Baraban

Baraban is a verdant Xenos World under the control of T'au Empire's Velk'Han Sept in the Jericho Reach. It has become contested by the Achilus Crusade's Astra Militarum, yet both sides suffer from inexplicable hallucinations bordering on insanity.

The planet's endless temperate forests are home not only to huge Vespid and Kroot armies, but to spectral presences that prey on the sanity of the Imperial Guardsmen fighting there.

The war on Baraban is a conventional one, with battle lines of trenches and fortifications, attacks and counter-attacks, as each side tries to push the other back.

Time and again the Imperial Guard launch armoured spearheads that shatter the xenos lines and it seems that surely a crushing victory will at last be won. Then the ghosts of Baraban make themselves known, and the Imperial forces fall apart in terror and madness.

A whole army can suddenly be assailed by bizarre visions and sensations, and must fight to save themselves from crazed comrades as well as the xenos.

The source of Baraban's ghosts is unknown, but everyone who has been there and survived has his own explanation. They appear to each guardsman differently: some as voices in the mind, others as visions of loved ones long dead or on distant worlds.

Even the Deathwatch who have participated in the Battle for Baraban report witnessing their Primarch wading into battle, or feeling the agony of the Emperor as Horus dealt him his mortal wound.

Many Astra Militarum commanders believe the T'au have a hand in Baraban's ghosts, but others believe the Kroot and the Vespid have their own difficulties on the planet.

The Kroot, in particular, develop into strange and apparently useless strains very easily, with dead-end strains like mindless cattle or uncontrollable predators resulting from the planet's cruel influence.