After the Men of Iron departed and the Federation disintegrated,
the entire Milky Way had plunged into chaos that lasted thousands of years.
Only when the Emperor returned, beginning the Unification Wars and launching the Great Crusade, was all humanity forged into the Imperium of Man.
During that dark and chaotic period of history, countless technological warlords began making their moves.
Some enormous interstellar conglomerates and armed factions that had survived the Federation era began plundering and warring with one another.
The foremost objective of those conglomerates was to seize former Federation military facilities.
They regarded the cutting-edge technologies under development there, along with technical documentation and finished equipment, as essential to their future survival and continued advantage.
Yet even a disintegrated Federation was beyond the reach of these interstellar powers.
These advanced research institutes and technological centers possessed extensive independent defenses.
To repel their greedy enemies, many Federation weapons centers activated their experimental equipment.
On many planets, the activation of those unfinished weapons reduced everything to nothingness.
Even so, the scientists who had once served the Federation remained loyal to its government. Though they had lost their Men of Iron assistants, Men of Stone technicians, and Men of Gold engineers, that did not mean these brightest of humanity were helpless.
Humanity's technological foundations also allowed some of them to crush those greedy merchants and their armed forces.
These people eventually degenerated into the Techno-barbarians of later ages.
They possessed dangerous, terrifying weapons and harbored intense hostility toward all intruders. Their mighty weapons gave them strength. But after losing the Federation's technological support, within just a few generations,
these descendants of scientists became arrogant and ignorant.
Technology began to disappear, and the true Age of Strife began in earnest, lasting until the Emperor's expeditionary fleets came knocking.
The Great Crusade