<span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;"><strong>It is the 41st Millennium </strong></span><br/><br/>For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.<br/><br/>Yet in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomicon, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds, but for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants, and worse.<br/><br/>To be a man in such times is be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. Yet you are not just any individual—you are a Heretic, a follower of forbidden gods and dangerous schools of thought, cast out by the rulers of the Imperium and their cursed corpse-god for the calling you have chosen. And yet both glory and revenge can be yours as you tread the path to greatness and take your place among the champions of the Dark Gods themselves!<br/><br/>- - - - -<br/><br/>You are heretics. Condemned by the God-Emperor for your crimes and sentenced to imprisonment, torture and eventually death by the Inquisition. Though your crimes are varied, you share a similar fate, having been hunted down and captured by agents of the Imperium and incarcerated aboard the Chains of Judgement, a prison barge on a course for the core worlds of the Calixis Sector and its capital Scintilla, where the dungeons of the Tricorn Palace await you. Befitting your nature as dangerous criminals, you were placed in stasis, held in a state of limbo to ride out the journey, powerless to change your fate. Now you have awoken, the feeble lights of the stasis crypt greeting you as you stumble from your casket. Strangely though, no leering guards or armoured troopers stand waiting with manacles ready. Looking around you see others like yourself emerge from their own caskets. You also note the walls and floor are thick with dust and age. You cannot help but wonder; just how long have you slumbered, and what has happened in that time?<br/><br/>You awaken in a small, circular room with a dozen stasis caskets lining the walls. The room is low-ceilinged and lit only by two flickering emergency luminen globes. Besides the caskets, there is a cogitator column in the centre. The column’s display screen is operational, with a blinking series of status updates. There is also a single, closed hatch in the wall of the crypt, with the legend “Stasis Crypt XX” above it.