Palermo and Catania and Messina were launched titanic ships prepared to besiege the island, and to take as many prisoners as possible. Malta's pathetic defenses fell within minutes, and soon its population was rounded up onto ships to be brought back to Italy, where they were tortured and defiled in the name of sheer excess. Soon, the Dark Lord became an afterthought. They were now committed solely to depravity and bloodlust.

After the successful conquest of Malta, the Dark Vizier Berlusconi now set his sights northward, to Switzerland. A great fortress in the Alps, Switzerland had refused to join in the Caravan Cities of the rest of the continent west of Erfurt and Bregenz. Rather, they continued the fortification of Graubünden and Schaffhausen and Thurgau and Glarus in the hopes of staving off the Orks for all eternity.

However they did not anticipate the fall of Italy and so when they came marching over the mountains, the Swiss had to detonate every bomb they could to prevent the invaders from coming in and performing their perverse rituals in their mountainous Confederation. But the defense of the Swiss, no matter how valiant, was for naught, as the great massacres and rituals in Geneva and Bern and Zurich and Lugano and Basel horrified the world with their prolonged torture, in which none died but all tried to die and wanted to die. These were taken back to Italy to live forever in dungeons for the pleasure of the depraved keepers of the castles that held them.

After Switzerland, they took Greece hostage, then Cyprus, then Corsica, then the Balearic Islands. There came to be a reorientation of Berlusconi's rule in that country; now, the greatest of warriors could rise to the aristocracy, becoming more and more powerful as they tortured and defiled more and more. This was far from punished; indeed it was rewarded, as Italy was now a land where the depraved was the ideal. One particularly crafty warrior curried favor in the eyes of the Vizier's court by tormenting the Pope and several Bishops in what had been Saint Peter's Square, now covered red with blood that seeped into the Tiber.

This lack of mercy extended into their former compatriots in Europe. During the transition from settled cities to Caravan Cities, Italians attacked the still transitioning city of Nice on the Mediterranean coast of France. A lightning response from other European nations had to bolt to Nice to stop the slavemongers, but they were too late; those that had not died were sent back to Genoa and Turin and Milan and Aosta to fend off the approaching Lord of Chaos.

THE CENTRAL KINGDOM UNDER SIEGE

Europe was not the only place subjected to hellish attacks by the Orks. The beacons throughout the former Eastern Bloc transformed the people of Siberia and Eastern Russia, the lot of them at Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Yakutsk, Magadan, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk-na-Amure, Birobidzhan, Blagoveschensk, and many others were made into bastions of Orks, prepared to slaughter whatever dared cross their path. The ancient civilization, China, was therefore subject to the invasions over the Amur and into the ancient empire.

As was the shock with the transformation of the Russians into the greenskinned monsters that craved blood and nothing less, the Chinese were forced to put themselves on a war footing, especially after the sack of Heihe across the Amur from Blagoveshchensk. Despite the massive deployment of the People's Liberation Army into what was once known as Manchuria (later violating the sovereignty of Mongolia to aid in the defense; however, by the time the Chinese reached Ulan Bator there was not much of a government left to negotiate with), the Ork assault came to utterly ransack Harbin, then move onto Changchun and Jilin, subjecting millions more to the carnage.

The Orks were not enough punishment upon China, or so fickle fate appeared to deem. In the mountainous and long suffering region of Uyghurstan, or Xinjiang in the nomenclature of the Chinese government, rebellion had been a longstanding fear of Beijing. Now, with the Sundering giving hope to all the horrific cultists of all the permutations of that evil philosophy, Chaos Cultists began rising up throughout the autonomous region, slaughtering Han Chinese who they deemed invaders and tyrants. Massive displays of depravity were seen in Urumqi and in other cities of the region. The People's Liberation Army had to move significant amounts of forces previously bound for Manchuria up into Xinjiang to quell the rising tides of Chaos.

With its paramount leader, Jiang Zemin, aging and preparing to retire, it became clear that new leadership would be necessary to meet the demands of this pressing crisis. Hu Jintao, a rising party stalwart, was soon made the new leader of the beleaguered country. In a speech to the National People's Congress in Beijing, which had been transformed into a fortress city much like Vienna or Hannover, Hu announced that China would need to "accept the new madness of war that is enveloping our country, and find within this war an opportunity to spread socialist egalitarianism to the world." Indeed, Hu maintained that it was capitalism that spurred the development of such horrors, with lords of Chaos being nothing more than "feudal lords" and "slavemongers" trying overthrow the Chinese mode of socialism.

At this speech, Hu announced the needs to spread the Dialectic, the Hegelian mode of thinking synthesized into Marxism, to the other nations of the world. "The Dialectic," he maintained, "will continue to guide the people of the world to an egalitarian socialist future. The Dialectic must become our very modus operandi, our raison d'etre. The Dialectic promises the most benefit for the most people. In our world, this is of the utmost importance."

THE DIALECTICAL STATE

The very idea of the Dialectic became the rallying cry of the Chinese government, as conscription orders were sent to every county of every province. In the name of the Dialectic and in maintaining social and political harmony, it was announced that there would be new administrations established for different sectors of society. The People's Liberation Army was given more autonomy, as was the People's Liberation Army Navy. Diplomacy and foreign economic aid were placed under another administration. A Wartime Labor Administration was established to govern agricultural and industrial pursuits in the context of what would become a neverending conflict. Finally the Communist Party itself was empowered to watch over the other administrations, as well as to direct the nation as a whole.

The massive armies of the People's Republic were not enough to stop the Orks that were pouring into Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, for they were met with even more massive hordes of Orks. It was decided that there had to be new doctrines for fighting these enemies. It would not be one of mass, but of range. The standard weapons used by the PLA would now have to be as long ranged as possible, with every infantryman a marksman. Tanks became artillery guns in essence, and artillery guns became superweapons usually deployed only in fortress cities like Shenyang and Dalian. Aircraft were made long range strike bombers and fighters; now an assault on Changchun could be met with planes launched as far away as Xi'an.

Soon, there came to be a major rift in regards to the tactics to be used by the Chinese against the Orks and the Chaos militants. One school of thought called its tenets collectively the Peng Dehuai doctrine, after the namesake commander of Chinese forces in the Korean war, and espoused a massive artillery strike followed by the deployment of tanks and heavy aircraft. A rival school of thought, the Mao Zedong Doctrine, espoused sneakier tactics and more usage of infantry rather than tanks, and would draw out the Orks or Chaos cultists and, after giving them the lure, destroy them in short order.

AN INTERNATIONAL COALITION

With the rise of the American Imperium, China saw the possibility of another cold war between the two great powers. China would need to build up alliances and commit them to serving the Dialectic instead of the Emperor of America, who by then was dormant on the Marble Throne in the Oval Chamber in Holy Columbia.

The Communist Party believed that the Imperium was using its efforts to fight Chaos in the Middle East to be a form of expanding its spheres of influence. To counteract these tendencies, China could very well do the same, to spread the good word of the Dialectic and make humanity's lot better as a whole. The Middle East was already the domain of sinister Chaos Gods, and so a new area for Chinese escapism was found: Africa.

In many countries in Africa Chaos Champions, emboldened by the Sundering, were bringing great suffering to the peoples of these embattle countries already wracked by mundane war and disease. Betrayed by the global capitalist neoliberal world order, it became clear that there was room for other philosophies to make inroads in these nations. In Nigeria and in Kenya and in the Congo and in many other nations, the people turned to China for help.

To solidify what would become Chinese recolonization of Africa, massive airships, armed to the teeth to fight off the forces of Chaos that lurked in the Indian Ocean, landed across Africa to fight the bands of marauders that had made life in Africa so miserable. Chaos or mundane, they were sent to their graves by the ruthless efficiency of the new Chinese military doctrines and technology.

Shortly thereafter, the Communist Party, the unchallenged elites of the People's Republic, began to treat these nations as nothing more than overseas Chinese provinces. Much like in China proper, conscription orders came out in African nations, including among themselves the former Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, and Cameroon, and their soldiers incorporated into a larger People's Liberation Army. Rather than seeing the Communist Party as a foreign overlord, China was seen as a liberator from the lords of Chaos while the Imperium was too busy in the Middle East. Soon, for more combat experience, African soldiers were deployed in China itself to fight Chaos or the Orks.

Seeing the success of this program, China began intervening in neighboring nations, namely Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, and Bhutan, and began enacting similar policies. These troops were made formal parts of the People's Liberation Army, and their nations all but in name became Chinese provinces, working together in the service of the Dialectic.

THE COLOSSUS OF COLUMBIA

During that brief interval between the Bush Heresy and the Sundering, the Imperium saw it necessary to exert its power over the rest of its hemisphere to prevent foreign intervention in what was seen as its natural sphere of influence. During this time, the immortal Emperor personally led the conquest of Canada, bringing victory to the Imperium at Montreal and Toronto and Vancouver and Ottawa and Halifax. The Emperor was very clear in his commands to the people of his dominion: control the Americas, then the world, in the name of keeping humanity united and free from the strife and horror of war.

After the Sundering, the Military-Industrial Complex, the great manufacturer of the Imperium's arms and the institution of the Machine Cultists, swore to continue the Emperor's divine command to unite the hemisphere. With the conquest of Canada complete, the Imperium, led in conjunction by the High Lords of Columbia and the Military-Industrial Complex, set its sights to Latin America. The Emperor had mandated them to rule this hemisphere, and by the Emperor, they would.

The anarchic land of Mexico, the Imperium's southern neighbor, was soon met with the furious power of the Imperial Guard, the rank and file Imperial military. Juarez, Tijuana, Nogales, Mexicali, Matamoros, Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, were all put under military governments that pledged fealty to the Emperor of America. As the Imperium's rule moved southward and southward, more the tithe collectors of the Imperial bureaucracy came down upon the villages and towns and cities of Mexico in droves to collect the money, food, and conscripts for the Imperial Guard that was deemed necessary by the Military-Industrial Complex to continue operating the war machine at full capacity. Those that refused were deemed heretics and sent to death as soon as possible, for they dared defy the Immortal Emperor.

Much as they had done in Canada and Mexico, the Imperium extended its reach into Central America. Knowing fully well that there were many immigrants from those countries within the Imperium's surly bounds, the High Lords of Columbia authorized the usage of majority-immigrant Guard deployments and Minutemen chapters in these countries. Such deployments were crucial in helping the people of these nations accept Imperial rule. Local religions were snuffed out, often violently, with the intention of bringing the cult of the God-Emperor of America. At the barrel of a gun, these succeeded.

RAGE OF THE HEAVENS

Much as in Central America, the Caribbean had to be controlled to ensure the territorial integrity of the Imperium. Overzealous seizures brought conflict between the European Union and the Imperium, but the former was too wound up in the crusade against the Orks to pay the Imperium any heed, only being able to afford the fortification of Greenland and Iceland in anticipation of an attack that did not come. Otherwise, with one glaring exception, the Caribbean was another dominion of the Imperium.

This one exception had been an enemy of the American nation long before the rise of the God-Emperor: the island nation of Cuba, led by the neglectful lord Fidel Castro, who despised the Imperium and everything it stood for. Even worse to the High Lords of Columbia was the fact that Castro was a Communist. To them, Communism was among the worst forms of heresy, second only to devotion to a cult of a Chaos God. This was something that could not be allowed to exist anywhere near the Imperium.

And so the High Lords of Columbia elected to use a tool that had been developed during the Cold War but never used: Exterminatus, the act of destroying all that was in a designated area. This used the horrifying nuclear weapons that the Imperium had at its disposal to destroy all, loyal or heretic, on whatever unfortunate land had deserved such a punishment. Cuba's long history of heresy was now not merely disagreeable; it was intolerable.

And so the missiles came flying from the various bases of the Imperium's heartland onto that island, eventually burning all that was in Cuba. This included a naval base, Guantanamo Bay, that had served the American nation for over a century, but its loss was worth the expurgation of this heresy upon the world.

As the Imperial Guard and Minutemen continued their long march southward, the nations of South America had come together to combat the advancing gestalt of nations that now composed the Imperium. Their leader was another dictator of Castro's persuasion, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Seeing that his heresy was of the similar kind of Castro's, the High Lords of Columbia decided to use another weapon developed during the Cold War.

The Life Eater Virus, as it was popularly known, was not strictly a virus; it was a gruesome concoction of various diseases to destroy as much life as possible. Firstly it started with a heavily modified version of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome that was designed to remove the ability of all life in an area to be able to resist foreign pathogens. Thereafter, a mixture of the most hideous diseases imaginable would take root, turning the targeted area into a place were life was a thing of the past.

This is what was used on Venezuela to punish Chavez and his ilk for the heresy that they had committed. With all Venezuela a decaying wasteland, the Imperium was able to take South America without incident. With this, tithes could now be collected and the Imperium's war machine could double in size.

THE EMPEROR'S OWN

When the immortal Emperor ascended to the throne of the Imperium, he made it very clear that there would have to be some kind of elite force loyal to the Emperor himself to allay the Imperial Guard, the rank and file. In the days of the Bush Heresy, the Emperor donated sanctioned the organization of new platoons to make new soldiers that would become the finest elite troops of the Imperium. These soldiers, the Minutemen, would become the strongest soldiers on the face of the planet.

Minutemen are created when the scouts in the service of the High Lords of Columbia find specimens of children that could become soldiers with the peak of physical and mental ability, then taken off to different camps in the far reaches of the Imperium to be modified, with all sorts of disturbing organs crammed into their body to enhance performance on the field. Subsequently, they are provided with some of the most powerful weapons and armor at the disposal of the Imperium, made with care in the foundries run by the Military-Industrial Complex. From there, they are inducted into the chapter of the Minutemen that they were taken to use, and then are deployed in whatever foreign land that the Emperor deems their service necessary.

In the conquest of the Americas Minutemen were essential in fighting off the forces of the various Latin American nations that were claimed in the name of the Imperium and to prevent the possibility of Chaos cultists from infiltrating the hemisphere; indeed it was a grand attempt at defending the core territory of the Imperium where Holy Columbia lay on the banks of the Potomac. As the Imperium expanded, more chapters were chartered in the lands conquered by the Imperial Guard and the Minutemen in equal measure, with the intention of bringing the population to the worship of the God-Emperor.

These foreign chapters of Minutemen were instrumental in accustoming the peoples of Latin America into the service of the Imperium; now, at least they thought that they were fighting for their own homeland in the service of something greater. They were now happily the God-Emperor's servants, and they would fight the forces of Chaos and anything else that would dare stand in their way.

THE LEVANTINE CRUSADE

Soon, foreign lands that were long allied with the Imperium were now begging for incorporation into it; after all, they were surrounded on all sides by Chaos or by other foes. No more exemplary of this phenomenon was the case of Israel, that ancient land given new blood in the age after the Second World War. A longtime American ally, it was now surrounded by mundane extremists trying to destroy it and by Chaos cultists trying to destroy humanity itself. Naturally, it asked for annexation into the Imperium so that it may be defended by the God-Emperor.

The High Lords of Columbia, with the special backing of the Military-Industrial Complex, agreed to such a proposal, with some revision of the nature of the country as a Jewish State; the God-Emperor was now acknowledged as the incarnation of their Messiah. With that, Israel was accepted as the newest member of the Imperium.

With that, there came the realization that the Israeli Defense Force could become a fine chapter of the Minutemen; this was from a nation that had been called time and again the Sparta of its age. After being persuaded that the IDF could indeed perform such a role, a chapter, the Maccabees, which would cement the status of Israel as the provider of some of the finest Minutemen in the Imperium.

The position of Chapter Master was given to a hardline Israeli member of their court and a former vizier by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu, someone strongly against the rising power of the Chaos Gods. A soldier in previous Israeli wars, Netanyahu was chosen for exemplary service to Israel and eagerness to support the Imperium. With this, the Maccabees would become the dominant defenders of the Israeli realm and tools of the Imperium of America in the Middle East.

Soon, the Maccabees became absorbed in the anger that Israelis held towards their neighbors. Soon, the local arm of the Federal Bureau of the Inquisition began looking for Chaos cultists in the Palestinian territories, and found traces of several but, try as they may have, could not get a good estimation. Israeli officials subsequently petitioned the High Lords of Columbia for permission to use Exterminatus on the Palestinian territories. They declined, saying that there would be too much collateral damage. However, they did authorize another solution.

Rather than the usage of nuclear weapons or the Life Eater virus, the High Lords of Columbia authorized the systematic extermination of the people of Palestine, with the understanding, or so they thought, of the widespread threat of Chaos cultists. Soon, the Maccabees and their support units brought in from America itself began descending upon the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, led by bulldozers modified to bring the strongest of edifices crumbling down, they began their dark mission. By 2005, not a single Palestinian man, woman, or child survived.

With the Palestinians utterly destroyed and loyal Imperial citizens now living in those territories, the Israelis and their Maccabee defenders turned their attention northward. Neither Egypt nor Jordan was any real threat; indeed they were both dealing with their own Chaos cultists. It was northward, towards Syria and Lebanon, known opponents of Israel and harborer of Chaos cultists in the service of the Dark Lord Khamenei. Without hesitation, the forces of the Imperium charged northwards to fight its sworn enemies.

THE CRAFTSMEN OF THE IMPERIUM

When the Bush Heresy was well underway, the various elements of the Armed forces of America were beginning to undergo consolidation. The commanders of the various branches of the armed services, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard were looking to streamline the manufacturing processes that brought them their weapons and vehicles to make war on heretics, and later, the followers of Chaos. Soon, the great corporations that supplied America with its weapons, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamic Land Systems, and all the other contractors hired by the armed services were merged with the generalship to form the Military-Industrial Complex.

The merger was not merely one of convenience; they also believed in machine spirits that possessed any piece of machinery, as well as a belief in the sanctity of correct forms of combat. The men who had run these great enterprises were now looking for ways to continue their predominance in the affairs of the nation; with the end of the Cold War, they had been looking for the next enemies of their nation to root out and destroy.

With the Sundering, the Complex sent its various Machine cultists to repair the damaged Emperor and install him in the life support system on the Marble Throne in the Oval Chamber in Holy Columbia. The Complex subsequently pledged its loyalty to the High Lords of Columbia, putting themselves at their service should they need it. And the need was most definitely existent; the Sundering made it necessary to secure the entire Western hemisphere and thereby secure Holy Columbia from foreign threats.

The machine cultists, with their unique belief in the divinity of machines, were willing to accept the Emperor as the incarnation of the finest machine, but did not follow the edicts of the Federal Bureau of the Inquisition. Those in the FBI did not like this, but accepted it as they were the ones who gave the Imperium its holy weaponry, from which the power of the Imperium emanated. Something so effective could not be considered heretical should the edicts of the Inquisition matter.

This unique belief is shrouded in mystery in terms of its origin, but it is believed that the intense weapons development of the Cold War fostered a degree of reverence in the hearts of the industrialists and commanders of the nation. The intensity of the need to overtake the Soviet Union, and by extension Communism, was something pursued with a religious fervor. Communism was heresy to the Complex, as was Chaos, but the machines that they labored over for decades on end became their most sacred relics, their own idols. These machines had to be made to bring more into the world with the urgency of a Christian bringing souls from heaven to Earth. From there, they had to be maintained as the ultimate guardians of the American nation.

INFINITE JUSTICE

With the sundering having gravely damaged so many cities of the Imperium, the Military-Industrial Complex saw it necessary to exact revenge on the terrorists who had brought so much misery to the nation, and crippled the Emperor, forcing him to exist half necrotic on eternal life support. Revenge was essential, said the Complex, and so the High Lords would listen.

Since those who brought such terror to the Imperium were followers of the Chaos Lord Osama, the living incarnation of deceit, it was decided that the Imperial Guard and the Minutemen would have to invade Afghanistan, to take down that Chaos God and root him out forever.

However it was noted that Osama had no fixed residence, for, at least according to rumor, his palace warped throughout the area of Afghanistan and Pakistan. To do so, it was understood that the Imperium would have to fight not only the followers of Osama, but also the Dark God Omar, the Lord of Pestilence and Decay, who was rumored to be harboring the former deity. Understanding the consequences, the Imperium invaded with the intention of destroying them both.

Shortly thereafter, the Imperium asked for, and received, the help of the secular and mundane government of Pakistan, which agreed to help with the destruction of what was long held to be a hostile neighbor. Pakistan was not in any way fond of what was going on in its western borderland, and so agreed to host the Imperium's armed forces in the western part of the country.

This took up most of the years 2001 and 2002, concurrent with the conquest of Latin America. However, the Military-Industrial Complex was not satisfied with just one invasion. In 2003, the Fabricator General of the Military-Industrial Complex, by the name of Colin Powell, went to the High Lords of Columbia and announced that the Dark God Saddam, the ruler of the unfortunate realm of Iraq, was harboring weapons that could utilize the tempest to bring about suffering on the level of that of the Sundering a hundredfold. Understanding the risk, the High Lords of Columbia authorized an invasion of Iraq.

The Dark God Saddam was deeply threatening to the mundane states of the region, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. These nations, eager to have the power of that deity neutralized, agreed to allow the Imperium to take care of what they felt should have been done a decade beforehand. With that proclamation of alliance, the Imperium began its invasion of yet another land.

THE DRAGON AND ITS ENVIRONS

The rise of the People's Republic of China in the name of their Dialectic made the governments of certain East Asian nations very worried. China had long been militaristic, perhaps even more so after the fall of the Soviet Union, hence leaving it the only major Communist state in existence. It was indeed greatly worrisome that the nation that had been the enemy of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines would cause so much fear in the capitals of these nations.

As the Chinese strode across Africa and Southeast Asia, integrating new nations into their Republic and holding their own against servants of Chaos and the Orks, the Taiwanese government in Taipei began preparing for what was feared to become a long and protracted war that would begin with an invasion of the island. As the main questioner of the People's Republic's right to rule over all China, Taiwan was afraid that the Chinese would finally realize their intention of achieving cross strait unification at the barrel of a gun.

The integration of North Korea into the Chinese sphere of influence likewise terrified South Korea; Seoul was only miles away from the parallel that dived the peninsula in two. Like Taiwan, militarization began in earnest; Seoul and Incheon rapidly became fortress cities to rival those of Vienna or Frankfurt in Europe. Soon Chinese and South Korean soldiers could see one another from across the Demilitarized Zone, but were hesitant to fire at one another.

In 2004, the Chinese undertook a daring display of force by moving forces onto the Senkaku (in Japanese) or Diaoyu (in Chinese) islands in the East China sea, disputed territory between the two nations, a blatant show of hostility to both Taiwan and Japan, both who claimed the islands. Understanding that each other would prefer such islands, but seeing little alternative, the Taiwanese President and the Japanese Prime Minister met in Kumamoto to discuss the possibility of a defensive pact. Not surprisingly, the terms of such an agreement were made easily.

By early 2005 the governments of South Korea and the Philippines asked for and had received membership in the alliance between Japan and Taiwan; they were accepted without incident but with much scrutiny from the Chinese, who were still busy fighting off the Orks and the Chaos lords of Uighurstan. This peace was not to last.

THE IMPERIUM IN THE ORIENT

In the middle of 2005, the Chinese confirmed the fears of Taiwan and its allies by launching an invasion of the island, intending to reunify the nation, or so what they had perceived as their nation. To prevent Taiwan from immediately receiving help, Chinese forces came rushing over the border into South Korea, besieging Seoul and Incheon. Help was needed, as the Philippines and Japan could not hold out on their own. They were willing to surrender nominal sovereignty to do so.

Sending their ambassadors to Holy Columbia, these nations pleaded for annexation by the Imperium of America. The High Lords of Columbia were met with the argument that they had been loyal allies of the American nation during the Cold War, having opposed the Soviet Union and China as long as the Communists had ruled these nations. They further pointed to the Israeli example, as well as the Latin American nations integrated into the Imperium. After some consideration, the High Lords of Columbia agreed to such a course of action.

Imperial forces landed in the major cities of these nations, and began fighting off the Chinese that had landed. However, due to the new tactics adopted by the Chinese, most of their forces were positioned on the Chinese mainland and firing remotely. The Imperium made great use of the weapons of the Military-Industrial Complex; during the beginning of the defense of the Eastern nations, more than half of the landing or bombing missions that were sent survived. This dwindled as the Chinese became knowledgeable of the Imperium's strategies.

The High Lords of Columbia deemed it necessary to provide an example to the Chinese to prevent them from seriously escalating the war; the Imperium was already tied up in the Middle East in multiple fronts, as well as in Afghanistan and in the rowdy portions of Latin America that had not yet fully accepted Imperial rule. The Imperium simply could not afford an active conflict with the Chinese.

It was then decided to unsheathe the terrifying sword of Exterminatus, but this was not to be used on the Chinese mainland; rather, it would put an end to the Korean War of half a century ago. Nuclear weapons were brought to South Korea and used upon the unfortunate Northern part of the peninsula, destroying the city of Pyongyang and the rest of the country. This was meant first and foremost to send a message to the Chinese that a real invasion would not be met with the continued existence of China.

Increased Ork and Chaos activity informed the Party elites that expanding the war would be unwise; as such, there was begrudging acceptance of the Imperium's terms in deed if not in words; the main focus of the Chinese war machine was in Manchuria. Still, there would be fighting in East Asia, and the war would not end without one side falling. Neither would.

THE ANCIENTS AND THEIR TOOLS

Humanity had long ago mastered the art of the mass production of automata that could be awoken after millennia; however, this was a secret kept by its creators and by later powers hoping for supremacy over one another. These entombed soldiers were those locked away in vaults miles under the surface of the Earth, not seeing the sun until summoned.

It was the ancient Egyptians that had perfected this art; it was not until Howard Carter, the intrepid archaeologist, unearthing the tomb of Tutankhamen were the secrets of these automata were examined in detail. However, these were not made public; the British government had found such machines the perfect way to maintain control of their far-flung empire and began moving newly manufactured copies of these machines, including replicator machines that could make more combat drones, into subterranean vaults in India and in its mandates in the Middle East, as well as in its African colonies.

With the dawning Second World War, agreements between the British and the French allowed the latter access to this technology, and so the machines were built in Algeria and in Morocco and in Syria and in other French colonies and protectorates. However, with the war in Germany coming closer and closer, it was found to be unfeasible to install these great machines in Europe; it would attract too much attention (there is no doubt that racist attitudes towards their colonial subjects played a part in this decision as well).

With the end of the Empires and the beginning of the Cold War, this technology made its way into the hands of the United States, which installed their own vaults in Iran before the fall of the Shah, in Iraq when the regime there was favorable, and later in Saudi Arabia and in Israel to protect them in the most dire times; the situation during and after that frozen conflict were never deemed desperate enough to use these weapons.

But perhaps the most horrifying aspects of these machines were not their power, which was considerable, but their method of creation. The colonial subjects of Britain and France, and later the unfortunate souls of the nations aligned with the United States, were taken and put into metal skeletons, which would render them comatose and subservient to a single mind, one defended in a subterranean pyramid structure that could rise from the depths of the Earth and wage war on those that dared disturb it.

FROM THE TOMBS THEY RISE

Unbeknownst to the colonialist powers and later the Americans, these devices included Chaos-detecting sensors that would automatically awaken them if the Ruinous powers became too active on the planet. The reasons for not awaking during the first war between the American nation and the Dark Lord Saddam, or the war in Afghanistan between the Soviet Union and the cultists of Omar and Osama, are not known. However, it is believed that the sheer power of the Chaos lords that had manifested themselves by the Sundering was sufficient to awaken these slumbering automata, which were positioned in a ring from Morocco to Vietnam, all ready to destroy those that were deemed a threat. This action was a prerogative from the ancients, forgotten by the modern colonialists and the Cold Warriors.

These machines, dubbed Necrons by the media of the Imperium to emphasize their unholy state as what the Federal Bureau of the Inquisition called "servants of the heretical dead." However, it could not be denied that they began fighting the servants of Chaos in Iran, where they were soon expelled to the desert wastes and rugged mountains of the country, for the concentration of the powers of the Dark Lord Khamenei were too strong for them to overthrow. Similar events occurred in Iraq and in Afghanistan, where they were thrown to the wastes to fight as guerrillas.

However, the Necrons were unable to determine the difference between Chaos and mundane entities, and as such, in the areas where there was no significant opposition from the Ruinous Powers, they ran amok. In India, the cities of Ahmedabad, Lucknow, and Bhopal were all quickly destroyed by the pyramids that rose from the depths, and Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and other ancient cities of that nation were turned into fortress cities rivalling Harbin and Beijing. In Syria, the Assad regime was already in combat with the Israeli troops of the Imperium; the former was destroyed by the Necrons. The Israelis then began their war against the Syrian Necrons.

In northern Africa, the great pyramids of Giza were revealed to be pyramids for the ancient Necrons, their stone exteriors crumbling to reveal sleek black metal summoning these skeletal troops to wreak havoc upon the Egyptian people; similar events happened in Libya, where Benghazi was raised and Tripoli fell soon afterwards, where there was enough dabbling in the arts of Chaos by the Gaddafi regime to warrant that.

In Tunisia, the Necrons awoke at the same time an Italian raid on Tunis was in its early stages; the pyramids began their slow march towards the capital, seemingly detecting the presence of such a harrowing enemy. With artillery mounted on their husks, the Necrons fired upon the Italian ships, destroying most of them and slaughtering those that landed. The Italians had to call a retreat.

THE EYE OF TERROR

The Eye of Terror, that damned creation of the cultists of the Dark Lord Osama, was created when one of the hijacked planes that was intended to be used in the heinous attack known as the Sundering was met with the resistance of its passengers. Loyal to the Imperium and faithful to their God-Emperor, they resisted the hijackers and, in an action that has forever granted them sainthood in the pantheon of the greatest Americans, took control of the plane and rammed it into the ground in the middle of Pennsylvania.

However, when this plane crashed, the gathered energy of Chaos, combined with the fervent belief of the passengers on the plane, tore a hole in the fabric of space and time to create a great portal into the realm of the Chaos Gods, from which they spewed out their horrifying demons into the vicinity of the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, sacrificing its residents in a hideous ceremony to appease their masters. After this, they began moving towards the city of Pittsburgh, which was immediately fortified and its civilians given weapons to fight off the terrors that were rapidly approaching them.

As the situation on the ground in the other cities of the Imperium came to be under Holy Columbia's control, forces from throughout the Imperium began flowing into Pittsburgh and into the state of Pennsylvania in general to defend the state from the forces of those that wanted to see every American die. They were to join the utterly massive force conscripted from the men and women of Pennsylvania, who had already began to acquire a reputation as battle-hardened warriors whose life and homeland was on the line.

THE KEYSTONE TO VICTORY

Pennsylvania, by 2005, had acquired a very militaristic culture; by the age of ten, the children of the state know the basics of all the weapons of the Imperial Guard, and are often thrown into combat to defend the state against the forces of Chaos even before that. Children as young as three years old have died in glorious combat, sacrificing their lives for the God-Emperor and his Imperium. Those that survive have served in the military for their entire life, and are veterans that make the soldiers of other states seem weak by comparison.

In the crusades to take control of the entire Western Hemisphere and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and East Asia, Pennsylvanian troop deployments have served with pride and honor against the foes of the Emperor. During the invasion of Mexico, the 7th Pennsylvanian regiment successfully acquired the city of Acapulco in the name of the God-Emperor with a minimum of civilian casualties; the latter was seen as benevolent not out of any weak ideology of pacifism but rather out of maximizing the amount of troops for new Guard regiments. Similar actions were taken by Pennsylvanian regiments at the battles of Soyapango, Panama City, Medellin, and Ananindeua.

When deployed to Afghanistan, however, the Pennsylvanian troops acquired a reputation, even among the servants of the Ruinous Powers, for savagery. These were the forces that had sent so many of them to the slaughter in their home state, and they were gleeful in their execution of the Emperor's orders to slaughter the followers of the Chaos Gods. Villages in Afghanistan were razed by the men and women of the Pennsylvanian regiments; this was met with the lavish praise of the Military-Industrial Complex. Similarly, in Iraq, the blood cultists of Saddam were horrified at the brutality of the Pennsylvanians, rivalling the Dark God's own twisted rituals.

In East Asia, Pennsylvanian troops participated in the defense of Taiwan from the Chinese, as well as repelling a Chinese invasion force from the Filipino island of Luzon. Subsequently, before Exterminatus, the 39th Pennsylvanian regiment served honorably in the defense of South Korea.

THUNDER IN THE ANTIPODES

The continent-spanning nation of Australia had been thrown into deep chaos and fear after the Sundering; Chaos cults active in Indonesia and other nations of southeast Asia occasionally mounted terrorist attacks on cities on the northern coast of the country. Events such as these included a ritual sacrifice of a children's camping group on the Cape York peninsula and the release of a demon outside of Exmouth, which had slaughtered many tourists on its way to an Imperium naval base.

The Australian government had committed troops to aid the Imperium of America against the forces of the Chaos Gods, but the move had been unpopular among the people. The nation's grand vizier, John Howard, had been a strong supporter of relations with the Imperium, and many had felt that he was a closet worshipper of the God-Emperor and thereby member of the Imperial Cult. Attacks on Australia were in no doubt connected to such support.

However, the people of the Commonwealth had begun to grow increasingly distasteful of having their brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives die in foreign lands where it was popularly held that the rule of Chaos was unbeatable; the futility was their quarrel. By 2007, the time for the selection of a new Vizier became apparent; the opponents of Howard nominated a man by the name as Kevin Rudd to run on a peace platform. The campaign between Rudd and Howard for the rule of the country was a vicious one, where their supporters clashed in the streets.

Legal machinery eventually revealed that Rudd was chosen as the new leader of the nation, who promised that there would be no more dead Australians at the beck of the Imperium. In the nation's capital of Canberra, Rudd promised peace and rebuilding, and a focus on defending the nation from Chaos cults closer to home.

Howard's loyalists were not willing to stomach this; indeed, large swathes of the military began breaking off of ordered deployments and began attacking nearby Ruddist strongholds. Soon, the great cities of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, and many others were thrown into civil war, where appalling crimes were committed on a daily basis. Slaughter became the norm.

And yet that was not the worst of Australia's worries.

THE WRATH OF THE ARID WASTE

The armed forces of Australia loyal to Howard had succeeded in controlling the Woomera Prohibited Area, a vast swathe of desert in the southern portion of the continent in which weapons were tested. It was not expected by anyone that the war would spread to this area; there was nothing worth fighting over except for weapons in bunkers isolated by the scalding heat of the desert.

And yet, in 2009 the monstrous fauna and flora of the Australian continent, created through the sheer isolation of the continent during the Earth's early millennia, and the hostility of the land, began acting with what appeared to be some sort of intelligence. These creatures began attacking the Howardist forces in the Area, slaughtering them, in forms that their science had never documented. Soon, twisted and depraved forms of the wildlife of the continent began attacking a war-weakened nation, slaughtering all in their path.

Many began assuming insect-like forms, but the original animal forms remained, now savage in combat and oozing poisons from every orifice. The first city to fall was Kalgoorlie, then Gawler, then Alice Springs, all wracked by the civil war that had erupted, and none could survive. Soon, the majority of the continent was under the command of these horrifying monstrosities. The only holdout was Tasmania, and even then, with token support from the Imperium, the island fell with the Siege of Hobart. There was no recourse.

These creatures acquired the name "Tyranid" during the siege of Launceston, where it was said by Imperial propaganda that they were "tyrannical annelids" despite not having many among their ranks that resembled worms in any degree. Nevertheless, the name stuck. This would be the name that the Imperium called these antipodean horrors, which had just overrun a continent.

Imperium scientists believed that the Tyranids had more to their actions than was immediately apparent. There appeared to be some kind of hive mind between them, which the scientists dubbed Synapses after human nervous system components. Further, the civil war in Australia was suspected to be of some kind of diversion concocted by the Tyranids themselves; analysis of surviving records from the Australian government revealed that there had been suspicious diseases aboard refugee ships coming in from Indonesia. One such incident left all but one member of the force left to confront them dead. The Imperium is determined that the disease, dubbed the Genestealer, had infected high echelons of the Australian government all the way to Howard himself, and from there instigated the war to weaken their army.

THE ALL-CONSUMING TIDE

The Tyranids, in their lust for power, began attacking other nations near Australia. The first to fall was New Zealand, where the populace of that nation was devoured in purposely made hives throughout the country. Wellington, Auckland, and many other cities were turned into feeding grounds for the Tyranids, where they multiplied, controlled by some kind of mind likely in the wastes of the Outback, where the drive to consume and grow was directed with great efficiency.

After New Zealand, attention was turned northward to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, where the fairly poor nations of that archipelago were sent to the slaughter. The massive population density of the area was plentiful material for their growth, continuing the push northward. Jakarta became another bloodbath, another feeding ground, another imperative for the swarm to grow. Fearsome creatures, modified from the local wildlife, began attacking the inhabitants of these countries, forcing the local militaries to burn their precious jungles.

Soon, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and the other great islands of that archipelago were under Tyranid control, massive hatcheries for more of their new offspring. Northward they continued, landing in Mindanao and slaughtering the inhabitants there. Since the Imperium had outposts in the Philippines guarding against the Chinese, the Imperial Guard and Minutemen were readily available to defend the archipelago from this new enemy.

Similarly, as the Tyranids began their march into Thailand, the Thai government in Bangkok pleaded to China to begin a program in that country similar to that carried out in various African nations or in Vietnam, or North Korea before exterminatus. The Chinese approved and began moving their forces into Thailand, firing upon the Tyranids from afar. They were cordoned off from the Philippines and Thailand by foes of similar strength, but their reach over the Pacific was undeniable.

THE END OF AN ALLIANCE

The Imperium of America had begun its invasion of Afghanistan, the realm of the Dark God Omar as well as host to the Dark God Osama, shortly after the Sundering; it sought revenge for the attack upon its own land, something that had not happened in decades if not centuries, depending on the definition. As the invasion carried on, the Imperium demanded that its longtime allies in Europe come to its aid.

The European elites did not do so; they were appalled by the Imperium's treatment of Latin America, which was being conquered and brought under the rule of Holy Columbia; their taste for conquest was insatiable. Furthermore, there was no desire in Europe to destroy what was held to be invincible; taking down a Chaos God seemed like trying to destroy the sun, or the oceans, or the Earth itself. It was not humanly possible.

As the conquest continued, the Orks were awakened by that unfortunate and foolish Chaos Champion Mashkadov, which then began attacking the cities of Europe in earnest. Europe was occupied dealing with the Orks, and later the Italians, who were intent on conquest in the name of slaves and depravity. The Imperium during this time asked again for support, now for the invasion of the realm of Saddam, but once more Europe refused.

This sent the High Lords of Columbia into a maddened rage; any positive mention of Europe was now heresy. The fortified island of Greenland was the only European possession to keep its nominal sovereign intact; the Military-Industrial Complex was now allowed to take control of the European possessions in the Western Hemisphere. These territories were then subsequently added to the realm of the Imperium. Otherwise, the Imperium was content to have European men and women slaughtered at the hands of the Orks.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED?

The Imperium's armed forces had been improved significantly by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; with native aid and the strength of the various assets of the Military-Industrial Complex, the forces of Chaos seemed to be at best subpar. In both Kabul and in Baghdad, the manifestations of cults of both Saddam and Omar were defeated and expelled into the wastes of the deserts and mountains of these countries, where they were content to wage guerilla war upon their enemies.

However, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Imperium and its allies simply could not find the fortress of Osama, famed for warping across time and space among these two countries. They tried to base their attack strategies on the appearances of Osama's cultists, but the Lord of Deceit would have none of them. Aerial sweeps became more and more commonplace, but the citadel simply warped out of existence if they ever caught a glance at it.

Iraq was not much better; the Dark Lord Saddam was eager to have more entities to spill blood on his holy land; he kept on summoning demons and sending mundane souls to the slaughter, killing both Imperial troops and their own in the name of satisfying their beloved leader. This was why they were so hard to stomp out; the combat itself was not a means to an end beyond that of senseless slaughter. When such death was not an impediment, but an objective, the quelling of such activity was not easy.

There was a power vacuum in both Iraq and Afghanistan; the Chaos Gods now longer controlled their cities, but the violence continued. They were all content to fight and die forever, something that the Imperium was wont to prevent. There was sectional violence as well; the original inhabitants of these areas were attempting to establish their own states, some in favor of and some against the Imperium.

However, there was a new storm brewing in Iraq, one that was gaining traction and adherents from the Blood God.

FILLING THE VOID

The weakness of the Dark Lord Saddam in keeping control of major Iraqi cities disenchanted many members of the cults that had kept him in power. The fanatics that had served him were not solely pursuant of mindless slaughter, or at least some of them, but also wanted to extend the war to other parts of the world, so that all Earth could become a sacrifice to the Lord of Blood. However, the Lord was more than willing to seep away at the Imperium's armies in Iraq and in Syria; the slaughter was satisfying enough to him.

However there was a rising group of cultists that began questioning the primacy of Saddam; this behavior of his seemed week to them. He had allowed the Imperium to gain control of an unacceptable amount of territory; Baghdad was now the capital of an Iraq that followed the American line, which was busy funneling natural resources into the storehouses of the Military-Industrial Complex, which needed them to satisfy their desire for conquest and victory. The loss of cities like Irbil and Mosul and Basra and Kirkuk were simply appalling to these cultists, who sought a new leader.

The philosophy of Chaos Undivided, which revered the four Dark Lords of Chaos, Saddam, Omar, Osama, and Khamenei, in equal measure as a pantheon of the most depraved beings known to mankind, began to grow in popularity throughout Iraq; none could deny that Saddam was powerful, but it was understood that the common reverence of all four beings could allow additional support for their cause and their fight against the Imperium.

Soon, these begin coalescing around a single leader, a former combatant against the Imperium invasion forces, which had captured him, but had released him on lack of any real perceived threat. This would prove to be a grave mistake on their part.

ABUBAKR THE DESPOILER

Abubakr the Despoiler began his Black Crusade against the Imperium starting in 2014, a good decade of Imperium mismanagement of Iraq; they had not wanted to seriously escalate the war, in part due to the war in Afghanistan against the cultists of Osama and Omar as wells as the brushfire wars against China and the Tyranids, not even mentioning the pacification of Latin America. The Imperium had not much of a reason to be focusing on this front in particular.

And yet that would change, as the Black Crusade began to gain steam, invading Syria to expel the Israelis that had already committed genocide against the Palestinians and the Lebanese, and were now fighting against other Chaos Cults in Syria. These chaos cults were in direct opposition to Abubakr at first, but soon saw the rising power of the Black Legion, his preferred name for his army. Those Chaos Champions that joined him were given high ranking in the Legion; those that resisted were slaughtered and their followers killed to summon demons.

The Imperium only realized their mistake in neglecting Iraq far later than they should have; Demonic creatures from the depths of the Tempest itself began attacking their deployments in Iraq and in the Arabian peninsula. Reporters from the Imperium's news agencies were captured and tortured for daring to defile their holy land.

The Black Legion made a point of recording the brutal rituals where they sacrificed civilians and captives to the Ruinous Powers; they rivalled the depraved acts of the Italians in their intensity and bloodshed. These recordings were put onto Imperium data networks and then shown to the public via cultists embedded deep within the Imperium (most of whom were already there before the rise of the Black Legion but swore their allegiance to Abubakr after he became as powerful as he did). This campaign of terror made the High Lords of Columbia worried, which little did in these times.

Many wanted to launch another Exterminatus upon Iraq and Syria, but this was struck down as possibly aiding Saddam, where the entire act would become in effect a mass sacrifice to the Dark Lord. Additionally, such was deemed too close to Israel and their Middle Eastern allies, who risked destruction in such a scenario. In this case, the Black Legion would have to be defeated conventionally.

Millions upon millions of Imperium troops began surging into Iraq, eager to defeat this new foe. The battles were as bloody as the first and second invasions of the country. It seemed as if the future only held more murder and death.

THE CULT OF THE EMPEROR

The reverence of the Emperor as a Deity is only natural, given his clear power and care for America and its peoples. He is the one who gives light to the oppressed and hell to the demon, the enemy of evil and the epitome of good. With his rise to the status of elected monarch of the American nation, his followers revered him as the greatest of Americans and the greatest that the human species had to offer.

The high priest of this growing cult was a man by the name of Saint William, to be distinguished from the previous Elected Monarch William who preceded the rise of the Emperor. Saint William, a member of the House of Daley, the premier aristocratic family of the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois, was appointed by the Emperor to secure his divine rule over the nation. After the Sundering, Saint William announced that the Emperor had given him edicts to preach to the rest of the world, to all the faithful to their one true deity. These tenets were:

· That the Emperor was once a man who walked among his fellow Americans, and is the epitome of their potential.
· The Emperor is the one true savior of the American nation, no matter the beliefs of previous Americans.
· It is the obligation of all Americans to be wary of psychics and mutants, and to hate those who do not follow the Emperor with righteous anger.
· All Americans are created equal and have their own place in the Emperor's divine plan.
· Unquestioning obedience is required by the faithful to the High Lords of Columbia and the Military-Industrial Complex, who speak in his name.

Every day, throughout the nation, the people of America give their thanks by saluting the flag, the great Imperial double eagle with the Revolutionary shield surrounded by a plethora of stars, with their sacred Pledge of Allegiance, a prayer authored and required by the Imperial Cult:




At every public occasion, at the beginning of every workday, and at the beginning of school for every child of the nation, the pledge is said, facing the holy banners of the Imperium in every room, with the shrines to the Emperor in every little village.

On more special occasions, the Cult, necessitates the singing of the Aquiline Banner, the national anthem of the Imperium, that is a more heartfelt paen to the cause of the Emperor. It sings of the righteousness of the soldiers of the Imperium and the holy cause that the Emperor represents, reminding all of his neverending leadership:



These prayers are those said on the days devoted solely to work and to service; there are other prayers for meals and for births, for deaths and for funerals, all of which continue to occur under the Emperor's watch. There are prayers for all things, the most elaborate occurring when a citizen of the Imperium plead to the Internet to grant them some of the Emperor's divine knowledge. The rites of the Internet are long and complicated, as it is a creation of the Emperor himself. A request for information may not be authorized; if it is, it is a cause for great jubilation, with entire cities thronging upon the fulfillment of a request.


AGENCIES OF THE FAITH


The labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Imperium has not one, but several agencies devoted to upholding the one true faith of the Imperium. These different agencies monitor and excoriate one another for the slightest hint of heresy; such fanaticism can easily be a mask for the worship of a lord of Chaos. These agencies are myriad, and all watch over American families to make sure their rites are pure and just.

The National Soteriological Agency (NSA) is responsible for the monitoring of the usage of the Internet among civilians, both in the navigation of craft and the acquisition of information from the Emperor. The NSA ensures that proper rites are undertaken in all instances of usage, so that the Emperor's greatest creation may continue to exist unimpeded by the tarnishing of heresy. All queries for information go through the NSA's scanners; if they are deemed impure, the poor soul who dared rebel in such a manner will be executed as a heretic.

The Department of Human Salvation (DHS) is a more proactive agency, which serves to prevent the influences of foreign or demonic intelligences in the bounds of the Imperium. Occasionally, spies in the service of foreign powers, such as China or the European Caravan Cities, or the servants of any of the Ruinous Powers or the Cults of Chaos that inhabit benighted lands, will attempt to gain footholds in the lands of the Imperium, and from there attempt to overthrown the Emperor himself. The task of the DHS is to prevent the downfall of the true deity of mankind.

The Federal Bureau of the Inquisition (FBI) is dedicated to expunging the various forms of heresy that arise amongst the Emperor's own citizens who dare to rebuke his grace. These cultists, often of the bizarre and evil Republican faith, tend to rise up in areas that are disaffected with the realm of the noble and instead turn to the followers of those like Bush.
The FBI has conducted raids on widespread proselytizers of heretical faiths, such as Trump, O'Reilly, Buchanan, Beck, and Coulter, who dare stray from the holy path.

The Central Investigator of Apostasy (CIA) is the foreign arm of investigation of heresy, and is charged with discovering the secrets of enemy cults and powers that dare trouble the Imperium. The CIA is tasked with going abroad and feeding information regarding the various enemy powers of the Imperium and their inner workings, to possibly prevent the rise of a major threat to the Imperium's very being.

VLADIMIR THE CONQUEROR

Even before Mashkadov's Folly in Chechnya, the supreme leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, was a man who was known as a strongman, a leader of the highest caliber that rivalled that of Stalin, the last great leader of his nation. The release of the classified Soviet psychic weaponry that created the Orks transformed him, like anyone else unfortunate to live in the former Eastern Bloc, into one of the horrifying Greenskinned creatures that began to attack Europe and China.

Even in a bloodlusted rage, Putin desired power, and he received that in spades by those who believed him to be a strong leader of an independent Russia. Putin easily defeated the other Orks running around Moscow and its environs, eventually taking control of all European Russia, from Murmansk to Makhachkala, from Arkhangelsk to Nalchik. From there, he ordered his armies to destroy the rebellious Ukrainian Ork republic, and added its significant resources to his armies.

Throughout all of this, Putin grew in strength and began to signal his power to all the Ork hordes, which began to grow subservient to him due to the dominant psychic power that he emanated. Lukashenko of Belarus soon swore his allegiance to Putin, and later the other nations of the former Eastern Bloc began to know the rightful leader of their kind. The former powers of the Communist Faith were now encapsulated in Putin's grasp and might.

During his conquests, the assaults on Europe continued unimpeded; the Orks' endless desire for slaughter was forever fulfilled by the war against the European Union and against the Chaos Champions of the former Yugoslavia, as well as those in the Caucasus. Soon, though, Putin and his brood began to seek conquest elsewhere. The Ork Republic of United Russia only controlled up to Orenburg and Syktyvkar in the east; there would have to be new conquests.

Into cities such as Chelyabinsk and Yekaterinburg, Perm and Surgut, Kurgan and Tyumen, Omsk and Tomsk, Novosibirsk and Kemerovo, the Orks under Putin marched to take control of their rightful territory, or so Putin claimed. Some Ork republics resisted, and they were slaughtered unceremoniously. Still others came into the fold, where they were given high positions in the realms of Vladimir the Conqueror, as he was beginning to be known. Those that did resist were dealt with brutally; the city of Abakan was laid waste with a nuclear weapon as the Ork chief of the Republic of Khakassia refused to submit.

By 2014, the United Russian orks had made their way to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Komsomolsk, and Anadyr; the entirety of the former Russia, indeed the whole former Eastern Bloc, was at their disposal. The Orks that laid waste to Mongolia and the northern parts of China were left to that task, for there was no reason to let the Chinese obliterate their eastern holdings; similar attacks on Europe were also permitted. However, Vladimir the Conqueror saw on the horizon a confrontation with another enemy: the Imperium of America.

AN IMPERIUM BESIEGED

The Imperium of America had arrived in Japan and by proxy the rest of East Asia to fight the Chinese and thereby prevent them from taking control of valued American allies such as the previously mentioned Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. The effective Cold War that had ensued in the region between the Imperium and the Chinese had created a highly defended set of territories when their western borders were concerned. The northern border of this territory, namely that of the Japanese island of Hokkaido, was less defended; no VOYNAAAGH had been expected by the Imperium’s general staff that would affect them in any significant capacity.

Vladimir the Conqueror knew this and used it to his advantage; the Orks, from their base on the island of Sakhalin, had launched a massive invasion of Hokkaido, destroying the paltry defenses of the Imperial Guard and Minutemen that had been deployed there, anticipating something far smaller in scope. The sheer speed of reproduction of the Orks had been to their benefit, for they had outnumbered the defenders ten to one. To cement their conquest, the Orks used a nuclear bomb on the city of Sapporo, the largest city of the island and its capital city.

This was not the only point of Vladimir the Conqueror’s invasion; the Orks also took off from the base in Anadyr, in the far eastern domain of Chukotka, and landed on the Seward peninsula in the state of Alaska. Destroying cities such as Barrow, they made their horrific crusade eastward. Alaskan guard brigades, leftover from the pacification of Canada, were immediately scrambled to block the Ork advance into the Alaskan wilderness. However, the small force there had not been enough; by the time the Canadian deployments were called to Alaska, the Orks had already sacked Anchorage and Fairbanks, the two largest cities in the state.

From there, the Orks made their way to Juneau, the state capital. The Imperium’s troops fortified the city, supported by deployments from Washington State, Oregon, California, and the western provinces and territories of Canada, turned the city into a fortress not like that of Harbin. The Orks responded to such a gesture by dropping nuclear bombs all around the city, destroying the Imperial garrison. The Orks, now personally commanded by Vladimir the Conqueror, were now heading southward, towards Vancouver.

ACCESSION OF LORDSHIP

Upon the ascension of the Emperor to the highest office of the Imperium of America, he saw the need to cut down on the truly labyrinthine bureaucracy that had governed the country since the end of the war with Adolf the Mad and Hideki the Vicious. It was said, and completely justly, that nobody knew how many laws were in effect throughout the nation, so vast was its legal code. The Emperor saw the redundancy and utter futility in such bureaucracy and began to centralize it for the good of all.

The Emperor, with his cult led by Saint William at the head, installed the new government by abolishing the old government. The High Lords of Columbia, named for their operation in Holy Columbia, the nation's capital city, were now the oligarchs of the vast nation; the former electoral system was deemed to be too chaotic for a nation of so many millions. These lords would rule in their steed.

Originally, between the Bush Heresy and the Sundering, there was a semblance of democracy in the Imperium; the nation's Congress existed and had some real power. The Supreme Court, likewise, existed and was theoretically capable of deciding cases that affected government policy. The Emperor saw the need for a guided democracy, one that would allow the continuation of some vestige of popular sovereignty.

This was not to pass with the Sundering, which rendered the Emperor incapacitated and eternally on life support. Upon the crippling of the deity, the forces of the Military-Industrial Complex, led by Fabricator General David Petraeus, marched into Holy Columbia and dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court, saying that a state of emergency was in session and thusly such organizations could not be in session. This was less than democratic; even at the present, more than a decade later, electoral democracy has not resumed in any way.

THE HIGH LORDS OF COLUMBIA

There are twelve High Lords of Columbia, all of whom are high ranking individuals in the Imperium of America. Each of them has dominion over a single conduct of the Imperium's business. Some are religious, some are military, and others control other fields. All of them serve in the name of the Emperor, now comatose, and have pledged to govern the Imperium fairly and continue the fight in the name of the Imperial Cult. The High Lords of Columbia meet in the old Capitol building in Holy Columbia; from there, power emanates.

Currently, David Petraeus, the Fabricator General of the Military-Industrial Complex, and Colin Powell, the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard, serve as representatives of the majority of the military. Vernon Clark serves as the Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy.

The Imperial Church has significant representation; Saint William of the House of Daley is a High Lord, as is Hillary Clinton, the Abbess of the Sisters of Battle, the armed wing of the Church. In addition to the two seats that it possesses, other high priests often address the High Lords, leading them in services to worship the Emperor. There are two Saints Jonathan and John that are common upon the Capitoline Hill; one of the House of Stewart and one of the House of Oliver. Further, a court jester by the name of Saint Stephen often amuses the High Lords, imitating the enemies of the Imperium in gross caricatures.

To maintain a semblance of democracy, the Supreme Justice of the Imperium, now John Roberts, is a High Lord, as is High Treasurer Benjamin Bernanke. The master of the Internet, Samuel Bodman, is represented as well. The Superior Merchant, Donald Evans, is another member of the High Lords. These represent the civilian component of the High Lords.

Security of the Imperium is of the utmost importance; the remaining three High Lords are from various security institutions. Michael Chertoff is the head of the Department of Human Salvation with a seat, as does Michael Hayden, the director of the National Soteriological Agency. Rounding out the list is Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of the Inquisition.

THE REIGN OF BLOOD

Saint William of Chicago, of the House of Daley, despite his current holding of the title of highest priest of the Imperial Cult, was not always the leader. In 2007 he had retired from the position to assume other duties in the Imperium; the post subsequently fell to Saint Keith of New York, of the House of Olbermann.

The appointment of Saint Keith was seen by many as the solidification of a trend of religious radicalism that had been sweeping the Ecclesiarchy; the various wars against the enemies of the Imperium had brought many to unwavering faith in the Emperor. Many criticized them for seeing heresy where there was none; more traditional members of the Ecclesiarchy considered them to be radicals that would divide, rather than unite, a besieged Imperium.

Saint Keith subsequently began writing tracts against what he had deemed to be evil among the Imperium; these included established members of the Imperial bureaucracy such as Sanford Bishop, Charles Schumer, and Zell Miller, all of whom were not "pious enough" to "remain among the living in the Emperor's realm."

Taking a proactive approach that had been unprecedented under Saint William, Saint Keith assembled his own army of fanatics under the command of the Ecclesiarchy that would go across the territories of the Imperium to root out every last taint of heresy, independent of the various agencies already in existence.

In great cities of the Imperium wide bloodshed broke out, deluging the Imperium in religious fanaticism that was appalling even to the majority of the Imperium bureaucracy. Saint Keith was widely denounced as a radical and a tyrant who ignored the words of the Emperor and a heretic in his own right.

By 2008 the Minutemen perceived that this madness had gone on for far too long. Various chapters of Minutemen from throughout the nation converged on Billings, Montana, where Saint Keith was conducting his purge, and besieged him in the town. While this siege drew on, the Captain General of the Custodial Legion, the personal bodyguards of the Emperor, Mark Sullivan, approached the leader of the bodyguards of Saint Keith, Saint Rachel, and took her to the Emperor's chamber in Holy Columbia. It is unknown what transpired in the Oval Chamber, but Saint Rachel came out of that meeting having turned against Saint Keith's folly.

She returned to Billings on the side of the Imperium's loyalists, and confronted Saint Keith in the middle of the city. When he was locked in duel with her, and began to fail, he made the famous utterance "I don't have time to die; I'm too busy!" before she felled him.

THE REFORMED ECCLESIARCHY AND THE SISTERS OF BATTLE

The High Lords of Columbia summoned Saint William, now fighting in Afghanistan as a warrior-priest, to Holy Columbia to resume his position of the High Priest of the Imperial Church. There, it was agreed that the Ecclesiarchy would be forbidden from possessing "men under arms" to prevent another Reign of Blood, as the last year's unpleasantness had been deemed.

However, Saint William saw a pressing need for even more faithful to fight in the wars against rising Chaos militancy in the Middle East, and began to look for ways to skirt around this ban. The solution was found in the ambiguous wording in the edict prohibiting an ecclesiarchical army; it prohibited men under arms, but it said nothing about women under arms. Hence was the foundation of the Sisters of Battle.

When the Sisters of Battle was founded, the Military-Industrial Complex, by far the most influential single entity within the Imperium's bureaucracy, was willing to allow this new force to exist so long as it was serving the goals of the Complex. As part of the allowance of this entity existing, Hillary Clinton, a longstanding member of the Imperial bureaucracy, was to be made the Abbess of the Sisters. Saint William agreed to this measure.

Subsequently the Sisters of Battle were deployed into Afghanistan and Iraq very quickly, and served as reminders to the Imperial Guard and Minutemen that the God-Emperor still looked upon them as their fearless leader, even in a necrotic state. These women became known as the daughters of the Emperor, so loyal and so pious were they. The followers of the Dark Gods truly began to fear them.

A COLD WAR IN AFRICA

As it was in many parts of Africa, South Africa and its neighbors to the north had been wracked by Chaos Cultists had had been inspired by the actions of Osama's cultists in the Sundering and were attempting to overthrow mundane secular governments. Subsequently, South Africa had to be at high alert lest the forces of Chaos attempt to destroy it and establish their own twisted necropolises as shrines to the Ruinous Powers.

One by one, African nations either fell into disorder after fighting off Chaos Cultists or were annexed by the Chinese, eager for soldiers and materiel to use in their war against their own enemies, be they Chaotic, American, or Ork. First the Chinese enlisted the help of those in the middle part of the continent, but then they moved southward, taking in Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana; South Africa simply did not have the resources to fund an entire front against Chaos.

The People's Liberation Army then rooted out any trace of Chaos cultism that it could find in these countries, sometimes uncomfortably close to the South African border. The South Africans responded by making their own excursions into Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, and Namibia, but all of these found more solace with serving Beijing rather than Pretoria.

South Africa therefore found itself in a precarious position between irrelevance and Chinese dominance. In the name of "internal security," the country annexed Swaziland and Lesotho, integrating them as provinces. Secondly the South African military was expanded substantially, and deployed to Madagascar, another country not yet in one camp or the other (it would eventually throw in its lot with the Chinese). The South Africans indeed needed another ally, and to do so they would look to the west.

THE IMPERIUM IN AFRICA

The leader of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, sent an embassy to Holy Columbia to discuss with the High Lords of Columbia the possibility of a formal military alliance between the Imperium and South Africa. The Imperium was most interested; the South Africans would very well be a counterweight to the Chinese in Africa, and one that could hold its own militarily. This was something that the Military-Industrial Complex in particular found worthwhile.

However, the Imperium refused to annex the country, on the grounds that it would escalate the conflict with the Chinese to a strategically undesirable level; the fight in the Middle East against Chaos was the first priority. South Africa would therefore not join the ranks of Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines; South Africa was more useful in its independence than in servitude to Holy Columbia.

Once this was announced the Chinese used their contacts already existing in the African National Congress, the ruling party of the country and that which backed Zuma, to begin agitating for regime change. The Chinese had long been interested in the Congress, as it could very well bring the country into the Chinese sphere of influence. Partisan rioting broke out in cities like Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Port Elizabeth, and Zuma had no choice but to deploy the military. In doing so, he inadvertently let Chaos cults, before then suppressed by the military, run rampant throughout his country.

From there, South Africa descended into civil war, between pro- and anti-Zuma factions, Chaos cultists, and the South African military. The Imperium seriously considered an intervention, but the situation in the Middle East was deemed too important. As such, South Africa was now another war zone.

AN IMPERIUM FALTERING

The invasion of Alaska and later British Columbia by the Ork Vladimir Putin and the United Russian Republic sent deep worries throughout the minds of the High Lords of Columbia. This was the first time that the Imperium had been invaded in two centuries. Now that Vancouver was in the hands of the Orks, the Imperium was in for a reckoning.

The dead orks that dotted the landscape of Alaska and British Columbia quickly released the spores to grow more Orks, which subsequently began growing and manufacturing their own weapons from the scrap metal of destroyed or abandoned Imperium weapons. Both the Minutemen and the Imperial Guard had some success against the Ork hordes, but nevertheless the siege of Vancouver was a horrifying Ork victory. Subsequently, the Orks attacked cities like Victoria, Kelowna, and Abbotsford, before making their way down to the largest city in the northwest of the Imperium homeland: Seattle.

As the Siege of Seattle went on, the Imperium forces in the Middle East were becoming increasingly pounded by the ever growing Black Legion, the followers of the Chaos Champion Abubakr the Despoiler, the former acolyte of Khorne that demanded the expulsion of the Americans and their allies and the establishment of a "Unified Dominion of Chaos" that would stretch throughout the nations of the Middle East, and from there would assume control of the entire planet, and offer its people as a sacrifice to the entirety of the gods of Chaos.

Group after group in a fractured Middle East began swearing their allegiance to Abubakr, who commanded a formidable force that was doing significant damage against the forces of the Imperium. In 2014, a truly vast army, larger than any ever seen, surrounded the city of Baghdad, the capital of the Imperium-controlled Iraq, and began pounding it with artillery and the summoned demons that arose from the portals called forth by Abubakr himself. Soon, more and more cities throughout the Middle East fell to the Black Legion

Becoming only more desperate, the Imperium ordered a retreat of all of its forces in the Middle East, Afghanistan included, to the city of Jerusalem, where they would make a final stand against the Black Legion. Soon enough, the demons and the cultists came, and began a battle biblical in proportions. This battle has raged on for years.

As if that was not enough, the Chinese felt emboldened enough to strike at Taiwan, landing an invasion force on the island's western coast. More Chinese forces swarmed into South Korea, seizing Seoul and Incheon. Still more from Vietnam landed on the Philippines, where they were met with the faltering Imperium and the Tyranids on Mindanao, who had already landed on Luzon.

And, in this time of ending, or so it seemed, the Imperium's engineers told the High Lords of Columbia something that horrified them, that spelled doom for the Imperium.

The Marble Throne was failing.

ESCHATON

Samuel Bodman, the master of the Internet, made his case to the High Lords that the technology used to create the Marble Throne, which allowed the Internet to perform its task by guiding ships throughout the Tempest, was failing. What was worse was that records relating to its construction were lost in the Reign of Blood.

The High Lords were understandably horrified by this, but no matter what the techpriests of the Military-Industrial Complex tried to do, the Throne would not come back to life. The Emperor would die, was the verdict. The Imperium would fall.

With the Chinese and Black Legion and Orks and Tyranids all at the battlefields within the Imperium, it became clear that so many years' worth would now come to fail in at most two years.

All the High Lords could do was pray and fight.