Timeline

Timeline

M22: The Cracks Show
The gradual rise of the Terran-Martian Federation halts as a combination of complacency, alien incursions, Eldar decadence, and untrustworthy machine intelligences frays the structure and unity of human culture.  The isolated regions of space that would eventually become Cloudburst enjoy initial stability, as close ties to each other’s economies and secure technological bases thanks to Martian ingenuity prevent some of the political damage from spreading that far from Terra.
M23: The Rise of Iron
The uprising of the Iron Men in the future Cloudburst Sector was as thorough and destructive as it was elsewhere in human space.  Entire planets simply vanished as nanite weapons swallowed them up.  Corers, employed to teleport or collapse the hearts of planets, destroyed several worlds, while unbreaking legions of robots marched through human cities, rendering them lifeless.  Eight hundred years of non-stop war followed, with no hope in sight.
M24: The Foundations Crumbled First
Through the work of a coalition of alien and human factions prevailed over the Iron Men, new problems followed quickly.  Hedonism and Godlessness among the Eldar saw to the beginning of their race’s decline, and the psychic distortions of their conduct ensured the increase in the expression of latent psyker genes in humankind and Orks.  The birthrate of human Psykers and Ork Weirdboys rose sharply, and whole worlds that survived the tides of Iron Men fell into the Warp, while others were stripped of life by Enslaver and Ps incursions.  Some human worlds, including the most dogmatic Forge Worlds, survived the anarchy, but not enough.
M25: The Federation Dies
Though fixing an exact date on the event is impossible, at some point in this millennium, the Terran-Martian Federation died, as millions of human worlds sloughed into the darkness.  Ignorance, fear, anguish, superstition, tribalism, hate, and bitterness claimed a quadrillion souls, and Mankind as a whole and righteous force in the Galaxy died.  Shortly thereafter, Old Night descended in earnest, as the continuing decay of the Eldar accelerated the fall of their less psychically-stable human allies.  Abandoned by their former friends, humanity turned on itself.  A thousand-thousand pocket kingdoms and empires formed and burned as the human race cut its throat.
The worlds of the future Cloudburst were crippled by the collapse of the Federation.  Lacking stable Webway access, dependent on imports, and stripped of both their psychic and robotic support, the humans of the later Sector were teetering on the brink.  The final blow came from the heavens, as the radioactive remains of a long-gone supernovae began to wash over several older nebulae and black holes in the region, scattering lethal waves of radiation and atoms over several human Agri-systems, rendering them unsuitable for agriculture.  Eighty percent of human worlds in the future Sector had driven themselves to extinction within six thousand years, and most of the surviving worlds fell prey to alien enslavement forces.
M26-M29: Old Night
The terror of this age is thankfully lacking in detail in much of Cloudburst records.  Unfortunately, records of human worlds beyond Cloudburst are not so lacking.  They tell of a vast, vile, and terrifying force of strange aliens, described by witnesses as ‘floating ropes’ and ‘tendrils of hate and hunger’ that drifted down from artificial moons and took the souls of those who couldn’t flee fast enough.  Other threats are more quantifiable, such as records of ‘great green brutes,’ clearly Orks, and ‘lithe, psychic un-men with guns that fired agony and confusion,’ probably Eldar pirates, killing humans out of boredom.  More obscure references exist to beings that Inquisitorial scholars have tentatively identified as either Slaugth or Rangda, neither of which still exist in huge numbers in Imperial space.  Most perplexing are the references to great floating eyes made of black and purple gas, which would extend teeth from holes that opened in their white surfaces, impale people, and pull out something blue and noisome, before disappearing and leaving paralyzed husks of men behind.
Oddly, the more bizarre alien forms seem to disappear from the records of the dead worlds and primitive cultures of the Cloudburst Circuit before the end of Old Night.  The lack of any obviously Chaotic demons outside of a few specific cases is also puzzling to the Holy Ordos, since a world that close to the Eldar Empire and that far from Terra would have been hugely vulnerable to daemonic incursion.
Regardless of the individual causes, the human civilizations of the future Sector were all dead and gone, reverted to barbarism, or enslaved by M29, and would remain that way for varying lengths of time.
M30: New Light
When the birth of the Dark God Slaneesh broke the Warp Storms that had wracked the galaxy for so long, no human forces remained in Cloudburst to exploit it.  Though over a hundred worlds still had either a few inbred remains of former colonies or cave-dwelling primitives left alive, most were still enslaved or dead when the Warp became navigable once more.  On Terra, the rise of the Emperor to prominence over the forces of the Techno-barbarians is well-documented, as he forged an Empire from the scraps of humanity’s cradle.  When the Great Crusade surged past the Eye of Terror and into the region known now as the Oldlight Exo-zone, they found horrors that nearly consumed them all.
From the dark, whispers came.  Rogue Traders Militant – hardly friends of the Emperor – reported that some of their number were gone, destroyed by odd alien pirates.  The Expeditionary Fleets eventually moved into the region and began settling it, despite the navigation problems lent by the dimness of the Astronomican.  In M30.859, however, whole worlds began to disappear in the wake of these Fleets.  Recalls were sounded, and the Fleets returned, only to be slaughtered by Rangdan vessels.  These terrifying cerbovores set upon the Imperium like wild animals, and ripped billions of brains from their human cattle.
The Emperor led elements of seven Legions of Space Marines, ten Titan Legions, massive forces of the Taghmata and Skitarii, the Ordo Reductor, two million elite Solar Auxilia and another three million Imperial Army conscripts, four hundred Custodes, and two thousand Sisters of Silence into battle against the monsters.  Just before the turn of the century, the last of the Rangda weare killed, their Slaugth slaves (or owners) were killed off to the last known subject, and the Oldlight Exo-zone all but abandoned.  Hundreds of star systems were rendered barren of all life by the weapons employed in the conflict, and several unrelated alien worlds also died off as the Emperor unshackled the Labyrinth of Night.

M31: Rebellion
When the Horus Heresy began, it began quickly.  Little of the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit was colonized prior to the outbreak of the Heresy, and what little was colonized declared for the Warmaster.  The intense fighting that characterized the fratricide of the era passed the Circuit by, perhaps for the long-term betterment of the sector.  When the one world in the sector to decisively take a side, Fathon Prime, elected to hide from the Imperium after the fighting was over, the last significant signs of human activity in the region died down.

M31-M33: The Dark Quiet
The Oldlight-Proximate Circuit maintained the quiet and the peace of the grave, for over two thousand years.  What few human worlds remained in the Circuit had either thrown off their alien enslavers and promptly fallen apart, or died off completely, after being overlooked by the Crusade’s many thousands of fleets.  Extensive evidence recovered from underground reveals that Oglith, Gorkypark, and possibly Nauphry were visited by a Waaagh! at some point during this period, but that mass of greenskins is long gone.
Techpriests of Mars, exiling themselves for the desire to make flesh-indistinguishable augmetics instead of naked steel ones, settled on Cognomen in this time.

M34: We Happy Schismatic
Cognomen stands alone.  Despite some very small colonization efforts in what would later become the Hapster Subsector, most human residents of the Circuit have either died off or live on Cognomen.  Unbeknownst to Cognomen, however, some few dozen worlds in the enormous Circuit, including Fathon Prime, actually did still exist under human control, or at least human population and alien control.  The only Imperial world outside Hapster at this point besides Cognomen, the Frontier World of Hangonne, on the border between Drumnos and the Circuit, was effectively a Drumnos world despite being inside what would later be Cloudburst.  Slowly, the number of worlds in the Hapster Subesctor grew to the low dozens, but the physical barriers of Warp energy, radioactive clouds, and thick asteroid clusters that appeared on no map prevented Hapster from expanding to trailing.

M35: Nova Terra
The Nova Terra Interregnum and the spike in power of the Adeptus Ministorum did not scar the future Cloudburst Sector as it did much of the rest of space.  Although the Hapster Subsector has some scrapes, mostly varying bands of Frateris Militia and Templars doing battle against each other over doctrinal disputes.  The Mechanicus of Cognomen and the settlers of Hangonne find themselves siding with Terra and Mars, and thus spared reprisal violence.
The rising tide of the Ecclesiarchy, and their return to prominence following the Ophelia relocation, brought faith to the fore in the Hapster subsector.  Wars erupted between the faithful, as they often do, but the sector itself was reintegrated into the Imperium after the battles between the faithful ended.

M36: An Era of Blood
The rise of the Era of Blood and the crippling effects of the cruel career of Goge Vandire are well documented, and need not be chronicled here.  The aftermath of the Nova Terra Interregnum, the Reign of Blood, and the Plague of Unbelief in succession, with two Black Crusades in the same period, kept the Imperium from exploiting its true power, and from reaching the heights of prosperity that they should have attained.  The reforms of Sebastian Thor at least ensured at the Imperium survived the madness of his predecessor.  When the wave of reformation reached Hapster, the fervor and degree of selfless devotion that Thor preached rang true in the hearts of the weary faithful.  Eventually, the violence between the worlds of Hapster subsided.

M37: Whispers of Change
M37.039: Uprisings Thwarted –  The daemon cult that dwelled on Oglith is driven off by a circle of human psykers, who then turn on each other, ensuring that all human life on Oglith dies off within four years.
M37.040: The Pirates’ Life –  The Voidlife pirate flotilla successfully robs Hapster’s orbitals of billions of Thrones of tithe goods.  The Imperial Planetary Governor is promptly executed for failing to prevent this, while the full force of the Battlefleet Subsector Hapster chases the pirates to the edge of the Naxos Sector, destroying four ships and losing the rest of the Voidlives in the Raoclos Nebular Cluster.  Only a few million Thrones’ worth of cargo and salvage are recovered.
M37.077: The Taint of Nurgle – The Rot Soul Brigade, a Traitor Guardsman brigade of light armor, appears from the Pox Ring Warp Storm in the heart of the Corumbino Nebula in the Naxos Sector.  Setting off on a hijacked Imperial Tithe barge, the Rot Souls make their way trailing, infecting over a dozen planets with the poison of sedition and the poison of Nurgle alike.  In the end, over eighty Space Marines and two thousand Guardsmen are needed to finally kill the Rot Souls on the scarred battlefields of Barda’s Shield, only five light years from Fabique.  This is not the final appearance of the Rot Souls in the history of Naxos and the Circuit, as they return twice over to plague the Imperium once more.
M37.104: A Theft – A horde of Orks descends on the Imperial Fortress World of Coriolis in the hope of looting it of its vast stockpiles of cruise missiles.  Valiant Imperial Guard and local PDF armies drive the aliens off, losing an insignificant eight hundred missiles.
M37.243: The Dark Lights – A ripple of Warp Energy from the shrinking Warp Rifts from the heart of the Corumbino Nebula disrupts a long-dormant Webway Gate floating in the cold space of the Nebula.  Dozens of silent Dark Eldar ships slip into the region, seeking flesh and souls for the Dark City.
M37.247: Sudden Horror – A flight of Dark Eldar Kabal ships appear in the night over the Imperial military capital of Arnopax in the Lucern system of the Naxos Sector, abducting tens of thousands of Imperial military family members from their beds, never to be seen again.
M37.787: Expanding Sights – The world of Forender is formally colonized by the Administratum in the Hapster Subsector, only for the colonists to all immediately be uprooted again as the first wave’s Techpriests locate massive metal structures mere feet below the surface of the spot selected for the world’s first power plant.  After being castigated for having missed it completely, the priests hasten to assure the Administratum that there could be no more.  Two years later, the colony erupts into a vicious civil war as a Mechanicus force investigating these metal structures goes completely mad, and turns their war-servitors on the farmers.
M37.971: The Scouring of Pholemnos – At the same time that the world of Pholemnos in the Gothic Sector is scoured of mutant life at the hands of an anti-Tzeentch Inquisition task force, four other Tzeentch cults in the undercities of Hapster are purged, hoping to distract the Change God with the simultaneous losses.  Tzeentch watches in amusement at the petty Imperial efforts, and promptly dispatches a Thousand Sons cruiser to assault the Inquisitorial staging area, killing thousands.

M38: A Tense Time
M38.090: Blood Sun – An army of Khornate daemons abruptly assaults the Imperial Shrine World of Larodar 4 on the border between the Naxos Sector and the Hapster Subsector, killing over a billion humans in an orgy of blood and terror.  A Grey Knights task force arrives two months later, to find the daemon army gone, and the surviving population teetering on the brink of outright heresy in their despair at the Emperor not having sent his Angels to aid them.
M38.402: Strength of Arms – Lord Fabricator Richardson of Cognomen formally petitions to have the edict against raising a Titan Legion raised by Mars.  No response is forthcoming from the Red Planet, so Lord Fabricator Richardson quietly begins organizing the planetary militia in the form of his very own Taghmata.  Declared Heretek Inculpa Belisarius by the Ordo Machina of the Inquisition, he barely escapes from Cognomen with his life, and spends the next two years fleeing from the Inquisition, before being caught and killed by a strike team of Stormtroopers on Fabique.
M38.560: Looking Outward – The Forge World of Fabique completes a four hundred year long manufacturing project and establishes the Grand Docks.  This massive, incterconnected network of orbital platforms, dry-docks, berthing yards, temples, low-G tube-trans trains, satellites, and metallurgical factories allows for Fabique to construct any Imperial hull class smaller than 14 kilometers, and can dock vessels up to twice that size for refits or repairs.  Higher in the world’s orbit, Fabique orders a large space station built into a convenient asteroid, named the Star Gilt.  Home to a huge coaching house and auction hall, the station becomes the hub of nearly all major Rogue Trader activity in the Naxos Sector, just as the Fabique Explorators had hoped.  Fabique is able to buy vast sums of archaeotech and other materiel from returning Rogue Traders at the auction houses, without any risk to themselves.
M38.612: An Unheralded Arrival – Future Archmagos Explorator Justin MacDonald finishes his training on Cognomen, and joins the crew of a senior Explorator on their search for a safer Warp route between Cognomen and the Drumnos Sector.
M38.799: Frothing Disease – Thousands of Nurglite cultists disembark from camouflaged barges and troopships onto the surface of Limmerdine, and the world turns from a pastoral wilderness paradise to a festering hell of plague and death.  Cities run green with the melting flesh and pus-rivulets of millions of dying Imperials.  Thinking quickly, the local Ecclesiarchy and Munitorum press the entire planetary population into a single vast militia, and march seventeen million citizen-soldiers into the force of Nurglites.  By sheer weight of numbers, the Chaotic warriors are overrun and defeated, but the world’s recovery will take over five thousand years by the most conservative estimates.
M38.999: Claws of Hate – Cognomen, for the first time in its long history, is assaulted directly by its enemies.  The vast Ark Mechanicus Archetype is attacked in its usual patrol by a force of mixed Renegade Space Marines.  The Age of Strife-era auspexes and sensoria aboard the ancient ship are enough to see the enemy coming, and the Archetype signals for help from the planet proper as it attempts to return to the planet’s orbit.  Before help can arrive, the Archetype is boarded by the mixed force of Traitors, including Gorlabe the Unyielding, a Black Legion Terminator.  The crew of the Archetype number over one hundred thousand people, however, and put up a vicious fight against the boarders, even as the vessel crawls towards Cognomen’s defense net.  Two dozen smaller vessels, mostly Defense Monitors, rush to the aid of their flagship.  Meanwhile, the actual objective of the raid, Cognomen itself, is left all but defenseless.  Two dozen Black Legion and Word Bearer Terminators teleport to the surface of the planet, directly into the great data-library of the main Fabrication Temple Plant.  Desperate counterattacks from the local militia are unable to stop the Terminators from looting over four thousand blueprints, then setting electrical fires in the rest of the building and teleporting free.  Though the Archetype was quickly secured and Gorlabe’s forces driven off, the damage was done.  Hundreds of thousands of blueprints, some older than the Imperium, were lost forever.  Cognomen was forced to beg for fresh copies from Mars, and those copies were provided only begrudgingly, with a force of eighty thousand Skitarii along with them.  These Skitarii would form the core of the world’s bolstered defenses.

M39: A New Beginning
M39.002: A Fate-heavy Voyage – Explorator Justin MacDonald is promoted to Magos, and given command of his own ship, the Grand Cruiser Long Vision of Knowledge.  He takes off into the nebulae that surround his homeworld in search of stable Warp Routes, despite being repeatedly assured that none exist save the one the fleet originally used to colonize Cognomen, thousands of years before.
M39.004: A Fatal Error in Judgment – A collection of corrupt members of the Adeptus Arbites succeed in murdering the second in command of the Hapster Administratum and covering it up, blaming it on a visiting Deathwatch Kill-Marine.  The Marine barely escapes retribution by uncorrupted Arbites, unaware of their comrades’ corruption.
M39.009: Foreboding – The Space Hulk Mortifracture appears from out of the great clouds of radioactive gas that girdle the Cognomen system.  Initial exploration of the Hulk by the Iron Hands Chapter reveals that the entire structure of the Hulk is completely overrun with Orks, but many seem starved or malnouorished, and they do not put up a good enough fight to resist the Iron Hands’ Terminator boarding forces, which capture the Hulk for the Mechanicus.  Cognomen, however, has no records of any Orkholds close enough to contain that many Orks.
M39.010: Recidivism – A vast army of human Renegades and Traitors descends on the planet Northrop in the neightboring Drumnos Sector.  Over eighteen million of these assailants, out of twenty one million total, are eventually identified as being descendants of the Imperial prison planet St. Hobson’s Patience, which had vanished into the Warp a thousand years before.  Disturbingly, many of the original criminals are also identified as having been present for the invasion, begging the question: what could have kept them alive for so long, while leaving them time to reproduce?  The Renegade force assaults Northrop’s defenses with manic rage, and only a combined force of Salamander, Red Scorpion, Angels Vermillion, Emperor’s Nightmare, Death Lights, and Angels of Redemption Astartes, alongside over a million star-sailors of the Imperial Navy, manage to stop the incursion before the whole world is destroyed.
M39.012: The Great Discovery – To the manifest shock of the Rogue Traders, Explorators, Astrocartographers, and Navigators of Drumnos, Naxos, and the rest of the Ultima Segmentum, Explorator Magos Justin MacDonald announces that he has discovered three shirtsleeves-habitable star systems, one with three Garden Worlds in it, within a few weeks’ flight from Cognomen.  Named Triune, for the three completely unrelated primitive cultures living on it and apparently unaware of each other; Dawn-break, named for the artificial star MacDonald found crashed into the planet’s surface; and Septiim, for the ancient Terran poet and inventor of renown, the three systems had all tested as safe for immediate human habitation, and none were more than fifteen light-years from Cognomen.
M39.014: Gold Rush One – Propelled by discoveries of immense value by MacDonald’s fleet, over one hundred Rogue Trader and Explorator ships leave Fabique for the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit.
M39.015: Unease – Several dozen Rogue Trader and Explorator ships return to the Star Gilt, with words of caution on their tongues.  They spoke of dead worlds, dead ships, and whole systems of utter devastation, out in the void.  Pict-captures and solid remains of wrecked Great Crusade ships, some with Legionary markings, surface in Fabique.  After months of speculation, the Inquisition steps in.  Several more months pass, when the Inquisitors and MacDonald return from the Oldlight Exo-zone, declaring a new age of exploration and exploitation in the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit.




The Future