Warhammer 40,000: Darktide story explained

The grim darkness of the far future can be a confusing place, so here’s the Warhammer 40,00: Darktide story explained.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide takes place in the universe of Warhammer 40,000, often referred to as Warhammer 40k. It is so named because it takes place in the year 40,000, depicting a grim, dark future for humanity filled with dangerous aliens, evil gods, and plenty of political satire.

Here’s all the worldbuilding you need to know about the universe, and the circumstances surrounding the Darktide story explained.

Warhammer 40,000 Darktide story explained

The Warhammer 40,000 universe takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy. Humanity lives under the yolk of a religiously totalitarian regime. A pseudo-human being of immense psychic power named The Emperor led humanity from the ashes of a collapsed once-galactic civilization and established The Imperium, a secular empire that focused on reconnecting humanity’s shattered empire.

However, after being betrayed by his closest lieutenant, in the service of dark gods, in the year 30,000 and being placed in a pseudo-comatose state back on Earth, the empire is slowly poisoned by false religious worship of the Emperor and becomes a crumbling fascistic regime built on lies. This is the period during which Darktide takes place.

If you want to hear the full epic timeline of Warhammer 40k leading up to Darktide, check out YouTuber Arbitor Ian’s video on the subject.

Darktide takes place within the enormous “Hive City” of Tertium, an enormous society that contains billions of humans. This city has been infested by the forces of Chaos, humans influenced by dark gods in a parallel realm trying to topple civilization on the planet.

You play a criminal, heretic, or otherwise ne’er-do-well in the eyes of the Imperium that has been conscripted by the Imperial Inquisition to fight for them and redeem yourself — or die trying. You are the scum scraped from the bottom of the barrel, tossed aside for reasons wrong or right, forced to fight for a chance at a new life in service of the Inquisition.