

Not to the predations of Xenos, but by the machinations of Heretics. In such a short period of time has your Chapter been battered again and again, before broke. Before that came the Kaurava Campaign, before that the Dark Crusade, before that.Tartarus. Three Crusades, all within Subsector Aurelia and home of the majority of your recruiting worlds over the course of twelve years. Now you sit in the latter third of the 41st Millennium atop a pile of ashes and bones. Were the Blood Ravens to be represented as a single space marine, it would be one who would more likely than not be incapable of living even if placed within a holy dreadnought. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth.
