Entropy.
If there is one word that can be used to effectively describe the state of our reality, it is entropy. It is a basic law that reality propels itself towards equilibrium in such a way that an isolated system cannot hope to stop. As the system continues to operate, entropy increases, efficiency decreases, energy loses its usability, and all falls to chaos and discord. More could be said, but not much more needs to be said. As our system progresses, the very laws of nature work to undermine everything that we work towards, destroying everything that we work our lives for, erasing our accomplishments, and eventually totally erasing every last trace of us. It is unavoidable, it is undefeatable. It is not an enemy, or a weapon, or a tool; it just is. There is ultimately no point in fighting it, and because of this, there is ultimately no point in anything.
That is not to say that it is not a valiant struggle to go out with a fight.
In this respect, the greatest warriors against entropy throughout all of remembered history have been the Human Race. Through a quarter of a million years of evolution, man has endured against all odds, spending every moment not spent on survival recording his own history. Whether it be cave paintings from man’s infancy hidden in the depths of the Europan hive; or massive faces of elder kings from the ages of enlightenment in the mountains of Merica; or the greetings and neon gods carved into the sides of the first interstellar probes still scattered about the Segmentum Solar, begging for attention from an assumed alien force of “good” out in the cosmos; man has stood out among the unwashed masses of primordial filth that inhabit the universe and has called out as a singular voice against the void, shouting “I AM MAN! I AM HERE! I SHALL BE AS GOD! AND I SHALL NEVER GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT!” And it is because of man’s beautiful, passionate arrogance that he has earned the right to call the universe his and his alone.
While it is true that there have been others who have claimed the same right: the self-righteous Eldar, claiming their decrepit age grants them the right to immortality when they themselves are responsible for the current rise in entropy in the galaxy; the brainless Orks, in their hapless stupor believing their broken piles of scrap metal drenched in red “paint” will give them any chance against the God Emperor-blessed forces of Man; the filthy atheistic Tau, so obsessed with such fallacies as “pure science” and “the greater good” that they can’t even see the idiocy of their own upstart endeavours through their own idealistic blinders(not that they can see much of anything, weak eyed bovines they are); the heretical machinations of the Necron, built to nothing more than destroy all life-and fail miserably in the process; and the truly alien Tyranids, mindless bugs obsessed with doing nothing but eating all in their path; none can truly rank up next to the glorious Human race.
Even worse though than all of the xenos filth that inhabits Man’s home, is the pure corruption of Chaos. An immortal black mark on every mind that has a soul connected to it, Chaos lurks in the deepest reaches of even the purest of minds, prodding its unholy tendrils into everything in our hearts which makes life worth living and turning it into a taint so foul that it requires death simply for redemption. Every man, nay, every living thing with half a brain worth mentioning (so as is, mostly just man) must spend its life in constant apprehension of the possibility of corruption, the perpetual “siege mentality” that one must be ever watchful for the forces of evil. And through this, man has found strength.
The age of the 41st millennium has been referred to as the age of endings, for it is the belief of some xenos, and even of some men, that the age of Man is a sign of the end of all things. This may be considered metaphorically true, but if it is, it is only because of the fact that in the unlikely event that man ever falls within recordable history, he shall take every last being in existence with him. While it is true that man has lost much since it became truly unified, this does not mean that man’s time is coming to an end. Yes, man has lost countless worlds and innumerable soldiers, and yes, man has forgotten more about technology then most will ever learn, and yes, the powers of the Throne may be faltering and the one god that can be said to be on our side may pass from this world soon, this does not make it the end. For men have come whose heroism has taken fallen worlds back, sometimes by the thousand. And while man does not produce technology at nearly the rate it used to, it cannot be said that he has stopped innovating. And while the Emperor sits dying, hope is far from dead, for from even the worst of outcomes, there is still a silver lining, and He may still watch over us.
And it cannot be said that life is any worse now than it was throughout most of our species’ existence; rather, quality of life has almost universally improved! For the first time in man’s history, other than perhaps the best parts of the Dark Age of Technology, man is finally able to keep his brethren fed, clothed, hydrated, and employed nearly universally. Even in the deepest underhives there is water aplenty, on the darkest Death Worlds there is food for the survivors, in the most confusing mines there is employment. Things could be better, this is true, but we must remember that for almost all of our history, they have been worse.
It is for all of these reasons and more that the existence of the dying world of Famēs Maximus, merely a few steps from Holy Terra, has been a subject of serious contention for most scholars aware of it.
If any man lived who could still translate the first part of the planet’s name, they would find it to be perhaps the most apt celestial naming instance in history. The history of Famēs Maximus is a truly bizarre one. Once similar in many ways to primordial Terra, with roughly 70% of the surface covered in ocean, the land masses coated in thick swamps, any chances of intelligent life evolving on Famēs Maximus were dashed by a massive solar cataclysm roughly 2 billion years prior to the Current Era. While the seas still brimmed with planktonoid life forms and the land still crawled with moss and algae, nothing much more advanced could ever really evolve there due to the star’s instability and the world’s residual background radiation. Thus, during the Dark Age of Technology, the world was quickly passed over for colonization despite being under a hundred light years from Terra, all memories of Famēs becoming nothing but a footnote in the star charts.
During a more desperate time, the still-fledgling Imperium of Man rediscovered the world and found it everything they had dreamed and more. Just under the surface was an unimaginable stockpile of pseudo-petroleum: the product of billions of years of algae formation and fossilization. The land could be farmed with minimal effort and gen-mod crops. The seas could be cultivated with ease. The mineral wealth of the planet could be exploited with only a few mass excavators. Given how many benefits the world would reap, the radiation problem was easily ignorable; minimal usage of common anti-radiation meds would solve any notable problems. This new world was quickly built from the ground up. It could hardly be called a hive world, with only three cities even worthy of being called micro hives; in place of hives (mostly too difficult to construct given limited resources and engineering capabilities of the men still recovering from the age of strife) the world’s surface became covered in dozens upon dozens of cities roughly equivalent to those of M3-M5 Terra, massive Adamantium-Plasteel constructs rising from the ground relatively level to each other. Also appearing across the surface were thousands of factories which produced everything from common Lasguns to the now coveted Famēs-Pattern Chimeras and Leman Russ tanks, even a single Titan foundry on the smallest of the world’s four continents. Spaceports dotted the surface and docking stations and satellites littered Famēs orbit. As the ages went on and the Emperor fell into his watchful rest upon the Golden Throne, the cities also became dotted with Mega-Cathedrals for the faithful to worship by the millions.
But, as in all things, entropy would soon take root here as well. One by one, the factories began to close; the only memories left behind being rusted hulks and irradiated landfills. The cities fell into ruin; some from age, others from abandonment, some even from arbitrary wars between feudal lords. Hatcheries and farms once capable of supporting billions collapsed as the environment around them died. The petroleum deposits ran dry, the churches collapsed, the spaceports became littered slums, the satellites fell from the sky, unsupported by any infrastructure anymore. Employment rates dropped to almost nothing, crime rates rose absolutely, famine and disease became facts of life. Finally, as is the fate of many worlds, the once great Famēs fell into obscurity, occasionally being recovered from the endless Terran bureaucracy, alerting the High Lords of Terra that something must be done, having plans drafted, having rescue prepped, only to have it disappear for another few hundred years.
This continued until near the end of the 41st millennium, when a group of Adepts, annoyed at having to continuously re-file the same world over and over again, brought it to the Lords of Terra once more, this time, making sure it didn’t fall into obscurity yet again. Agreeing with the Adepts, the High Lords decided to finally provide aid to the hellish world, deciding to contract one of the major incorporations to begin the process of rebuilding the world’s infrastructure from the ground up, no expenses spared.
Of course, as with all major projects taken on by any government, even the Holy Imperium, the contract automatically went to the lowest bidder.
The Roth Incorporation can’t exactly be referred to as a shining example of business integrity. Or business savvy. Or ingenuity. Or profit seeking or investor defense or basic logic or really anything that you would expect to find in a corporation so large that it owns solar systems. The only way that the Roth Incorporation actually gained any of its profit was through massive amounts of politicking, lying to investors, buying off governors and system lords, and a several centuries-running profit transfer system at one point known to history as a “Ponzi Scheme.” The only reason they took on the Famēs contract at all was to avert suspicion over said scheme. It has even been suggested that if Roth were to take on a symbol following the same vein as the DeVayne Incorporation’s “Open Palm,” it would likely have all but the centermost finger curled up into a fist with the centermost proudly standing straight in the same vein as the ancient Haviian “Good-Luck Symbol.”
Despite this, it cannot be said that Roth has done no good on Famēs; rather, they have made remarkable headway for only fifty years of work. After six millennia, fears of starvation, dehydration and radiation have been removed due to new food production technologies being introduced (well, more of old technologies being reintroduced), allowing the average citizen a daily ration of roughly 2400 calories and 3 quarts of water (not that this is actually that great of a ration-even the average Necromunda underhiver get 3000 calories and 6 quarts a day), as well as radiation med dispensaries on every other street corner. Significant renovations have been made to the world’s cathedrals and centers of commerce. Extremely ancient mediums of recording like magnetic tape and groove-records have been mostly phased out in favor of newly introduced and much less ancient ones like holography and data slates, with new Hololiths and the like being placed into just about every area of human habitation, no matter how impoverished. Finally new satellites have been sent into orbit to improve world communication, bringing the world back together, at least to an extent.
Not that the Imperium contracted them to do ANY of this. Rather, not only did they do nothing that they had been contracted to do, but in many cases their actions were actively antagonistic to the Imperium’s will. The central request was for Famēs numerous spaceports to be cleared of debris and habitation so that the majority of the populous could be gradually transported off world for service in the Imperial Guard, which would have led to an immediate improvement in the world’s poverty rating; instead they improved the standard of living in the slums built on their location enough to cause the average citizen to actually refuse eviction requests. They were also supposed to reactivate the world’s numerous docking and refueling stations so that vessels entering orbit could be serviced (which would also give vessels a reason to enter orbit; these stations are commonly set up for full trading as well); while they had done this to an extent, it was nowhere near the levels required to actually boost trade, at least not enough to provide a kick start to the planet’s economy. In fact, even the task of providing temporary employment seemed to be too much for Roth: while they were supposed to raise employment to at least 50 percent, they had only succeeded in raising it to 2 percent. Even then, only half of that number were enlisted to Roth’s private security group, BlackMesh, who seemed to follow the ancient Terran adage of “one man with a gun may control a hundred without” to the letter. Perhaps their most impressive accomplishment though was their ability to foster hatred for the Imperium to the metaphorical boiling point without most citizens of Famēs having never even heard of the Imperium.
Still, despite Roth’s failings, Famēs was slowly but steadily improving. Though the populous would likely blame Roth for all of their suffering, this was simply their way, and they couldn’t be blamed for this.
Ungrateful bastards.
But as with all good things, this world’s recovery was soon to be put on hold with the arrival of an entirely new threat, one which it can easily be said that nobody in the entirety of the Imperium outside the most psychotic or clairvoyant of individuals could have seen coming. This new threat appeared in the most bizarre of ways, in the most unexpected of places. For at the exact sea level of Famēs eastern dead ocean, a tiny spherical window to another world suddenly appeared, and began an exponential rate of growth. Eventually contact would be made, which is when the Roth Incorporation and the Imperium would discover what the other world was called: Equestria.
No one involved would ever know what hit them.