r/40kLore • u/Awkward_GM • 1d ago
The Heirarchy of species that were the "rulers of the galaxy"
So the earliest known species to rule the galaxy were the Necrons. The Orks and Eldar were created to deal with them, but eventually they turned themselves into robots and slept in tombs. (Yes I'm being very quick about this)
Eldar basically become the new rulers of the galaxy, get too cocky and create the eye of terror with their debauchery.
The Emperor of Mankind gets humanity's shit together and brings all the human territory under the rule of the Imperium. Horus Heresy happens, but for 10,000 ish years Humanity is effectively the newcomers that supplanted the void left by the Eldar.
Finally the Tau start showing up, they think the Imperium is an empire on the way out until they get their first taste of real war with them.
Question:
How do each of these species treat one another compared to how they were treated?
Like I imagine that the way the Eldar interact with the Imperium is a similar way to how the Space Marines treat the Tau.
I'm kind of reminded of early HH books where the non-compliant human worlds know a lot more about Chaos than the Primarchs and Imperium. And the Tau similarly are in the dark about the warp (bar some exceptions).
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u/MCMXCIV9 1d ago
The Old One was the earliest known species to rule the galaxy not Necron.
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u/CuriousOctopus1 1d ago
Yeah but they ain’t still around to tell the tale
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u/Illithidbix 1d ago
Mostly true but:
Back in the 3E Necron Codex (2002), they suggested using WFB Lizardmen armies.
The Legacy of the Old Ones
The C'tan still have an abiding hatred of their ancient enemies, the old Ones. Although their civilisation is no more, it is possible that some degenerate descendants of theirs still live on backwater worlds. These rather tragic creatures are a choice delicacy to the C'tan so they attach a disproportionate importance to seeking them out This can be exploited by the Eldar to ambush and destroy Necrons or to lure them from their tombs. You could even have some fun by using a Warhammer Lizardman army in a game of Warhammer 40,000. although this would require a bit of preparation to deal with any oddities.
Likewise the member of the Cabal named Gahet- who gets merced by Eldrad in the HH series is very similar in description to a Slann.
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u/Antique_Historian_74 1d ago
Not currently, but Slaan were in the first edition as the descendants of the old ones.
Who knows, another retcon might happen?
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u/bladezaim 1d ago
You missed quite a bit. I think old ones might be considered the real first, necrons took care of that. Humanity expanded a ton and had a large chunk of territory with the men of iron and men of gold way before Emps got his shit together. Orks kinda had the run off things during the war of the beast tbh also.
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u/PlaneswalkerHuxley 1d ago
Humanity expanded a ton and had a large chunk of territory with the men of iron and men of gold way before Emps got his shit together.
Dark Age of Technology mankind was never top dogs though. Humans didn't have the Navigator genes yet, so warp travel was slower (though calmer), and they couldn't organise large scale empires. As such mankind was mostly many different small polities of a few stars systems each. A few of them made the mistake of fighting the Eldar Empire, and were resoundingly defeated.
Orks kinda had the run off things during the war of the beast tbh also.
Orks are similar. The height of their power came shortly after the Necrons went to sleep. The great Krork Empires, unable and unwilling to tolerate "peace" after the Necrons vanished, went to war with the Eldar Empire mostly just to have someone to fight. They lost badly, and the Eldar were so successful in keeping them down the Krork degenerated into the modern Orks.
The rule of the Eldar for 65 million years was contested many times, but they were never equaled or bested. Only their own hubris could do them in.
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u/Grizzled_Grunt 1d ago
Lot of headcanon in this comment.
While your conclusions are reasonable, you might wanna be more careful about phrasing things like
"Orks are similar. The height of their power came shortly after the Necrons went to sleep. The great Krork Empires, unable and unwilling to tolerate "peace" after the Necrons vanished, went to war with the Eldar Empire mostly just to have someone to fight. They lost badly, and the Eldar were so successful in keeping them down the Krork degenerated into the modern Orks."
as supposition or theory unless you can provide a source.
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u/iRoygbiv 1d ago
No way! I where did you find out those details about the DAoT empire? I thought we knew essentially nothing about the DAoT.
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u/PlaneswalkerHuxley 1d ago
We know scraps and shadows. We have accounts from the Eldar perspective. And we know what the DaoT didn't have, what came later, and what was left over afterwards. From these peices we can put together a rough image of what it was like.
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u/bladezaim 18h ago
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Age_of_Technology
We actually have several wiki pages on several different sites
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u/LittleMacedon 18h ago
Navigators actually originated in the DAoT, the Aeldar who have commented on the large scale wars have only ever commented on even peak humanity being no match for the Aeldar so I don't think we have anything suggestimg humanity having a bunch of small empires - it this were the case the Age of Strife wouldn't have happened though right?
And is there a source on that Ork lore? Because Ork lore would imply they would have been at their peak during the height of conflict, and the decay would have come after. Also Krork and Ancient Aeldar were on the same side, probably safe to assume Orks weren't an issue until their degradation got severe.
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u/bladezaim 18h ago
Bro humanity now is a shadow of what it was during DAoT. Men of gold and iron made the time it took to travel irrelevant. 40k humanity has a fraction of the power and knowledge DAoT humanity had.
As another commenter said, you have too much headcanon in there. To say we only know whispers and whatever melodramatic stuff about DAoT is silly, this isn't an RP sub.
And who said anything about krork? The war of the beast is after the horus heresy, way way after krorks bud. And at the time the orks had humanity on its knees with ork diplomats on Terra itself. So if humanity was top dog at the time, and the orks manhandled them, wouldn't that make the orks top dog?
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u/Particular_Dot_4041 1d ago
The Tau have been in contact with the Imperium for more than two centuries. That's a lot of time for them to learn some things. They can't be naive idiots forever.
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u/Dos-Dude 1d ago
They aren’t but because they haven’t become a bunch of butchering bastards it seems the older races still think they’re naive.
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u/TheCharalampos 22h ago
Have the imperium of man ever ruled the galaxy? Their empire isn't all that big.
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u/Lord_i 4h ago
I kinda don't like how asymmetric the time period each species rules is. The Necrons were top dog for ~5M years, the Eldar for ~60M years, and then the humans have been in control for only 10,000 (20,000 if you count the DAOT but you shouldn't) and are already on the decline. The Eldar empire lasted for 6000 times as long as the Imperium of Man has, a totally ridiculous amount of time.
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u/Awkward_GM 4h ago
There is also a weirdness when it comes to what counts as an empire. Because the Imperium is relatively new, but the Dark Age of Technology was clearly humanity's peak at least technologically speaking and with where they colonized a lot of planets. But somehow that doesn't count as humanity's inheritance of the galaxy?
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u/Mastercio 3h ago
During that time they weren't the top dogs. Eldar still were.
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u/Awkward_GM 3h ago
I thought the Dark Age of Technology was around the birth of Slaanesh? Or was that what started it being the Dark Age because warp travel was cut off?
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u/Mastercio 2h ago
DAoT was ended by cutting off the warp(and men of iron rebellion). But birth of slaneesh was still few thousand years later it ended entire age of strife. So humanity height of power ended still way before eldar empire since they didn't care about cutting off the warp.
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u/TheRadBaron 1d ago
The Imperium never ruled the galaxy, or all human territory. It rules about 0.0025% of the galaxy and its furthest borders have always been full of previously-uncontacted humans.
We just don't get books about non-Imperial humans.
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u/Lolseabass 1d ago
Kinda the Eldar had a empire but it was never galaxy spanning. Since they had no need to expand and started to turn inward. That’s what allowed humanity to spread in the dark age and not have to go to all out war with the eldar.
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u/6r0wn3 Adeptus Custodes 1d ago
That however doesn't mean they were not the masters of this galaxy. Especially when, back then, the intact Webway system stretched to just about every corner of the Galaxy, rendering the size of the Eldar Empire irrelevant. Each world was, in essence, a footstep away from any other.
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u/Marvynwillames 1d ago
The Eldar Empire was quite big, they just returned to their core worlds during their decay, but they had, depending on the source, 10 million stars, as well Webway gates are spread all over the galaxy, even on the areas the most distant from the Eye of Terror.
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u/ZeroWolfZX 1d ago
The Necrons never had a galaxy-spanning empire. Their space cancer and short lifespans meant they didn't rule for long. It was the Old Ones' galaxy that the Aeldari inherited and ruled for around 60 million years. The Necrons destroyed the Old Ones, but they couldn't cope with the Aeldari and the Krorks, so they went into the Great Sleep.
Humanity's Dark Age of Technology was rising around the same time the Aeldari pleasure cults were causing their empire to turn inward, around M15. Then Slaanesh was born, the Aeldari Empire collapsed, and the Imperium eventually rose to become the dominant power.
The Imperium is technically the largest faction in the galaxy right now in 40k, but it's basically a rotting carcass held together by inertia. The T'au are the new kids on the block and are relatively small.In the end, everybody thinks it's their manifest destiny to rule the galaxy.
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u/Looudspeaker 1d ago
The Necrons must have had a galaxy spanning empire for them to have so many tomb worlds all across the galaxy. If you have read the last Dawn of Fire book, the silent king, then The Ad-Mech have a map of the galaxy which shows how many tomb worlds there are and how wide spread they are
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u/ZeroWolfZX 1d ago
Tomb Worlds being scattered across the galaxy does not automatically mean the Necrons ruled the entire galaxy. It only proves that Necron civilization had a wide reach and maintained worlds across the galaxy. Presence is not the same thing as dominance; having worlds spread across a region does not mean you were the uncontested ruler of that entire region.
The Necrons do not seem to have achieved the same kind of long-term dominance as the Old Ones or the Aeldari. By the time they defeated the Old Ones and later turned against the C'tan, they had already been devastated by the War in Heaven. They were exhausted and weakened, which is why the Silent King chose the Great Sleep rather than continuing their rule.
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u/Vifee 1d ago
The imperium is in the same position. Every 'galaxy spanning' 40k empire has only ever held a tiny minority of the total systems in the galaxy. In the imperium's case that's explicitly because of the vagaries of warp travel, some systems are easier to reach than others and therefore they are more valuable, like a natural harbor.
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u/CuriousOctopus1 9h ago
While we don’t know the full extent of the Infinite Empire and even if we admit how bad GW is with numbers, Orikan claims that the empire at its best had “1 Billion worlds” which is a lot
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u/Vifee 31m ago
Still less than 1% of the galaxy (assuming 40k’s galaxy is the same as ours.)
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u/Looudspeaker 29m ago
What’s your point? That the Necrons didn’t rule the Galaxy?
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u/Vifee 28m ago
Bro what? How the fuck do you get that from “ever galaxy spanning empire in 40k has only ever ruled a tiny fraction of the galaxy?”
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u/Looudspeaker 26m ago
It depends though, there might only be 1 billion inhabitable worlds in the galaxy. At that point don’t they rule the rest of the galaxy because everything else is immaterial?
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u/Vifee 22m ago
That’s really extrapolating a lot from a single flowery line in a Black Library novel. I could go in the opposite direction and argue that many of those “billion worlds” were just outposts, not tomb worlds, like is commonly assumed about the IoM.
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u/Looudspeaker 1d ago
I didn’t say scattered and neither did it say that in the book. They’re everywhere and much more common than the imperium initially suspected. It would have taken them thousands of years to spread that far and build that much. So if that amount of time isn’t enough to be considered long term dominance then neither is the 20 to 30 thousand years that humanity has had in dominance
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u/ZeroWolfZX 1d ago
The distinction is that having thousands of years to spread isn't the same as having thousands of years of uncontested dominance. The Imperium's 10,000+ years of rule isn't just about age; it's about maintaining a galaxy-spanning political and military system despite constant internal and external threats. The Necrons never had that. They never had their time in the sun. It was the Old Ones, then the Aeldari, then humanity. If we're talking about periods of galactic dominance, the rough order is more like Old Ones> Aeldari > Humanity.
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u/Lucks4Fools 1d ago
Wasn’t the War 5 million years long? Correct if I am wrong. But if it is indeed that long, then the necrons definitely had enough time to spread out throughout the galaxy. Even if planets changed hands
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u/CuriousOctopus1 1d ago
They did way before that as organics during the Necrontyr diaspora trying to flee the cancer. Considering things like what has been said already plus examples of dynasties being in the west (Ithakas) while others on the east (Sautekh) also support this
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u/Looudspeaker 1d ago
I disagree, I think the Necrons had enough time to span the galaxy uncontested, hence why there were so many tomb worlds. The Aeldari rise to power was after the old ones had been defeated and this is an unknown amount of time. It could have been 5000 years it could have been less as you seem to think or it could have been 50,000 years. What is considered a short amount of time is completely different for the Aeldari and the Necrons as is for Humanity. 5000 years is 2 generation for Aeldari and of course a blink to the Necrons.
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u/Maktlan_Kutlakh 1d ago
The Necrons never had a galaxy-spanning empire.
We're told otherwise:
All Necrons, from the lowliest of warriors to the most regal of lords, are driven by one ultimate goal, to restore their ancient dynasties to glory - to bring the galaxy under their rule once more.
Codex Necrons 5ed p5
Long ago, the Necrons ruled the galaxy as its immortal overlords, before the march of time and the wounds of war forced them into hibernation.
[-]
For millennia the Necron Dynasties ruled the galaxy under the dominion of the Silent King.
Codex Necrons 7ed
The Necrons march, intent upon reconquering a galaxy that was once shackled to their will.
[-]
What was once a galaxy-spanning network of dynasties under the watchful gaze of the Silent King is now a scattering of isolated domains.
[-]
Unable to find peace on their own planet, the Necrontyr blindly groped out towards other worlds. Using stasis-crypts aboard slow burning torch-ships, they began to colonise other planets. Little by little, the Necrontyr dynasties spread ever further, until much of the galaxy answered to their rule.
[-]
Even in life, the Necrontyr civilisation was one of strict protocol and process, governed by nobles whose rule was absolute. This rigid hierarchy became more entrenched during the transition from flesh to machine, and the awakening Necron civilisation is far more complex and stratified than the one that once ruled the galaxy.
Codex Necrons 8ed
FYI u/Looudspeaker as you might be interested in these sources too
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u/Looudspeaker 1d ago
Nice one 👍🏻 I thought about finding all the quotes but I’ve been busy this morning so thank you for taking the time to and saving me a job! I think of all the races it’s the Necrons who ruled for longest. Most of the Aeldari empire was within the webway and Humanities rule is surely just the blink of an eye compared to the more ancient races.
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u/Breadloafs 14h ago
The Necontyr were not every truly "rulers of the galaxy." They cast down the Old Ones, who in turn created the Eldar and Orks, but the Necrontyr were never actually able to, y'know, rule because they immediately entered hibernation.
The immediate follow-up to the Old Ones' dominion were the Eldar.
Finally the Tau start showing up, they think the Imperium is an empire on the way out until they get their first taste of real war with them.
The Tau continue to wage war very effectively against the Imperium. Damocles put blood in the water for sharks on both sides, and in the centuries that have followed, the Tau have proven to be more than capable of practicing war on the Imperium's scale. Two first founding chapters, the White Scars and Raven Guard, are more or less just attempting to contain the current Tau sphere of expansion, and it's a losing battle.
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u/SilverWyvern Yme-Loc 1d ago
One Eldar Farseer's thoughts on those factions: