Verronus/Varrus (Daemon World)

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The Hive World of Verronus (Low Gothic: Varrus) was once the brilliant heart of the Jericho Sector., a place of power and riches, but also of learning and peace. Now, Varrus sits at the heart of the Hadex Anomaly. All knowledge of the system has been suppressed by the Inquisition - ordinary citizens of the reach have no idea that the fiendish light emanating from the heart of the Anomaly originates from what was once an Imperial World.

The Inquisition has classified Verronus as a Daemon World, but truth be told they have no idea what it really is. Is it really a planet anymore? Or is the intensity of the warp anomaly such that no planet can exist, not even a world steeped in Chaos?

Barotta is relatively sure that the creation of the Anomaly was no accident, but the result of a vast ritual, thousands of years in the making. He suspects that the seeds of Verronus' destruction were sown during the sector's creation. If so, what entity other than Tzeentch could have orchestrated it?

Samech-pattern Las-blaster

The Samech-pattern Las-blaster is a reloadable, one-shot, man-portable anti-armor weapon produced exclusively by the Samech in the Jericho Reach. Since this Forge World is no longer part of the Imperium, but fallen to Chaps, the Las-blaster is incredibly rare in M42, especially beyond the Jericho Reach.

The weapon is slightly less potent than a full-bore las-cannon, and has a much shorter range. That said, it's powerful enough to kill Astartes with a single well-placed shot, and punch through all but the heaviest tank armor. Its main selling power is that it can be carried and operated by a single soldier, is easy to use and maintain (only basic cleaning and maintenance prayers required). Rate of fire is low. The spent energy cell must be replaced between shots, and the machine spirit needs time to rest before the weapon can be refired.

According to an M35 review by Mars, the las-blaster was based upon Eldar weaponry, and would likely have been declared heretical, had not all contact with Samech been lost only a few centuries later.

Eleusis (Shrine World, Orpheus Salient)

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Eleusis was a former Imperial Shrine World located along the path of the Orpheus Salient of the Achilus Crusade. Most of the surface of Eleusis was covered with great seas, and on its few landmasses, ten thousand temples and glass-blazoned shrines to the God-Emperor were built, forming the great "shrine cities." These wonders basked in serene holiness for five thousand standard years, becoming a place of pilgrimage for aspirants from as far afield as Macragge and Salem.

With the coming of the lost Jericho Sector's "Age of Shadow," the devotions of the shrine priests, priestesses, and attendants were twisted to the worship of the Dark Gods of the Warp as death stalked the temples and the profane overcame the pious. When the forces of the Achilus Crusade retook the planet in the late 41st Millennium, every inhabitant was ordered to be burned and the heretical shrines cleansed by fire and rebuilt.

Only a fraction of the planet's former population and glory had been restored when a new threat emerged: that of Hive Fleet Dagon. Crusade Command considered the defense of the world 'impractical' and evacuation 'counterproductive'. Instead, they deployed a device from the Dark Age of Technology that sealed away most of the planet's surface water, making it dead and unappealing to the encroaching swarm.

When Barotta of the SoX arrived here with Inquisitor Krawl, they found Genesteales among the population. Could this Stealer infestation have called the entire Hive Fleet? Had it come along with Calixian refugees used to resettle the planet, or did it have another origin? Ultimately they never found out, but perhaps it doesn't really matter.

Archmagos Hextrix was able to release the waters of Eleusis after years of research and experimentation. It is again a brightly blue ocean world of a million islands and a thousand temples, a place of worship and pilgrimage. It is from here Tanith-Baal directs Bartta's Daughters as they work to protect the fledgling sector and bring the light of the Word to the people.

Hethgard (Mining/Dead/Fortress World, Orpheus Salient)

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Hethgard was a Fortress World with three moons (also heavily fortified) that served as the primary command center for the Achilus Crusade's Orpheus Salient in the Jericho Reach. When the Tyranid menace codenamed "Dagon" was encountered, Hethgard's purpose changed: it was to protect the rimward flank of the Achilus Crusade's advance, and more importantly, to prevent the enemies of Humanity from reaching the Well of Night and the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate within it.

To that end, it was remade as a Fortress World, with every square kilometer of its surface and many hundreds of meters below ground devoted to the protection of its defenders and the repulsion of an invading force. Designed by a coterie of Divisio Tactica siege engineers and Adeptus Mechanicus artisans out of the lathes, Hethgard's fortifications were carefully arranged to allow for the swift and effective detection and destruction of invaders, its structure devised by ancient strategic lore, arcane formulae, and the results of intensive prognostication.

When Librarian Barotta of the Sons of Xandor arrived sometime after 212.M42, Hethgard still remained. There were scant few human survivors to be found, only four were located, but the world had proven true: the Hive Fleet had broken against it, wasting its power, until finally the controlling synapse was destroyed (details unknown).

The freezing, thin air of Hethgard's mountains had preserved the dead as if they have died only recently. Countless million human dead, and endless fields of slaughtered Tyranids. And an enormous amount of war material. Much of it destroyed or damaged, but the sheer scale of the battle fought here meant it was a near limitless pool of scavenge.

Hethgard's pickers still contribute to the Sector, even if their economic importance has waned a bit. A few lesser mines have been reopened, and towns and villages have sprung up to support the growing population.

Achilus Crusade/Jericho Reach

The Achilus Crusade was a secret Imperial Crusade that began in late M41. It sought to bring the Jericho Reach in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy back into the dominion of the God-Emperor of Mankind. It had some initial success, but the forces of the Imperium became too spread out, and eventually ran into serious opposition, including a Chaos Anomaly, a Tau Colonization Effort, and a Tyranid Hive Fleet. 

With the final death of the Corpse-God at the eve of the 41st Millennium, and the coming of the Granite Prince in the early 42nd, the Imperium greatly reinforced the Crusade, and evacuated billions of citizens through the Warp Gate, using them to settle reconquered worlds in the Jericho Reach.

At some point, prior to the Fall of Scintilla, all communication with the Achilus Crusade ended. It is thought that Tau forces managed to seize control of the Gate. What became of the Crusade is unknown.

Jericho-Maw Warp Gate

The Jericho-Maw Warp Gate is a Warp Gate of unknown Xenos origin that joins the former Imperial sector of the Jericho Reach in the Segmentum Ultima to the turbulent, Warp Storm-wracked region of space called "the Maw" that divides the Calixis Sector from the Koronus Expanse in the Segmentum Obscurus.

Any solid matter passing within the sweep of the crescent's great arms - which span a distance over a hundred kilometers - disappears into darkness and is hurled irresistibly to the other side of the gate and spat out, arriving on the other side of the galaxy.

As far as can be discerned, the time taken by the transit is all but negligible; mere seconds of icy black dislocation spanning a distance that might take a starship under Warp Drive several Terran years to accomplish, if such a direct journey was even possible.

The passage is not without its perils, however, as although no Warp-Drive or Gellar Field is required to use the Warp Gate, the passage through it is a turbulent one. It was quickly discovered that any less than sturdy vessels attempting the crossing were often badly damaged or even shaken apart by the stresses of the transit, limiting the Warp Gate's practical use to warships and other strongly-constructed voidcraft.

The gates appear utterly impervious to physical harm, protected by potent force fields the AdMech can't even begin to explain. The origins of the two gates are unknown. They were not built by the Eldar, and do not match the profile of the gates left behind by "the Old Ones".

The gates were once jealously guarded by the Imperium, but the Maw end is currently garrisoned by Tau ships, watch for signs of Tyranid incursions through the gate.

The Jericho end has no garrison - the gate there is shrouded by a thick field of space dust. This dust is made of exotic matter that defies all known shielding, and can disable even capital warship in weeks or months at best.

Port Wander

Port Wander is a massive void station located in the Rubycon II System, on the uttermost edge of the Drusus Marches Sub-sector of the fallen Calixis Sector. Port Wander was founded by the Imperial Navy in 917.M40 as a staging ground to investigate the loss of many vessels on the fringes of the Drusus Marches. With the discovery of the Koronus Passage into the Koronus Expanse region of the Halo Stars in the late 40th Millennium, the space station grew in importance owing to its close proximity to the Passage. Its original role as a base for Imperial military operations was slowly forgotten, and Port Wander became a way station for those daring passage into the Koronus Expanse. Merchants and mercenaries began to choke the once-deserted corridors of the station, and strangers shook the dust of distant stars from their boots while trading wondrous things from beyond the Great Warp Storms.

Once upon a time, it was rightly regarded as the last bastion of the rule of the Emperor of Mankind this side of the Koronus Expanse and the last stop before entering that untamed region of the Halo Stars. Always a place of desperate hopes and vain dreams, Port Wander is a darker place now, a vast fortress controlled by malign machine intelligences, and infested with twisted mutants - and still darker things. Yet still, the trade flows, and people come and go, for the riches and wonders of the Koronus Expanse call to the hearts of greedy men, who will risk all, if there is hope of profit.

The WAY OUT

Entering the Vortex can be a difficult process for the uninvited or unwanted. But LEAVING the Vortex is altogether more difficult... reavers may leave the Vortex, the Gods willing, but without exception, they are always called back - whether they want it or not...

That said, there are ways in and out for those in the know:

THE COMMON PATHS

The 13th Station of Passage is the easiest and most well-known route. Other, similar paths exist, but are more perilous or lead to distant places, and are traveled by few. More recently a path opened to Dusk... but already it is said if you go by this route you can go no further than Dusk.

THE DEEP PATH

Frozen Heart of the Vortex lies at the center of it all. For those brave - or foolish enough - to venture there, the road is wide open. The Vortex will spit you out wherever you want to go, and will no longer have any hold over you. Of course, a million champions have tried, but only a handful are believed to have reached the Heart.

THE OTHER PATHS

The Tyrant Star: the Tyrant Star is a baleful phenomenon that appears within the Vortex as often as without. Ancient legends tell that if a traveler can make his way INTO the Tyrant Star, it can take him not only WHEREver, but also WHENever he wishes to go. Unfortunately, the legends don't tell HOW this might be accomplished, although it's said that the renegade Rogue Trader Haarlock was able to do it.

The Wandering Moon/Gates of Moment: appearing within the Vortex is a small, wandering moon, a celestial body that seems to exist in multiple locations (and possibly times as well) at once. By landing on the moon, a traveler could leave the Vortex, though he has little control over where he'd end up.

Forbidden Portal: many legends tell of the Forbidden Portal, a huge edifice of bone and crystal that never opens, but promises to take a traveler elsewhere. There are two problems: It's never been opened and its location isn't known - each legend places it in a different place.

Path of the Dead: there is said to be a place within the Vortex, where Chaos has no power. None at all. The slumbering dead wait here, waiting for a call to arms. These are the Necrontyr, and they have to power to come and go as they please, crossing the void between the starts a men pass through a door.

The Webway: the Eldar have a presence in the Vortex, have had since time immemorial, and they have never been bound to it like other races. It is thought that the Eldar webway leads to the Vortex, and that at least one such passage is still open and possible to travel along by starship.

Q'Sal

At the juncture of the Sixth and Seventh anteciduals of the Screaming Vortex, a particularly persistent whorl of warp energy surrounds the sorcerer’s world of Q’sal. Here the sorcerer-technocrats of the cities of Tarnor, Velklir, and Surgub have held sway for over eight hundred centuries by their own reckoning, an almost inconceivable timespan in realspace terms. The high loremasters of Velklir maintain that Q’sal lay at the heart of the Screaming Vortex in the earliest days of is formation, but has gradually moved from the center towards the periphery, the Scrollwardens of Surgub counter that they have irrefutable proof that Q’sal began at the periphery and is moving to the center. The Archivist-savants of Tarnor can add their weight to neither view, having been struck mute by decree of the Arch-quaestor of Tarnor for a period of not less than two centuries in censure for their outrageous utterances. So it goes on Q’sal.

Q’sal is a rich and prosperous world that would seem familiar to the inhabitant of a civilized world of the Imperium. The clean lines of its glass-towered cities overlook plains covered with well-tended agriculture, its air is alive with the movement of flying craft. In space, a docking ring and shipyards work constantly and a variety of sleek-hulled vessels can be found moored there. On closer inspection, all of this seemingly ordinary activity reeks of the most potent warp-spawned sorcery; everything from daemon-forged engines to voidships powered by rune inscribed menhirs. Spells and cantrips are implicit in every kind of technology in an arcane fusion of magic and science.

SURGUB

The city of Surgub is built on an island in the bay of the great River Crelix and claims to be the oldest settlement of Q’sal -- a claim hotly refuted by Tarnor and Velklir. Surgub is ruled over by fourteen Factors with palaces in the highest steeples of the city. They meet in a strict pattern according to lunar phases. By their decree, any action that might distract them from their deliberations at such times is punishable by death, banishment, or reward according to their whimsy -- a decision ordinarily made according to the manner of business they were attending to. In the past, infractions have been recorded for a multitude of activities including whistling, not whistling, riotous public assembly, incontinent verbosity, unwelcome eruptions, and snark.

The measure of a Sorcerer’s worth in Surgub is determined by the height of his tower, a law that has caused the city to grow vertically into a crown of crystalline spikes many kilometers high. The highest-ranked Sorcerers seldom descend from the heights, living out their lives in the clouds far beyond the grip of common mire beneath. The Sorcerers of Surgub often weave Warp enchantments to levitate them several inches above the ground when they must go abroad, in keeping with a belief of their city that a Sorcerer setting foot upon the earth loses his powers.

VELKLIR

The city of Velklir lies at the southern extremities of a chain of mountains far to the north. Velklir is ruled over by a tyrant elected every forty-nine years and, by tradition, the features of past tyrants are carved into the rocks surrounding Velklir. Over the centuries this practice has covered the flanks of the mountains with hundreds of stern, hollow-eyed patrician faces, giving Velklir its more common name of "The City of Faces." Velklir’s towers are squat, round-bodied structures of green glass often broader than they are tall.

Velklir’s Sorcerers show a great passion for astronomy and the tops of many of the towers are given to arcane observatories and gigantic astrolabes. The astronomer-scientists of Velklir strive to carefully track every heavenly movement and astral conjunction in the Screaming Vortex. They obsessively make complex calculations, plot horoscopes, and predict the flux of the Warp to discover the most auspicious periods for their undertakings. It is said that a Sorcerer from Velklir can guide a vessel through the Immaterium with astounding accuracy, rivaling even the mutant Navigators of the Imperium, and that the greatest warbands repay Velklir for their assistance with a great tithe of souls. Even a Velklir star-chart is a great aid.

(this is the home of Akram the All-seeing, High Sorcerer of Q'Sal)

TARNOR

The city of Tarnor occupies a region of irrigated desert west of Velklir. Seen from afar it appears as a mass of domes and spheres tinted a thousand scintillating colours; whorls of amber, vermillion, carmine shot through with bubbles of cobalt, puce, lavender, and sienna. The sight of Tarnor gleaming beneath the desert sun can strike the unprotected blind. At sunset, the innumerable hues of cityscape merge to make colours unnamed in ordinary reality. The shadows cast are not those of Tarnor, but other cities in other times and places, making a grotesque shadowplay of the future. The Sorcerers of Tarnor wear a variety of placid-seeming masks whenever in public, changing them several times daily in correspondence to chimes rung throughout the city. The spoken word is frowned upon and a complex system of ritualized gestures is used to undertake most transactions. A visitor that abides by these strictures will find themselves feasted and entertained in great style by their silent hosts, though cautionary stories abound of guests causing offense by exclamations of delight.

Part of the Tarnor Sorcerers’ obsessive silence extends from their bizarre love of music. It is said that a Sorcerer of Tarnor cannot pass music being played without stopping to listen and that they will bestow amazing gifts on those that bring them a new kind of instrument or an unheard tune. By night, the curving streets of Tarnor echo with the weird strains of otherworldly melodies and alien harmonies. The mad profusion of instruments achieves a dissonance that can at times overwhelm the senses and blast the ears, or at others transport the soul on sublime breezes to a place of paradise.

The Tale of Kobald the Godless

Do you remember the Tale of Kobald the Godless?

Of course you don't. No one remembers him. Even the Gods have put him out of their minds.

Long ago, Kobal was servant and champion to all the Gods, the High Masters and the Low Ones, the Four Greater and All the Lesser.

Until one day he decided he would no longer follow anyone, but be his own lord and master of all. So he turned his back to the Gods, who had for aeons lent him their strength and offered him protection.

The Gods were not pleased.

They could have destroyed him with but a snap of their allmighty fingers, but they did not. Ever benevolent and all-powerful, they sent their envoys to treat with him instead.

But Kobald would not receive any visitors, not even those on the Gods' business.

So the Gods had no choice but to punish the Godless, so that he would take notice. Depravity, mutation, bloodshed, and disease, and much more they sent onto Kobald's flock.

But he would not relent.

So the Gods were forced to sterner measures. All Kobald's followers died, all his works turned to dust. Others rose up in his place, and he was forgotten.

Finally, he received the envoys - there were none left to bar their way. Each pleaded with him, offering him priceless gifts.

First came the Banshee, the Envoy of Tzeentch, but he would not listen to reason. He had no use for magic, or prophetic power, or anything else the bird-god had to offer.

Ellia Gut-ripper was next, carrying the word of the Skull Throne, but the offer of bloodshed without end could not convince Kobald. What use had he for blood or brass, or anything else offered by a god without a real face?

Grimm the Smiling, Herald of Slaanesh brought pleasure and pain in equal, bountiful measure, but the Godless just sat there, unmoved. These were ephemeral things, old things, worn out, useless. Not gifts, but curses. Besides, he had no use for a God who couldn't even decide to be man or woman.

Last was Surglub the Everliving, the humble Voice of Nurgle. But Kobald had fallen asleep, and no amount of shouting could wake him. Surglub had to return back to his master, his task unfished.

Finally, the Gods shrugged and left Kobald alone.

In the end the Godless died alone and powerless, a withered old man, while his peers ascended to Daemonhood.

The End.