Topic: The most important Fluff moments?

[OD from TV]

So a friend wants me to teach him 40k, no big deal right?  Well he doesn't want to read the background fluff, but instead asked if I could briefly go over the biggest elements of the background fluff, possibly over a pint.

That got me thinking, just what exactly are the biggest moments in the fluff?  The shortlist I've thought up off the top of my head is the War in Heaven, Fall of the Eldar, the Great Crusade, the Horus Heresy, the Tyranid invasions of Mccragge and Iyanden, the War for Armageddon, and the 13th Black Crusade.

So what are the other major events am I'm forgetting that should be brought up in this discussion?

Peace
~OD

[Benis]

Well as a newcomer to the background it might be best just to explain the basic background for each army (punting the Imperium into one big explanation).

Perhaps something like (might have missed a lot...):

• Old ones: The Warp, Webways, spawning races, immortality etc.
• Necrons: Conflict with Old ones, jealousy, torch ships, C'tan, biotransference, War in Heaven, rebellion etc. 
• Eldar: The Warp, Webways, War in Heaven, slaver invasion, mastering the galaxy, the Fall, craftworlds, the paths etc.
• Chaos Daemons: Seriously the Warp, the eternal conflict, the Great Game etc.
• Dark Eldar: The Fall, Webways, Commorragh, she who thirsts, etc.
• Orks: The Old Ones, infestation, continuous war, psychic gestalt conscouisness etc.
• Imperium: The Dark Age of Technology, the Emperor, the Age of Strife, the Unification Wars, Space Marines legions, Mars, Great Crusade, Horus Heresy, the Scouring, Space Marines chapters, Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, Age of Apostasy, the Inquisition etc.
• Chaos Space Marines: Eye of Terror, Black Crusades, the Maelstrom, the Badab War, the Gothic War, the Thirteenth  Black Crusade etc.
• Tyranids: Zoats, Hivefleet Behemoth, Hivefleet Kraken, Hivefleet Leviathan etc.
• Tau: First contact, the Mont'au, the coming of the Ethereals, the Greater Good, Kroot, the Damocles Crusade, Commander Farsight, the third sphere expansion etc.

If you just want specific events you could probably drop stuff like Iyanden and the three Armageddon wars. Better in that case to flesh out stuff like Ullanor, Davin and Istvaan during the Great Crusade and the Siege of Terra and the Scouring during the Horus Heresy. The Age of Apostasy is also important when it comes to explaining why the Imperium is as it is. The rest is pretty much secluded stories that pertains mostly to a single race.

[Lachdonin]

I'd break it down into...

Old Ones, Necrons and the War in Heaven
The 'New Man' and the Age of Technology
The Age of Strife and the Fall of the Eldar
The Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy
The appearance of the Tyranids and the Rise of the Tau


Various major wars, such as Maccragge, the 3 wars for Armageddon, the black Crusades (including the Gothing War) etc are more specific details than a general primer to 40k... In fact, i found this a few months back, and have used it as a basic primer for several people. Despite a few grammar issues, it's a pretty good description of human history up until the Emperor's internment in the Golden Throne.

Warhammer 40k history

[OD from TV]

Great points Benis, doing a balanced approach of the various races is probably the best way to go.  And I can't believe I forgot about the Age of Apostasy or the Tau (heck, I use to have a Tau army).  Although knowing him and his constant desire to play things that are really rare and not always game legal (such as playing Ravnos in VtM and wanting to be Lawful Good Drow in D&D), I was thinking of skipping the Squats and Zoats conversation. 

Great find on that vid Lachdonin!  I think I can get him to muddle through the typos and grammatical errors, heck I seem to make them quite often myself and that's after getting a BA in this crazy language.  Which is good because frankly I've never been much of a Pro-Imperium type of person, so the less I have to blather on about them the better.

Thanks guys!

Peace
~OD

[Sir_Godspeed]

I'd honestly throw in the Gothic War, the invasion of Macragge, Armageddon Wars and the 13th Black Crusade for the reason that they were important events for players and were formative in establishing the feel of the fluff. Ullanor and such events may be more defining in-universe, but they're still pretty fresh (afaik) and not a lot of players have a personal feel of those events as many have to some of the other events. (for example, the Enslaver Plague might've been immensely important, but we know pretty much nothing about it).

Admittedly, it would probably be smart to preface mentions of these out-of-universe-high-profile events as being exactly that.

[Killing Time]

LORE - Warhammer 40k Lore in a Minute!

[travisb7]

Youtube video went here

Ya jerk, I was JUST about to post this! Love these one minute lore videos. Sure, leaves out quite a bit, but it is just enough to get you interested.

Good call!

[Bumbles]

Ullanor.
If the Emperor didn't quit the field at Ullanor, Chaos would never have been able to be so successful in the Traitor Uprising.
If he hadn't become so obsessed with his attempt to break into the Webway (and mess it up so horribly, even before Magnus broke the defensive wards) he'd have been there to spank Horus into place before he could do so much damage.