...well welcome friends from the western 2/3rds of the United States since that seems to be what we are currently limited to at the moment.
Not all of you are very experienced in pen and paper RPGs so the goal of this site is to provide resources to help get you more familiar with them to lessen the learning curve when you start. For this first post I am just going to go into a little background on the 40k universe that our first campaign will take place in.
The universe that Dark Heresy takes place in is a bleak future in which mankind is beset by all kinds of unimaginable horrors. The Imperium of Man encompasses millions of worlds, all sworn to the service of the God Emperor who has sat motionless (but don't say he's dead) on a golden throne for 10,000 years.
Originally things had gone great for mankind. We spread all throughout the galaxy, starting colonies on a myriad of different planets. Technology was being discovered at a breakneck pace and we had just discovered warp travel. Basically warp travel allowed us to travel through another dimension to get to a far distance at incredible speeds. The only way to navigate through the warp though was through use of psykers, mutated human beings capable of tapping into the other dimension and drawing on its powers.
We spread out far and everything was wonderful, until the psykers started getting too powerful. Their abilities allowed them to start controlling people's minds and manifesting deadly energies with a single thought. This caused huge wars and uprisings and there was so much psychic disturbance that it actually created "storms" in the warp dimension. These storms blocked the psykers from seeing through the warp and thus made all warp travel impossible. Now all the colonies of man were spread out among the stars with no way to travel or even make contact with each other. This went on for thousands of years and all of the colonies developed in their own ways without any influence from each other. Technology entered a dark age where people no longer knew how to design or repair machines, and so ancient technology became highly revered. The most advanced equipment are relics from thousands of years ago, and the machines that are still capable of producing new equipment are among the most prized treasures in the galaxy.
Earth (known as Terra) was consumed in huge wars, nuking itself so many times and so badly that the oceans evaporated. Most of the surface became a barren wasteland, but enormous suborbital plates were built and cites were built on them so life on earth continued, as did the wars. Eventually one of the many warlords became exceedingly dominant. He used genetically engineered soldiers of his own design and crushed all others vying for control of the plant. He declared it his goal to rebuild the empire of man, by rejoining all the colonies of man together under one banner and banishing all superstition and religion. His hope was to bring in a new age of science and reason, at any cost.
The Emperor created genetically engineered sons to lead his genetically engineered supermen on their crusade to unite all humans, and obliterate those that resisted or were too tainted from interactions with alien races. Everything seemed great, thousands of worlds were brought to heel and it seemed like nothing could the Emperor and his Primarch sons.
Then everything went bad again. Some of the Primarchs rebelled, aligning themselves with the Emperors favorite son Horus causing a galaxy wide civil war. The traitor primarchs discovered that there were entities that were living in the warp dimension, and made bargains with them for power and glory twisting them but making them unimaginably powerful. The traitors fought all the way back to Terra and laid siege to humanities homeworld. In a final showdown the Emperor and his son Horus both managed to mortally wound each other. All the Primarchs either turned to the chaos of the warp to become demon princes, were killed, or vanished and the emperor was interred in the golden thrown. The traitor legions fled to an area of space known as the eye of terror and periodically launch raids into imperial space, still attempting to destroy that which they feel abandoned them. The emperor never moved, and a thousand lives are sacrificed daily to the golden throne to keep his psychic presence alive. The imperium now worships him as a god, and is more fanatically religious and superstitious than ever.
With the forces of mankind split, they were no longer able to press on with the crusade to unite the galaxy, and were no longer able to fend off all the hostile alien races that inhabit the galaxy. So currently the Imperium of man is a decaying yet still huge force in the galaxy which is regularly under attack from giant bug monsters, space elves, space orks, evil metal skeleton guys, demons from the warp, and their own twisted chaos space marines from the Horus Heresy. Basically it really sucks to be a human, you are most likely going to die in some horrible way, but you're cool with that as long as it doesn't also steal your soul into a screaming hellscape of perpetual misery.
The inquisition exists to protect people from the horrors of the heretics, aliens, and demons and they pursue their duty rigorously. It is not unheard of for an entire planet to be exterminated just on the possibility of a chaos taint. "It is better that a thousand innocents should die, than a single heretic go free" Or something like that, I don't have the actual quote.
You will not be playing inquisitors (at least yet) you will be playing the inquisitors lackeys. They disposable people that he sends out to gather information or die in horrible ways at the hands of some horrible monster. Live long enough though and perhaps one day you will be the one sending lackeys to die!
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