The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. Rick Priestley explained that this was to illustrate the Imperium's practice of erasing embarrassing or incriminating events and figures from Imperial records ( damnatio memoriae).

Two of the original 20 Legions and their respective Primarchs are not named and are described as 'redacted' from the records of the Imperium. It also first described the Horus Heresy, the civil war of the 30th millennium in which nine of the Legions converted to the worship of the Chaos Gods and rebelled against the Emperor.

It introduced the original 20 Space Marine Legions as well as their Primarchs. The book Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned (Rick Priestley and Bryan Ansell, 1990) was the first book from Games Workshop to give a backstory for the Space Marines. Space Marines were first introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (1987) by Rick Priestley, which was the first edition of the tabletop game. See also: List of Warhammer 40,000 novels Likewise, they are the most popular protagonists in spin-off fiction such as novels and video games. They are the most well-known and popular characters in Warhammer 40,000, always featuring in the artwork and starter set of each edition of Warhammer 40,000 and other spin-off games such as Space Hulk and Epic (excluding the 2nd edition Titan Legions), and simpler derivative games such as Space Crusade. Warhammer 40,000 is a miniature wargame, where Space Marines are one of the playable factions that can be used. Some Space Marines have betrayed the Imperium and serve the Gods of Chaos, and are thus known as Chaos Space Marines. They wear mechanised suits of armour and have modified genomes that grant them superhuman strength and endurance. In the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000, the Space Marines, also known as the Adeptus Astartes, are superhuman warrior-monks who fight for the Imperium of Man.

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