GATHERING STORM: The Origin of Modern Warhammer 40k | Warhammer 40,000 Lore 

For those wondering what happened to the Ynarri story; Seeing the eldar having 4 of the 5 crone swords slaanesh said "My ball and im taking it home" and just yoinked the 5th one. Unable to get the sword, the story is over and never mentioned again. gg. Great vid as usual Ian.

I can think of few better RU-vidrs than you to cover this.

Dude i love your 40k content so much, its so calm and fun and not 'BIG NEWS IN THE 40K UNIVERSE DAY 204567 EPIC RU-vid VIDEO BUT SAME AT THE VIDEO THAT WAS POSTED YESTERDAY' seriously, you are so needed in this community for being chill as fuck

This was so useful for someone who only got into 40k In 9th edition. Please do a physic awakening summary like this!

As a veteran non-player (played Warhammer Fantasy Battle from when the first box came out til a few years before Age of Sigmar happened, but the lore of 40k was always compelling!) this does indeed fill in a *LOT* of holes in my knowledge of how the storyline started moving forwards. So, big thanks for making this :)

I remember enjoying Trazhyn's scenes in those books so much: man's chilling in his own tropical retirée when everything in the galaxy is going to fucking shit and when the bell starts tolling so hard it breaks his stuff he's like "OI?! Can't have that!" and casually drops it *in the Webway* xD

I love how all the reasons for the factions getting involved is perfectly in line with their character with Chaos being the one causing the conflic resulting in the Imperium reacting while the Eldar are gathered through faith and prophesies and gratee plans and finally the Necrons (Trazyn) just doing it because they (he) thought it'd be fun, all culminating in Chaos doing the space equivalent of flipping the table

The sisters of silence and Adeptus Custodes joined these crusading armies, only occasionally wiping out all the primaris marines that they were travelling with.

I remember how exciting it was, how much new stuff coming in and the waiting for the final story line of this arc

My favorite event around the beginning of this was the Siege of Fenris. It was really cool to have a massive showdown of Thousand Sons against Space Wolves.

Maybe I'm showing my Ahriman fan boyness but I feel that Yiv reversing the Rubric on a squad of Rubricae in the Webway is an important event of this confluence.

Incredible retelling of events! Makes me excited for the Arcs of Omen events.

Being something who only got into 40K in the last year this was really helpful for understanding some of the history of the current setting

Your presentation style is perfect for this story. Odyssey is almost an understatement.

Never understood why GW didn't release this as a novel series as opposed to game books which you can't even buy anymore.

Not gonna lie, the scene where Calgar shouted for them to stop, and when Guilliman step out from the machine was a powerful scene that makes your hair stands.

Great Summary, thanks :) I remember when the "Eye of Terror" campaign started being announced and, as the only person in my immediate circle who had cared about Battlefleet Gothic, let alone read the story in the rulebook, I was alone in recognising the Blackstone Fortresses as a sign that an interwoven narrative was being put together. It was exciting.

My mind is blown. I've been following this development for years, but concentrated like this.. insane. Ian, You are a very good narrator.

Thank you, this is the Lore I missed between leaving the game after the Fall of Cadia and coming back in 2020.

So much of the art in this campaign was just incredible. Games Workshops artists definitely do not get enough credit because I swear a good 60% of the impact and uniqueness of the setting comes from their work.

I really loved this video, might be my favorite. Really well done as always!

Hey mate, I just got to say that this sort of video was exactly what I was hoping for. You summarised the lore in such a good way and I would love for you to continue this series covering more events and providing a timeline. Great job, and keep it up!

I really like these, I've been away from 40K for quite some time, so it's nice to have concise summaries like this, that also give enough detail to be interesting :)

My memory of the news of these books coming out was a collective sigh of relief in the fandom (at least my part of it). Games workshop's insistence that they would not move past the last year of the 41st millennium had become a weight around the neck of setting and it was starting to stagnate. And while I haven't been super thrilled about any of the new stuff (where my blue-skinned bois at GW?!) I'm glad they're willing to let the setting evolve again.

I didn't realize how Eldar-heavy this new lore was. thanks for putting this video together.

Thanks for this, Ian! I've been busy being a new dad for the past few years and came back to 40k completely confused and baffled by what was going on. You brought me up to speed in less than half an hour. You are my bloody hero!

OMG that ZX SPECTRUM reference :D 😍

Thank you for this. I fell out of the hobby during 4th edition and came back in the middle of 8th so this really helps fill in a lot of holes in the lore for me.

I love that you pointed out that 40k, though now having a "main storyline", is still able to also be a "setting". The recent Charadon and Octarius campaigns are proof of this and the former in particular is one of the better examples of "modern 40k" IMO.

So incredibly well told. Was properly fascianting and filled in a bunch of gaps for me about what happened before Guilliman was brought back. Can't wait to get more of these giving an overview of the lore leading up to where we are now AND of course the continuation of the Arks Of Omen series. Great stuff as always!

I just love to imagine the disbelief and exuberance Calgar must have felt when his father stood before him restored

I can't help but think when guilliman revived it was akin to seeing a wwe hall of famer showing up to beat the current heel.

As someone with a large 10-15 year gap in my warhammer playing knowledge, this was a great catch up as to what on earth happened to the setting while I was away! Another great lore video as always

Ian, thanks for putting this together. Now I don't have to hunt down and over-pay for the Gathering Storm books! Also, how bonkers is 40K? I mean, it's pretty bonkers. I love it.

This was such a fun time to be playing! It was so cool to feel like your battles could now kinda be plugged into a specific campaign in the larger clusterfuck. I started running Cadians for the first time, instead of using my guardsmen as counts-as Tallarns, imagining they were hard pressed survivors.

A timeline? Yes please. It would be great to have a concise idea of when events take place with the Dark Imperium, even if the Great Rift itself kind of messes with that.

Thank you so much for doing this!! Great video Ian!

Fantastic summary! I hope GW picks up the Ynnari storyline some day

This is probably one of the best lore videos I've seen on this topic. I've been in 40k for a few years but seldom can I find myself keeping up with everything. This video with all the incredible artwork helped so much! I can wait to see more videos like this as the Arks of Omen unfolds! Lore is what really keeps bringing me into the hobby and you are a masterclass ❤️

Thanks so much! Please keep doing more of these! I'm watching these like I used to watch Saturday morning cartoons in the '80s.

I've been hoping you'd do this recap. Great video

Awesome video, appreciate the summary. Gathering Storm was around the time I was becoming extremely jaded about GW's general strategy of gouging money with dozens of supplements and army books so I missed a lot of the lore surrounding it, but it's very compelling seeing the overarching storyline progress.

Trazyn is probably my favorite character in all this, he's just in here for the fun and nothing else.

imagine a Series about this.

Love these deep dives, Ian, keep them coming!

Awesome!!! I'd tried to get ahold of the Gathering Storm books, but no luck, so I was completely out of the loop on these important events. Thank you for this retelling - you've saved me money, time and nerves! As before, I'll keep recommending your channel to anyone looking to get into 40k lore. You're simply the best there is for that. :)

"Um, sir, will all of this be in the test?" :) I am going to have to watch this more than once to follow it!

Great summary. I've read all three of the books, and even I needed that! Can't wait for the following series! Thanks, Ian!

This is about the time I first properly got into 40k. I knew it existed before but only in the periphery of my attention. Gathering Storm is when things really got me going.

This was perfect! …and a timeline? Yes please! I read a bunch of Horus Heresy books but when it comes to 40k millennium I’m completely clueless as to how we got here. Please, more of these! It would be great to do a character driven overview too… Shadowsun pls 😬

Thanks so much for this video, fantastic as always and great to get up to speed on what would have otherwise taken be about 100 hours to read

Ok something like this is what I have been looking for for so long If you were to do these in more detail and just more of them I would watch the hell out of these

I'm really looking forward to more summaries like this! Everywhere I've tried to find a condensed retelling of these events or Psychic Awakening or even the recent Warzones, I've gotten too confused.

My man.... Thank you, you do a great job.

A most informative video Arbitor Ian. Great vid. 👍

Incredible video, i never knew where to find the lore on this period. You earned a new subscriber!

I remember hearing of this back in the day but since I wasn't as deep into 40k as nowadays I didn't absorb any details. Personally I find this refreshing in a day and age where companies are so paranoid about rocking the boat and stir things up franchises kinda end up feeling like stale swamp water. So the fact GW was willing to commit to an actual step forward in the narrative and actually codify something of impact in 40K is something I respect, even if I can understand why some of the directions isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I loved A Border Princes read through of the Campaign Book lore and he was cracking up by the time it got the Red Corsairs, we were all the same tbf

Great video! It did indeed fill in so knowledge gaps for I felt a bit lost lore wise when I got back into 40K 2 years ago.

Thank you for these videos! 🙏 I've been quite disconnected from developments in the lore of WH40K for the last few years, and this is really helping me catch up with the storyline going into 10th edition

Something about Gilliman fighting Magnus the Red on the moon is so baller. I haven't read the books yet though, do they exchange fun dialogue? I hope they do

Awesome video! I'd love to see a good summary of psychic awakening. I missed out on a few of the middle books.

Great stuff as always. For someone who might not ever get a chance to read the novels, I would love to see more vids like this detailing the lore as it crossed from 7e to 8e and now 9e.

I began playing in 3rd and played through 4th edition before stopping for many years. I remember checking in after I heard about Gathering Storm, reading the campaign book, since I knew the whole Cadia scenario well from the Eye of Terror Campaign, and being complete put off by its style. I never started playing again, basically turning my back on 40k again for years and years. What I loved about the warhammer books was the suggestive open world feeling of all the bits of lore: seldom was any bit of lore established as definitive fact, a lot was purposefully obscured, ie because the lore text was a fictive piece of imperial archive material and had been censored by the Inquisition or some such. Most stuff was rumored or at least overshadowed by doubt or different theories, or straight up superstition. Texts that conciously tried to NOT be canonical. The feeling of the slow decay of knowledge and information over the 10.000 years since the heresy into a world of controlled propaganda, blisfull ignorance and turning into religious dogma what once was straight up history or fact: I remember how the first codex Malleus made VERY clear that the popolace (and rank and file of the Imperial Army) were left ignorant about the very existence of the threat Chaos, Demons and even the continued existance of traitor legions. Planets population was systematically purged after they encountered (and beat back) Chaos Invasions so as to contain the information about the very existance of that threat - just as with the populace of Armageddon after the first war, when they beat back Angorns World Eaters. I remember how my friends and I spent the summer of the eye of terror campaign heatedly discussing all the lore implications and or hints and bait in the campaign book about characters and their motivation to take part in the battle for Cadia. I LOVED that. It always felt like an invitation to tell your own stories in the dark future of the 41st millenium. It was a exclamation mark: Insert your own story here! I was sooooo taken aback by the new style and the demystification of once completely mythical figures like Primarchs by having them as straight up protagonists of the story. The 42nd Millenium and its lore basically has barely anything left of what Wh40k was for me.

nice work Ian, you made it all easy to understand.

Well that was wild! I haven't played 40k for ~15 years (around the time of the 13th Black Crusade/Eye of Terror campaign). So this really useful in catching me up on things. Would love to see more videos bridging the gap from here to Arcs of Omen.

This was pretty good, thanks.

Not gonna lie, I was hooked listening to this.

I'm still cagey about GW's seeming tendency to "de-dystopize" the Imperium. It's not some complete 180 or anything, but more a subtle shift in art direction and narrative elements that seem de-emphasize the Imperium's internal dysfunction, totalitarianism and monstrous, unimaginable scale. It's been going on a while, and again, it's not complete or anything, it's just big enough to be noticeable. I don't know, maybe I'm just frozen in the 3-7th-ish edition style of the setting where the Imperium was monumentally rotten from within and obviously the cause of most of its own problems, and that was sort of the "joke". Maybe this shift started with the runaway success of the HH novels, which sohwed GW the appeal of both a central, ongoing narrative, and the appeal of active, motivated main characters, which they've now ported into 40k kinda. This isn't to say I think GW's writing USED to be better, it was always pretty hit or miss. But I think I just liked the overall vibe and aesthetic more. I don't know, it's hard to pin down. And I don't want to feed the whole "grognard outrage" machine, which is navel-gazing and stupid.

Awesome video. My favorite of your lore videos. The only videos I like more are your book club videos.

Fantastic video. So informative. Please keep up your amazing work.

Amazing video. Really looking forward to more like that.

Great video, the wiki on this subject is pretty convoluted.

Best summary to date!!!

As always your videos are amazing! Thanks for all the hard work!

Oh man! What a treat this was 😊

Cant over state how much of a good job you did and are doing Ian!

Great video, and I'd absolutely love to have you breakdown the story of other narrative campaigns held in the 40k universe in the same way. Maybe also, and I don't know if it's feasible, but a video on the history (and evolution) of the narrative campaign books might also be useful?

I only got into the hobby in 2020, and the vibe I've got is that basically the lore didn't move essentially from like 2nd edition until this Gathering Storm storyline. Since I've been in the hobby they've been adding interesting new little bits and pieces and it's really engaging to follow. I wanna see a few more drastic things like they really should have killed off Calgar in Nihilus

Great update on the Lore, and there I was wonder what to tackle next after the HH! much appreciated thanks

Great video, thanks! I was just wondering what were the latest books in the timeline

yeah i remember the finale: The primarch rises i was like O_O as somebody who started this mid 90s it felt like "jesus lives again" a living loyalist primarch in 40k - not possible. but there he was.

I was just thinking I needed a summary of recent Warhammer history... and this appears in my feed!

Brilliant video. I hope against hope that you will undertake a similar series once Warhammer: The Old World is released.

A simple and clear summary, as usual. Thanks, Ian. 😄

It would be great to have an entire series of the stories so far. I've returned to 40k in 9th after a decade long hiatus. I missed 6,7,8th editions and none of my local club can give me a real breakdown of what I missed.

My personal interpretation is that the original description of the 13th Black Crusade - in which Eldrad dies - is a future foreseen by Eldrad which he chooses to avert.

Thank you very much for this lore. I would love more of this.

This was great. Looking forward to the next one. Full timeline!

As a new player starting in 9th edition, one aspect that still confuses me is when (in terms of edition) some of these key events took place? All that I can learn from the core book and the codexes is that it happened "before" (sometimes thousands of years before) in game time. Which is fine, but I'm also interested in "player time," and that information is difficult to parse out from most internet content. Did some of the events you describe take place during 8th edition, or 7th edition, or earlier? For example, how long ago (in real time) did Roboute Guilliman return to life from statis? It would be helpful so that I can speak intelligently with players who may have played many years ago, but may not know the changes to lore in later editions.

I *just* started playing an Ynari army so this provided some much-needed context :D

I thought that Guilliman got The Emperor's Sword from The Emperor when he finally made it to Terra and they had their little pow-wow. Am I totally wrong?

As someone who fell out of the hobby before this and came back only recently, was this campaign one of those _Storm of Chaos_ style campaigns based on players' battle reports, or was it just a new book that came out and told everyone "here's the new metaplot update"?

To add on your theory: The old lore spoke of a lone guardsmen seeing the emperor being beaten and dies trying to rescue him. It is seeing the guardsmen’s death that convinces the emperor to kill Horus. But. What if the guardsman was Loken and his death convinced not the emperor but his old friend Abbadon to kill him with the stone blade that the perpetuals have. It would make sense that the “unknown” soldier would be a grey knight being all super secret. And Abbadon has been alluding to for sometime how he despises chaos and what his chapter has become and his last words were that he was heading back to the vengeful spirit to save Horus

This was like 40k’s all-star game, pretty much every main character in their universe

Pity they just dropped the Ynnead stuff.

I am amazed, again, how you can just bind me to intensely listening to your explanaitions of so many layered story elements for 30 Minutes and I feel intellectually fed and stimulated and at the same time I have an inkling more understanding of this vast 40k universe. Thank you! So one question, I am a little new to this (only 16 books in, 9 Ciaphas Cain and the rest your recommendations) - this seems like several factions, emperor botherers, pragmatists and eldar alike side to fight Chaos - is this a trend that continues e.g. with Indomitus or is every alliance connection severed as soon as the story has no more use from it? Just seeing it from the perspective this grim dark thing with no hope is just a phase 🫣 And what book series would you recommend to be able to catch up the the „latest“ developments, so I can just get the new releases in the future?

I’ve been a fan of 40K since the late 80’s early 90’s and have read about 50 or so 40K novels. I’ve attempted to read the Gathering Storm when it came out, but found it abysmal writing at best. It’s simply a mess. Someone obviously set a deadline that others scrambled to meet. However, the events that occur during that campaign are vitally important for someone that wants to understand certain things about the current 40K setting. For anyone who is interested in knowing what happens I recommend the audio narration by ABorder Prince on RU-vid. He lets the audience know ahead of time that the content is pretty bad, but his voice acting helps the story along some.

I have become engrossed in 40k lore ever since Astartes. Love learning new shit about it.

Great summary, thank you! I’ve read the wiki articles but there’s just so much stuff to take in and it’s hard to follow the actual story itself. I hope you’ll do a Pariah Nexus video as well someday (or whatever was 8th to 9th edition) since I’m not actually sure the context of it, it seems to be just a small self-contained story with no effect on the rest of the galaxy…?