Warhammer 40K lore for beginners: five lessons for new fans

Whether you've played Space Marine 2, Dawn of War or Total War, or caught the Henry Cavill news, going to look up Warhammer 40K lore can leave you reading about a civil war from 10,000 years ago and a man who's spent most of that time sitting on a golden chair. Very accessible. So here are five condensed lore lessons I wish I'd known sooner: why there are no good guys, who the Emperor is, the warp and Chaos, the Horus Heresy, and everyone else fighting over the galaxy.

I got into Warhammer through the Vampire Wars books when I was around 19. After that I came across the Blood Angels, and Dante is still one of my favorite characters. At the time, I hadn't appreciated how dark the Imperium was. 40K is a setting with thousands of stories happening within it, and you don't need 40 years of lore to enjoy them. The Emperor's story also has a twist so ironic that I still find it slightly amusing.

Lesson one: There are no good guys in Warhammer 40K, not even the Space Marines

You've probably heard the line: in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. They weren't joking. Humanity is fighting for survival against hostile aliens and literal demons. Unfortunately, humanity's answer to all of this is the Imperium of Man, a brutal, religiously fanatical empire spanning roughly a million worlds, where human life is very cheap and the paperwork is worse.

Games Workshop has said this itself: "There are no goodies inside the Warhammer 40k universe. None, especially not the Imperium of Man." And yes, that includes the Space Marines. The enormous armored super soldiers on the boxes you see are fighting for that very same Imperium.

I still love the Blood Angels, because I think you can love a faction, and even root for them, without agreeing with everything they stand for. There are probably heroic people in 40K. That just doesn't mean the empire they're fighting for is particularly heroic.

Lesson two: The Emperor of Mankind tried to stamp out religion and became a god

The Emperor is an immortal, ridiculously powerful psyker. More than 10,000 years ago he united a war torn Earth, which is now referred to as Terra. He then crafted 20 genetically engineered demigods called primarchs, essentially his sons, but they were scattered across the galaxy before he could raise them. So he used their genetic material to create the Space Marine legions. Then he launched the Great Crusade to reclaim humanity's lost worlds, finding his sons along the way.

The Emperor believed humanity needed to abandon religion and superstition. His empire followed something called the Imperial Truth, which said there were no gods. One of his sons, Lorgar, didn't get the message. He believed his father was a god, and he started building temples and entire cities to worship him. The Emperor wasn't impressed. He ordered the Ultramarines to destroy Lorgar's beloved city, then publicly humiliated Lorgar and his whole legion. Possibly one of the worst father and son conversations in history.

Fast forward 10,000 years and the Emperor is barely alive, sustained by a massive machine called the Golden Throne, and the Imperium worships him as a god. The man who tried to stamp out religion has become the center of the biggest religion in the galaxy. Personally, I think that's both tragic and quite funny, although I suspect the Emperor probably wouldn't appreciate my joke.

Lesson three: The warp is real, and so are the four Chaos gods

What I find interesting is that there are gods in this universe. The warp is a parallel dimension of psychic energy, and humanity needs it because spaceships use it to travel faster than light. They're guided by mutants called Navigators, who have a third eye and follow a psychic lighthouse called the Astronomican, which is powered by the Emperor himself. Psykers also draw their powers from the warp: reading minds, setting people on fire, useful stuff.

But the warp is also home to demons. It reflects the emotions of living beings, such as rage, fear, despair and ambition, and those emotions feed four hugely powerful beings known as the Chaos gods. Khorne is the god of rage and bloodshed, the one behind "Blood for the blood god." Nurgle is the god of disease and decay. Tzeentch is the god of change and sorcery. Slaanesh is the god of excess and obsession.

I think what's particularly interesting is how Chaos connects the wider history of 40K. The Aeldari, for example, brought Slaanesh into existence through the excesses of their own civilization, which is a great way to ruin things. The Emperor told everyone there were no gods, and part of the idea was to keep humanity away from anything Chaos could use to corrupt them. The trouble is that the gods are very real, and they don't need you to worship them to feed on your emotions. That's unfortunate when your entire civilization is built around constant warfare and misery.

Lesson four: The Horus Heresy is why the Imperium is such a mess

When people say 30K, they mean the era roughly 10,000 years before the main 40K setting, and the Horus Heresy is why everything is such a mess. The Emperor made his favorite son, Horus, Warmaster and left him in charge of the Great Crusade. Horus was proud, and he worried that the Emperor would eventually discard his sons once their job was done. Then Chaos got involved. Horus was shown manipulated visions of the future that played directly on those fears.

In some ways, elements of Horus remind me of Morgoth, Tolkien's original dark lord: immensely powerful, but in the end brought down by pride and resentment towards a greater authority. Horus also had the Chaos gods whispering in his ear, so it's not exactly an ideal support network. I think there's something tragic about Horus, but that obviously doesn't excuse what he did.

He betrayed the Emperor, and nine of the 18 Space Marine legions followed him. The civil war that erupted killed trillions. Eventually Horus besieged Terra, and the Emperor confronted and killed him, but was mortally wounded himself and placed upon the Golden Throne. As a Blood Angels fan, the Heresy means something extra to me. Our primarch, Sanguinius, was killed by Horus, and his death still haunts the Blood Angels through the Black Rage, though that's a story for another time. Ten thousand years later, the Imperium is still broken and still fighting the same traitors.

Lesson five: Humanity shares the galaxy with the Aeldari, Necrons, Orks, T'au and Tyranids

Those traitors aren't even the only threat. There's a lot more to 40K than Space Marines fighting Chaos. The galaxy is full of other civilizations, and the Imperium calls them xenos. First are the Aeldari, the ancient psychic race whose excesses gave birth to Slaanesh. Their civilization collapsed, and some of the survivors now live aboard enormous ships called craftworlds. Then there are the Necrons, an ancient civilization that traded their flesh for living metal bodies, slept for millions of years, and are now waking up to reclaim the galaxy.

The Orks exist to fight, and the more they fight, the bigger and stronger they become. In a galaxy full of misery, they seem to be having a lovely time. The T'au, for all the memes you might see, are a young, technologically advanced empire united by the Greater Good. Finally, there are the Tyranids: vast swarms from outside the galaxy, controlled by a single hive mind and consuming entire worlds.

If I had to pick one faction to explore further, particularly if I was new, I'd probably choose the Aeldari, because I think their history is tangled up in almost everything. They created one of the Chaos gods, and they even played a big part in bringing back one of the Emperor's sons, Roboute Guilliman. There's a lot in their lore that helps you understand the wider universe.

You don't need to start with the Horus Heresy books, which is a question many people ask. There are over 60 of them when you include The Siege of Terra, and that's quite a reading list for someone who's only just arrived. Find a faction or a character that interests you and follow it. That's what makes 40K so interesting to me: there are thousands of stories spread across millions of worlds, and just because someone is the hero of their own story, that doesn't necessarily make them a good guy.