For four epochs, the Imperium had slowly, but surely, expanded across most of the known universe. It provided all of its member states with all that they could ever need or dream of; promising peace and prosperity for all eternities. But at the dawning of the fifth epoch, the once noble and benign Imperium was corrupted from within at the ascendancy of the current Imperial family.
Where there was once trust now ruled paranoia; where once there was freedom there was now oppression; where there was once liberty was now tyranny. Although ancient augur machines and cognitive databanks had long foretold the slow and steady decline of this mighty Imperium, few of them had predicted the rapid developments in the Western Provinces.
For many years they had suffered under the yoke of the slowly declining Imperium; paying increasing taxes for the benefit of the decadent court of the Imperial family and seeing little in the way of representation within those hallowed halls. For years this division of have and have not, had festeredwithin; slowly and steadily building up pressure, just waiting for that first spark to ignite everything.
It was to be on Terra, the ancient home for all mankind which would set the stage for that very first spark. As Imperial tithing ships cruised through the sector, the Imperial officials were met with a virtual barrage of plasma fire from every planet that they attempted to orbit. The Sol system declared its independence from the Imperium with the destruction of twenty tithing ships.
Enraged, the Imperial Court decided to mobilize their Mecha cohorts to suppress this unruly member state. Within the day, Terra was laid to siege by no less than twenty such cohorts. What the Imperial Court failed to realize was that this show of force would have the opposite reaction.
Where they had hoped for absolute obedience, they now found defiance as the whole of the Western Provinces sided with Terra and declared their independence. The Imperial Civil war had begun, and the Federation of Planets had been born in bloodshed.
It was to be a time of war in an apocalyptic scale as the ancient Imperium was torn asunder from the inside by the ravages of civil war.
Designer: Torben Kastbjerg