The Glade 4.0

Does anyone have a good online link to the story (or a timeline) to Warhammer 40k? It sounds fascinating, but what I have found so far is disjointed at best -- like they take some individual character stories, and allude to some totally different obscure event that you have to try to hunt down.

All I can get so far is, it's set in the year 40,000 and there is this dying Emperor of Mankind, who may or may not be a semi-divine human who was born tens of thousands of years ago, yet somehow still lives on. There are space marines who are super genetically-engineered soldiers and some other aliens thrown in there for good measure.

What I am wonder is, is there a resource that starts at the beginning of where the events significant to the current story and takes you through up to the present? I'm looking for something a little more coherent. Like, how did Humanity get so super-powerful? Technology? Divine intervention?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Cool thanks.

So the Emperor is ~50k years old (wow).

And Humanity progressed naturally, with their technology allowing them to colonize the galaxy. Their tech grew even more with shared knowledge from alien species, and their psychic powers at some point got switched on and intesified via supernatural beings.

So it's basically a combination of tech, alien knowledge and divine intervention.

Rough story

Humans worship a zombie that lives by feeding it psychic souls. They try to kill anything thats not human.

Orks try to kill anything... even orks

Necrons try to kill anything thats not a necron

Eldar try to kill Necrons, and anything that interferes with them, otherwise they're dying out

Chaos kills everything.

Tyranids eat everything

Tau try to bring everyone into their empire, and if you dont wanna join and attack them, then they kill you...

Sense a theme? (btw, i <3 40k)

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

And a wiki-style resource for 40k:
Warhammer 40k Lexicanum

Not as good as a primer, but you once you know a basic outline of stuff to jump off from, you can dive into just about anything in more depth there.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

From TvTropes:
The Eye of Terror in Warhammer 40000 is a gigantic, thousands of light-years across swirly energy thing of hell. Going into it is a quick way to a Fate Worse Than Death.
Or, for the Ork WAAAGH that invaded the Eye and crashed onto a living planet dedicated to Khorne where they became 'doomed' with immortality, having to fight its daemonic inhabitants until they're slain only to rise again the next morning for all eternity. They considered this the awesomest afterlife ever.

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Holy shitsnacks!