The Age of Strife, also called Old Night, was the catastrophic collapse that nearly finished humanity between the Dark Age of Technology and the rise of the Imperium. It’s the reason the Emperor had to conquer Terra, and why so much knowledge was lost forever.
What was the Age of Strife?
It was a galaxy-wide dark age that ran from roughly M23 or M25 to M30. Human civilisation shattered into isolated worlds, warp travel became suicide, and billions died.
Worlds that had depended on interstellar trade starved. Terra was hit hardest, its huge population left to famine and civil war. Xenos races like the Orks raided freely while daemons poured through the minds of untrained psykers.
What caused the collapse?
No single event did it. The revolt of the Men of Iron came first, a war against thinking machines that devastated human space and helped end the Dark Age of Technology.
Then psykers started appearing in greater numbers. Some worlds accepted them; those worlds often fell to daemonic possession as the Warp bled through. Only planets that brutally suppressed their psykers escaped that fate.
Massive, persistent Warp storms sealed the deal. They cut off whole regions of the galaxy, making communication and travel nearly impossible for thousands of years.
- Men of Iron revolt: a war against robotic armies that broke the old human order.
- Rising psykers: uncontrolled psychic power opened doors for Warp entities.
- Warp storms: persistent disturbances that isolated human worlds from each other.
- Cascading effects: famine, civil war, xeno invasions, and total regression.
How did it end?
The Age of Strife ended in M30 when the Warp storms finally subsided and the Emperor launched the Great Crusade. He’d already unified Terra by force, and now he set out to reconnect the scattered human worlds.
The isolation had changed humanity. New abhuman strains had evolved to survive their environments: Ratlings on comfortable worlds where inbreeding stunted them, Ogryns on harsh cold planets, and Squats on high-gravity worlds near the galactic core.
Why it still matters in 40k
The Age of Strife explains the Imperium’s paranoia. The fear of psykers, the hatred of xenos, the obsession with lost technology, all of it traces back to Old Night.
It’s also why so much knowledge is gone. STCs, ancient tech, and whole civilisations vanished. The Imperium is still trying to recover what was lost, and it never really has.
Key facts
- The Age of Strife ran from roughly M23/M25 to M30 and is also known as Old Night.
- It followed the Dark Age of Technology and preceded the Age of the Imperium.
- Causes included the Men of Iron revolt, a surge of psykers, and massive Warp storms.
- Terra suffered famine and civil war, while xenos raids devastated many colony worlds.
- It ended when the Emperor unified Terra and launched the Great Crusade.
- The isolation gave rise to abhuman races like Ratlings, Ogryns, and Squats.
FAQ
When was the Age of Strife?
Sources place its start in either M23 or M25, and it ended in M30 with the Emperor’s rise and the start of the Great Crusade.
What’s another name for the Age of Strife?
It’s also called Old Night, a nod to how dark and regressive the era was for humanity.
Did the Age of Strife create the abhuman races?
Yes. Thousands of years of isolation let human populations adapt to their environments, producing Ratlings, Ogryns, Squats, and others.