Koronus Expanse

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"Lo, I see that which is beyond. I see the faces of pale moons and the fire of lost stars. I see the void un-walked and the waiting dark. I see the void that is my home and to which I return with hope and fear."

- reputed words of unknown Rogue Trader departing Port Wander

The Koronus Expanse is the name given by the authorities of the Imperium of Man to a dangerous unexplored region of the Halo Stars located beyond the Calixis Sector in the Segmentum Obscurus. The Expanse is accessed through the Koronus Passage, a treacherous but navigable route through the great Warp Storms that bar passage to the Halo Stars beyond the way station of Port Wander on the edge of the Expanse. As is true of the Calixis Sector itself, the Expanse was untouched by the God-Emperor’s Great Crusade many millennia ago -- and so it is a realm of fearsome xenos, treasures beyond imagining, heathen worlds of men, and the echoes of ancient doom.

The Koronus Expanse in the late 41st Millennium is a scattered, partly explored region on the frontier of the galaxy containing a few young Imperial colonies and vast natural wealth still barely exploited. Rogue Traders vie with one another for known resources, heedless of lives lost in the pursuit of riches, while a tentative attempt at Imperial colonisation follows in their wake. Drawn by the flow of wealth, pirates and servants of the Dark Gods have also slipped into the Expanse, eager to cast destruction upon the works of the God-Emperor’s faithful, living by what they wrest from dead hands, while the Expanse itself holds many secrets and native inhabitants no less dangerous.

For centuries, Rogue Traders have braved great evils and the treacherous warp to venture into the Koronus Expanse, but their efforts have barely begun to uncover its secrets. Footholds have been built close to the few semi-stable Warp routes into the area. Here, resource-rich worlds are exploited, xenos ruins excavated, trade envoys meet with heathen lords, and Imperial colonies are attempted upon sheltered worlds. This effort has been enough to shower wealth and fame upon the fortunate -- and make corpses of the rest. The gateway to the Expanse is littered with broken vessels and tales of the vanished.

Beyond these human conflicts lie truly dark and dangerous voids, rife with rumoured terrors, undiscovered stars, and worlds of men who have never known the light of the God-Emperor. There are no defined Warp-routes, no safe ways through the swirling Empyrean. These regions hold the fearsome Ork, the treacherous Eldar, and strange ruins that lie beneath the light of dying stars.

The Warpspace of the Koronus Expanse is treacherous and unknown in the main, and the partially explored regions of the Expanse are islands of Imperial activity amidst a vastness of danger and mystery. Navigating is a far cry from traversing the well-established Warp routes of the Calixis Sector. Most of the Koronus Expanse is known to the Imperium only though legend, revelation, and hearsay. The Rogue Trader who ventures into this unknown risks his very soul upon the talent of his Navigator, and on the quality of what little information he has gleaned from those gone before.

Beyond the partly explored regions of the Koronus Expanse, past deeps beset by pirates and dread xenos, lie many worlds and strange phenomena which exist as the stuff of dark legend. Some of these uncharted stars were visited by a single Rogue Trader whose tales are doubted or dismissed by rivals as outright lies, while others are known only from dubious and apocryphal sources such as Thulean datavaults recovered from Dolorium’s voids in 741.M41, or the infamous prophetic visions of the Seven Witches of Footfall. Other fragments of contradictory lore relating to these dark zones are culled from even more untrustworthy sources, such as the muted astropathic whispers overheard on the Warp’s twisted eddies, the falsehoods of the deceitful Eldar, or the ancient myths of heathen worlds given over to darkness for millennia uncounted. Such areas are labelled only as “Here be monsters” on ancient charts, where only the foolhardy or insane would venture to seek their destiny.

Great Warp Storms of the Halo Stars
"Calixian history is littered with footnotes describing the lost and the dead who braved the Great Warp Storms beyond the worlds of Saint Drusus."

- from The Voids, scribed by Tarsimus of Archaos

On the rimward margins of the Calixis Sector boil vast Warp Storms that have since ancient times barred passage into the Halo Stars. This barrier of raging tempests has claimed the lives of many who would dare to find new passage to the unexplored expanses. They ebb and flow with a ferocity and maliciousness that can lure even the most seasoned navigator to destruction in a sudden rending surge. Though these Warp Storms are referred to as a group, they are in fact an amalgamation of individual Warp Storms that clash, overlap, and occasionally consume one another. Passage through this mass of tempests is almost impossible outside a few stable routes that run through the storms like narrow threads of calm. Some storms have persisted for long enough that they have acquired names of infamy amongst those who travel and navigate the Sea of Souls. Of these, the most famous are the Void Dancer’s Roil and the Screaming Vortex, which bracket the stable passages known as the Maw like daemon sentinels at the gates to a waiting hell.

The Void Dancers’ Roil is a mass of subtly sliding drifts and beguiling currents in the warp that can lead the most seasoned Navigator astray and carve apart the hulls of starships that dare their tides. It is said that ghost-ships have been sighted drifting amongst the Void Dancer’s Roil, their hulls as pale as carved stone.

The Screaming Vortex is a boiling mass of Warp turbulence and vortices that clash and grind against one another with unceasing fury and power, giving rise to a constant psychic wail that can be perceived by those sensitive to the flow of the Warp. It is this dread wail that gives the Warp Storm its name. The character of the Screaming Vortex is that of a raging beast whose teeth clash and gnaw in a neverending search of food, and it is said by the void born that it has claimed entire fleets to satiate its endless hunger.

Nesting within or beside the Screaming Vortex and the Void Dancer’s Roil are other lesser Warp Storms whose nature is permanent and distinct enough that they have acquired their own infamy and doom-laden titles. Some Navigators who have strayed within or to the edge of the great storms whisper of the Deathveil as a strange cascade of unnatural beauty that will draw the mind of the unwary to within its soft and silent embrace never to return. Old voyagers into the Halo Margins of the Calixis Sector exchange strange stories of the pocket of stillness within the fury that they name the Whispering Storm, where the fingers of the dead caress the hull and forgotten voices whisper inside the minds of the living in voices of crackling static. These strange storms within the Warp, and many others beside, all whirl and dance together and so create a wall within the Sea of Souls that cannot be crossed except by a rare few stable Warp routes. The greatest and most easily navigated of these is the Koronus Passage, or “the Maw” as it is more often called, which passes through the Great Warp Storms and into the dark unknown of the Koronus Expanse.

Port Wander
"A stinking, painted harlot who would see your blood flowing for a few coins, that she may be, but who cannot say that they love the light that is known waiting for the traveller returned from the void."

- Rogue Trader Cortin Blaine, captain of the Astra Veritas

Port Wander is a void station on the uttermost edge of the Drusus Marches Sub-sector of the Calixis Sector, rightly regarded as the last bastion of the rule of the Emperor this side of the Koronus Expanse. A place of desperate hopes and vain dreams; Port Wander teems with a transitory population of traders, spies, merchant factors, pilgrims, and missionaries amongst which move Adeptus Administratum functionaries and minions of the Adeptus Mechanicus, all feeding on the riches that flow from the realms beyond the Warp Storms in the Koronus Expanse. All who travel into the Koronus Expanse share one common experience in that they pass Port Wander. Be they the pious bringing the Emperor’s Light into the darkness beyond the Imperium or black-hearted monsters searching for the keys to forbidden dreams, many will stop in the last place where the rule of the Golden Throne keeps the horror and possibility of the unknown at bay.

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 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 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.

Rubycon II System
Rubycon II is the star system that is home to Port Wander in the Drusus Marches. It is centered on a a bloated red star that is nearly a thousand times larger than Blessed Sol and burns a deep crimson. It is a dead system of two large gas giants whose pale surfaces flow with great typhoons that spread and die like bruises on flesh. These two planets are named the Ruby Brothers, and between the two worlds lies a wide and dense field of asteroids that may be the remains of a lesser sibling planet whose death occurred long ago. This broken string of asteroids is a common hiding place for those wishing to avoid Imperial notice, and has become a meeting place for agencies of ill repute who would still chance the Koronus Passage to the Expanse. Beyond the orbit of these two bloated twin planets is Port Wander itself, set amongst a clutch of asteroids, many of which have been converted into other installations, ship yards, housing units, research stations, repair docks, and storage facilities. Surrounded by vessels of all shapes and sizes, it glows with the lights of hundreds of beacons and tens of thousands of souls. Beyond this island of life are the comets, untold hundreds of thousands of chunks of ice and carbonaceous soot, each a glittering mote in the heavens. Finally there is the true void, still and serene except for the silent roar of mighty plasma drives as voidships pass in flight or in hope.

Structure of Port Wander
From a distance, the port resembles a small Imperial cityscape, with spires and cathedral towers arching upwards and a huge Aquila marking its allegiance to the God-Emperor. Numerous long piers protrude from the sides with spider-like docking fixtures, ready to bring in a voidship and anchor it to the station. Smaller shuttle bays dot the station where numerous small spacecraft carry cargo and people between voidships and the station. Deep crevasses run along the station, showing the slow layers of expansions through the many decades and the somewhat patchwork nature of many of them which includes parts from small vessels such as the nearly intact hull of the Solstice Imperialis, grafted onto one side of the void station many centuries ago. Further construction and external maintenance is constant, with servitors crawling over areas of damage or expansion like flies over a bloated metal beast.

On the underside of the station are the main repair yards, where damaged ships can contract out for refurbishment and mending. The yards include entire sealed drydock bays, where smaller ships can be totally enclosed for more intensive work. Also along the station’s keel are a variety of elaborate and mysterious arrays and probes used by the Adeptus Mechanicus in their arcane research into the nature of the Warp passage leading through the Great Warp Storms to the Koronus Expanse beyond.

Across the length and breadth of the station are Lance emplacements, weapons batteries, torpedo launchers, and Void Shield generators, all placed for maximum efficiency and kept in readiness. In addition to these static defences, squadrons of heavily armed monitor craft are stationed near Port Wander, and warships from Battlefleet Calixis pass the port on regular patrol. Port Wander may be the gate to the Koronus Expanse but it is a gate that is guarded.

At any given time there are at least a half-dozen Rogue Traders docked at the station, as well as other merchant vessels, enormous transports, and numerous smaller craft moving into and out of docking stations like swarming insects. Other vessels move through the area, offloading raw fuel gases mined from the two larger planets or minerals and ice from the further reaches of the system. There are also numerous asteroids sharing its space, most of which have been turned into fuel depots, palatial manses and estates, crude habitats, storage facilities, voidship yards, and other more useful installations.

Koronus Passage: "The Maw"
"It is a beast that swallows the apostate, the doubter, and all who ship with them. Better to slay the unfaithful than risk the dread Maw whilst such false wretches draw breath."

- Opening lines of the Voidfarer's Warning from the Drusian Play

The Koronus Passage is a stable but dangerous Warp route that passes through the Great Warp Storms separating the Calixis Sector from the Koronus Expanse. The Koronus Passage was discovered by a Magos-Explorator of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the distant past, lost for millennia, and found once more by the Rogue Trader Purity Lathimon at the very close of the 40th Millennium. The Passage links Port Wander and the Drusus Marches to the great star Furibundus and the Imperial void colony of Footfall -- and beyond Footfall, the mysteries of the Koronus Expanse beckon.

Superstitious voidfarers call the route “the Maw.” To their eyes the Maw is a beast made of warp storms, cunning and malicious, whose crushing gullet must be braved by those who seek to break through to the Koronus Expanse beyond. Many have died in trying, and traversing the Maw remains harrowing despite centuries of experience gathered by Navigators and Rogue Traders. Some say this ill-omened title came from the first to survive the crossing -- and that they returned wild-eyed, at the edge of sanity, and few journeyed to the voids again.

The possibilities of a passage through the Great Warp Storms were first recorded by Abenicus, insane Navigator of House Benetek, and have gripped the hearts and minds of Rogue Traders ever since that time. Vast riches and a way through the Great Warp Storms were once a lure to the brave and foolhardy, and many died for pursuing what they believed to be the truth. In time, cautious steps into what would be called the Maw laid the groundwork for the Stations of Passage that guided steps of those passing through the Maw. Later, during the Mistaken Age of the early 41st Millennium, Navigators learned to read the Maw and its moods -- to see signs in the Warp for what they were and so avoid the sudden, sweeping maelstroms that doomed earlier explorers. The Stations of Passage fell into disuse, save as refuges from unexpected upheaval in the Empyrean, and as covert rendezvous points for plotting Rogue Traders.

In the present times the Maw is a rite of passage for Rogue Traders of the Calixis Sector. A Lord-Captain may bear the greatest Warrant of Trade ever seen in Port Wander, but until he harrows the Maw and survives to see the raging light of Furibundus at its farthest end, he is no better than a common Free Trader in the eyes of his peers.

Stations of Passage
The Stations of Passage are locations within realspace at which voidships can safely drop from the Warp while navigating the Maw. Rogue Traders religiously avoided certain Stations, and some still retain an ill reputation. Many of the Stations are clear voids, howling streams of energised gas, or the outskirts of dead systems. Others are more intriguing, however.

The Temple
The Temple is a dead star system at the very outskirts of the Great Warp Storms, a short Warp jump from Port Wander. It is a strangely symmetrical, almost artificial system of perfectly spherical rocks several hundred meters in diameter orbiting a sun that is a cinder of dense matter. Nothing else exists -- no dust, gas-streams, or worlds. The Temple is so named either because of a long association in voidfarer myth with the Temple card of the Sybillan Emperor’s Tarot. The card signifies the commencement of a blessed endeavour but also the passing out of the realm of the sanctuary of the known.

The Witch-Cursed World
The Witch-Cursed World is a large rocky rogue planet set alone without a star to orbit in the deep void like a bauble discarded by the whim of a god, its atmosphere frozen to glaciers upon its surface. Whether it is an exile from its former star system or was formed within the lightless void is unknown. No crew will stand for a long stay in these voids -- it is an ill-omened place.

The Battleground
Legend has it that the Battleground was an ancient wreckage field even before the Rogue Traders Trame and Ettimus Lathimon fought here to mutual destruction over the Ragged Worlds. A vast span of debris swirls slowly under dim starlight, most of it Imperial, spread across the empty void. Every crew has a dozen tales as to what happened here long before Rogue Traders traversed the Maw.

The Hermitage
In the midst of the Mistaken Age, a tiny Adeptus Ministorum sect paid vast sums for Trame Lathimon to carry them and their void station Hermitage out into the Halo Stars. Lathimon cast the hermits forth from his holds at the Conclave, a station then known for the frequency with which vessels met to trade for rumours of what lay beyond. The outer reaches of the Hermitage have crumbled and opened to the void, but a few hermits still come to dwell here. Rogue Traders have long left ciphered messages at the Hermitage for their allies, hidden at prearranged points within the void station. The richly decorated central transept is sometimes used as a neutral zone for clandestine trade, the parties standing before a bluestone altar, platinum Aquila, and perfectly preserved banners depicting the victories of Saint Drusus.

Furibundus
"A lamp of fervour shines upon the white gate, Not held by the greatest saint to mark the way, But hung alone to banish enfolding shadows, That beset the Emperor's true servant upon the fated path"

- Translated from the prophetic verses of Abenicus

The light of Furibundus marks the far side of the Great Warp Storms and the beginning of the Koronus Expanse. It is a huge and primal stellar mass, far brighter and more energetic than any star should be. Its fires rage so fiercely that the cataclysmic energies unleashed within cause vast bulges of burning plasma to distend Furibundus’ form, writhing as though immense beasts fight within. The outer envelope constantly tears and ripples, throwing off huge flaming masses into the near voids. Furibundus is surrounded by shells of remnant gas expanding outward, each a remnant of the star’s outermost layers.

The Imperial presence around Furibundus clusters in two locations: the stonework void-settlement of Footfall, and the Adeptus Mechanicus temple of Altar-Templum-Calixis-Ext-17. Footfall’s ornate, tethered structures orbit at a sufficient distance from the star to be safe from the lethal ribbons of solar plasma, and for voidships to operate with little impediment. Further inwards, close to the primal roar of Furibundus, there is a planet set in a frantic orbit and blasted to molten rock over and again by its proximity to the bloated star. The only way it can be seen is by the shadow it casts on the movement of plasma-ribbons. This is Altar-Templum-Calixis-Ext-17, and it is here that the Mechanicus hide a heavily-shielded fortress-temple, within which Tech-priests study the secrets of this furious star.

Footfall
"You sir are a liar, and while you may command a flotilla of warships, the fact is that right here and right now there is just you and me and this hammer. So let us hear no more of what you do not known and proceed to what you do know."

- Doronal Casius, "Prince" of the Kasballica, in coversation with Rogue Trader Hiram Sult

The settlement that was once Dewain’s Footfall, and now simply Footfall, is a tethered network of hundreds of stone structures floating in Furibundus’s voids. It is a mass of buttressed temples and plasma-pitted fanes whose towers jut out at all angles into the void. Most are linked by enclosed stonework tunnels and arch-bridges, in addition to huge steel chains. At the very centre is tethered a huge macro-statue of the God-Emperor, larger than many warships.

Many of Footfall’s buildings would not look out of place upon a planetary surface, while other spiral mazes and winding tunnels of unsupported stone would fall apart under the tug of gravity. Sections of Footfall have no gravity, and many have fluctuating levels of generated gravity. The few structures that have their own stable gravity generators are highly desired prizes and are fought over by the most powerful factions, changing hands over the corpses and regrets of their prior occupants with alarming regularity.

Over the centuries since its establishment, Footfall has become a lair of villainy and intrigue, the descendants of its original population of stoneworkers and Rogue Trader vassals now far outnumbered by less-reputable newcomers. Here, religious fanatics rub shoulders with assassins, spies, fugitives from Imperial justice, narco-tribesmen, rowdy crew on furlough, and a wide range of disreputable merchants. Beneath this tumult of lawlessness can be found and an even more shadowy world: Hereteks, Chaos Cultists, unrestrained criminals, unsanctioned psykers, and worse. Here a thousand forms of deadly intrigue can be found, and anything from a starship to a human soul can be bartered in Footfall -- for a price. It is for precisely these reasons that many great powers and factions from the Calixis Sector maintain secretive agents in Footfall: the Administratum, Battlefleet Calixis, the Great Houses of the Imperial nobility, the disciples of the Dark Gods, the Adeptus Ministorum...and perhaps even the Ordos of the Inquisition as well.

For the Rogue Traders and their agents, Footfall has many uses beyond those of a simple port. These individuals come to learn about competing interests, find an array of illegal services unavailable on Imperial worlds, send forth trusted crew to carouse, gather new recruits to replace those lost to the void, and participate in deadly intrigues to gain an edge in the exploration of the Koronus Expanse. It is also a place where a vessel can shelter to refit and repair damage in relative safety, provided a Rogue Trader can abide the thousand assorted scum who might flock about, or the dubious strangers who will swarm their injured vessel and toil upon its hull for a few Thrones apiece -- or the Hereteks whose price is far higher but whose “no questions asked” expertise makes them worth the daemon’s bargain to hire.

Winterscale's Realm
"It is a place of graves and grinning skulls. Its wealth is its curse on all who seek it, for who could not look upon such wealth and not think to spill his brother's blood to posses it all?"

- Vilius Hope, voidsman

Winterscale’s Realm is one of the most explored and exploited regions, and one that has delivered both fabulous riches and early death for the unwary in equal measure. Winterscale’s Realm is a region of space defined by the stars explored and charted by Sebastian Winterscale in the early centuries of the 41st Millennium. It is composed of a few coveted worlds sitting like islands amongst the darkness of the unknown. Rogue Traders have traversed the Realm’s breadth a hundred times, but even so, its farther reaches and troubled Warp regions remain unmapped. Though only a handful of worlds within Winterscale’s Realm have been even partially explored, these have proven to be fat with riches and treasures. It has lured those whose goal is only wealth, and has become a battleground between rivals for its bounty. Gems, precious minerals, exotic Death World beasts, xenos artefacts, and many more rarities have poured into select coffers of merchant cartels and noble backers in the Calixis Sector and beyond, thanks in no small part to the Winterscale Realm’s tireless explorers.

Winterscale’s Realm is named for the Rogue Trader Sebastian Winterscale who first explored and charted many of its stars. Those who venture into Winterscale’s Realm do so in the main because of the legendary wealth it is said to harbour, but also because it is one of the most haphazardly charted regions of the Koronus Expanse. There are many Navigator clans who hold many more charts of Winterscale’s Realm; most such records agree in part, though some are wildly divergent. The few points of agreement between these charts thus indicate the worlds, stars, and Warp routes that are generally agreed to exist, at least insofar as the explorers of the Koronus Expanse are concerned. The other charts are considered to be flights of fantasy, and their navigational data to be nothing more than a vile trap to lure and destroy the foolhardy. Many believe that the reason for the profusion of misleading and contradictory charts of Winterscale’s Realm is simply a by-product of several centuries of Rogue Trader activity. But a few whisper in the obscura dens of Port Wander that all such charts are true, and if combined using the correct cipher, they would reveal the true extent of Sebastian Winterscale’s exploits and the hidden riches of his realm.

The proximity of Winterscale’s Realm to the Koronus Passage, the tales of its wealth, and the relative abundance of navigational charts -- albeit of dubious accuracy -- mean that explorers and merchant concerns and renegades are drawn to it, willing to fight for fortunes that might be no more than fancy. Winterscale’s Realm is soaked in the blood of rival claimants to worlds and resources, and every glittering prize carried back into Calixis Sector has to be bought in death and slaughter from those others who would claim it. Weaker Rogue Traders, fearful of greater risks, may come to Winterscale’s realm hoping to grow slowly wealthy from its resources while remaining close to the light of Imperial domains. Any who does not come armed and prepared for battle, however, is a fool who will not see the lights of Port Wander again. The graves of the naïve, arrogant, and unlucky litter the stars of Winterscale’s Realm and offer mute testament to this untamed cauldron of death and greed.

Burnscour
"Death dripping down in the rain, blood and the scream of beasts: that is all I recall of that place."

- Mesenicus Var, mercenary captain of the entourage of Rogue Trader Hiram Sult

Burnscour is a Death World of roaring storms, jungles, and strange beasts. It is no place for men, as the steaming rain alone eats at metal and breeds strange fungus on exposed flesh, and the sap dripping from plants is lethal or viciously toxic. Yet the beast trade has found a foothold upon Burnscour, carried there at exorbitant rates by Rogue Trader vessels and illegal, unsanctioned merchant craft. They come to Burnscour to stock the ever-hungry fighting pits of the distant Calixis Sector with saurian leapers, gargantipedes, and other horrors of fang and maw. Hunter retinues clad in bulky suits of vulcanised rubber stalk the jungles in search of exotic xeno predators for the fighting pits, ever watchful for creatures that will make the most lethal attractions on far-off Hive Worlds of the Imperium.

There are no permanent structures on the surface of Burnscour -- only the slowly dissolving metal carcasses of landing craft brought down by the planet's storms, the few melted ruins of structures built by fools, and the swaying jungles ever growing beneath the caustic rain. From the uppermost leaves of its canopy to the ground, the jungles of Burnscour are a choking mass of countless plants: trees with dark waxen leaves and trunks covered in barbs that weep thick sap the colour of bile, blooms of fungus as pale as milk, thick creepers from the branches of trees, delicate flowers the colour of livid bruises on pale flesh, which open at the touch to expose waving fronds that fill the air with a heady scent that dulls the mind -- all these and thousands more species swarm and choke the surface of Burnscour.

Beasts stalk through the nightmare jungles of Burnscour. Things of every sizes, all perfectly adapted to the hellish environment, live here in vast numbers, from beetle-like creatures who gnaw through flesh or bark to feed on blood or sap, to the strange six-legged stalkers the size of three grown men but scuttle silent and invisible though the branches of the middle canopy. Almost all are capable of killing any human that steps onto the surface of Burnscour. The lethal nature of Burnscour’s native creatures is both the planet’s curse on any who might wish to establish surface habitation on there, but are also the prize that draws many to it.

When men come to Burnscour, they come for the beasts. So little does the jungle and rain tolerate the presence of man that beast-hunting parties are usually dropped onto the surface of the planet and remain for as little time as possible before hailing their waiting drop craft with a homing beacon. These hunters and their ferocious harvest are often hauled off the surface into hovering dropships that never touch the surface. Others defoliate the jungle with anti-plant bombs and Heavy Flamers to create brief landing clearings—which are swallowed again by the jungle within days. Dangerous it might be, but the price commanded by hunters for living beasts of Burnscour is enough to blot out the tales of hunting parties vanishing, never to be seen again, or the whispers of the things that stalk unseen beneath the dark leaves and hissing rain. It is said that even the feared Beast House of the Calixis Sector has invested a small fortune to secure constant supply from Burnscour. Such are the prices that its predators can command from the wealthiest and most discerning patrons.

Egarian Dominion
"If proof were ever needed that some darkness best left undisturbed lurks amongst those haunted stars, then I could offer no better than those dead and dry worlds. To the wise they would suggest that curiosity is indeed the greatest of sins."

- Inquisitor Marr, speaking of the discoveries of Rogue Trader Sebastian Winterscale

The Egarian Dominion was once a populous xenos domain that spanned a handful of close stars. Many millennia past, the alien civilisation that dwelt in this domain fell victim to a nameless doom that left only empty, desolate worlds and crumbling structures in its wake. The principal worlds of the Dominion are dry, cool desert planets, covered by tightly packed structures that form a vast maze in three dimensions, walls and corners hundreds of meters high and extending in belts for thousands of kilometres across the desert plains. These claustrophobic xenos complexes are buried by windblown sand and dry soil, their borders ragged cliffs that mark the edge of lowland deserts. Egarian building materials glisten with rainbow light as though oily, even as they crack and crumble with age. They somehow channel the light of Egarian stars, and even the deepest regions of the xenos hives are lit with a disturbing, shifting glow. The passageways are cramped for humans, and the hive mazes are empty, as though the xenos and almost all their works simply vanished overnight. The only sound is the moaning of the wind as it blows through enclosed maze-spaces and across desert outcrops.

Murdered World of Jerazol
"There is no crime too terrible, nor act so monstrous that man will not commit given a sufficiency of conviction and self interest."

- ancient Terran proverb

Jerazol is a desolate world of ash and charred bone. It is a world, tales say, murdered for greed and spite. Discovered by a pious Rogue Trader whose name does not survive in Imperial records, Jerazol was verdant, fertile, and supported a population of humans whose culture had regressed to the level of a primitive tribalism. The unnamed Rogue Trader was determined to bring the population back into the light and dominion of the God-Emperor. He began the process of tutoring and civilising the population, while purging it of any trace of deviancy or corruption. Not long after Jerazol was discovered, it was also found by other explorers, who believed that the primitive humans where hiding wonders of lost technology in warrens beneath the earth, built by their forgotten ancestors who first came to the world from across the stars. These machines, they said, were worth any price in blood and death, and when the nameless Rogue Trader stood against them, they destroyed his vessels, letting their wrecks fall to the surface of Jerazol like the burning tears of a god. Then, it is said the murderers bombarded the world, burning its surface to ash and choking its atmosphere with smoke. The tales do not agree as to whether the despoilers found the technological treasures they sought. Some say they unearthed such wonders that they rose to the highest tiers of power within the Imperium, others say that they only found ash, bone, and mud and that they cursed the dreams that had brought them through void and madness to murder a world for naught. No matter the truth of the tales, the burned and Dead World of Jerazol exists as testimony to the price that can be paid in search of the riches of Winterscale’s Realm.

Foundling Worlds
"It is a place cloaked in storms, where the ghost lights of false stars lure you to a depthless nothing. It is a place that wants us not, and will see us dead for our daring its bounds."

- Navigator Helias Yeshar speaking of journeying into the Foundling Words

The Foundling Worlds lie beyond the Cauldron, a lesser Warp Storm whose baleful churning might be seen as a warning against further exploration. By strange accident of fate, the Foundling Worlds cluster, although relatively close to the Koronus Passage, was not visited by Imperial ships until several standard centuries after the opening of the Koronus Expanse to exploration. Amongst voidfarers the Foundling Worlds are described as a cursed place of sudden Warp Storms, temporal distortions, and strange stellar phenomena, and it is said that nothing will come to any good that is undertaken within its bounds. That is not to say that none have tried to probe the mysteries of the Foundling Worlds or tame it through colonisation and exploitation -- but even after a route into this storm-wracked region was established, most of its stars and planets remain unexplored. Those few endeavours that have been made to establish settlements or to harvest the wealth of the Foundling Worlds have met with disaster or misfortune.

It is extremely difficult to navigate a course into the Foundling Worlds, even if one is following a charted route. The Warp trashes and twists as if trying to throw a ship onto another course, and furious tempests suddenly appear and claw at a ship’s Gellar Field. At other times the cluster gives rise to strange pockets of stillness that hold ships becalmed. Even established routes are unreliable, sometimes appearing to vanish altogether or suddenly lead to different locations. Many ships have been lost trying to make passage into the Foundling Worlds, and with every craft lost, the evil reputation of the Foundling Worlds grows. The strange localised nature of the storms, and anomalies that enfold the Foundling Worlds, have led some amongst the Navigator houses to privately speculate that the region is hidden and protected by something that does not wish its worlds violated by human presence.

The Foundling Worlds are littered with the dead carcasses of hopeful attempts to wring profit out of its stars: derelict space stations not crewed for centuries, shattered outposts inhabited by the burnt and dried corpses of the dead, feral colonies of humans who have turned from the light of the Emperor. All are a testament to the belief among many who explore the Koronus Expanse that all endeavours in the Foundling Worlds are cursed. With each passing decade, a bold new generation scoffs at the tales of older and more wary explorers and set their plans amongst the Foundling Worlds. Some prosper for a time, but fate is inexorable, and the malignancy of the Foundling Worlds is patient; in time, all are undone and their fortunes with them.

Grace
"Hunger unwound what little hope was left and moved us to what humanity would not once have contemplated."

- Comdeus Canto, survivor of the expedition from the Inferno’s Child

The storm-ridden world of Grace is circled and shrouded by swirling clouds and hurricanes. Continual gales carry the spores of its simple fungal life far and wide amidst lightning and frozen hail. Beneath the storms, the peaks and valleys of Grace’s jagged surface form a stark, beautiful landscape that was once dotted with the proud structures of a colony founded under the authority of Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda. From behind Void Shields and armoured crystal viewports the colonists, drawn from the wealthiest exiles of Imperial nobility and the most successful of criminals (a distinction between the two being not always easy to draw) gazed out on the beauty of the world that was their sanctuary from blood wars, vengeful rivals, and the iron fist of Imperial justice. The world of Grace is still just as beautiful, but the colony palaces lie in ruin and its pale-eyed people scuttle in the shadows, harbouring a terrible secret.

Grace was an Imperial colony world founded not for the expansion of the domain of the God-Emperor, but to serve the greed and arrogance of Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda. The colonial palaces built on Grace were palatial fortresses for Imperial exiles of wealth and means -- those worthies secretively brought to the edge of the Imperium by the Cold Guild, stored in frozen vaults for their journey and returned to life in the depths of Port Wander. Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda swelled her coffers accepting fugitives into the world she had claimed and giving them leave to build their armoured palaces on Grace. At further ruinous cost, she provided the exiles with illegal slaves from Footfall, provided them with the finest foods using the lesser voidships of her fleet, and allowed their spies and agents to pass to and from Imperial space in the holds of her ships. It was, for a time, a paradise of the wicked, but it did not last.

It is said by the pious that in time no sin goes unknown or unpunished in the God-Emperor’s sight, and the punishment for Grace was terrible indeed. Vessels of Aspyce Chorda carrying supplies to Grace were destroyed by a Warp Storm that rose up, swallowing them whole and sealing passage to Grace. The world itself was a pleasurable and beautiful refuge and had no capacity to produce its own food. For a time the exiles and criminals contented themselves with the false hope that supplies would come, and then when they did not, they turned on one another, sending their vassals to loot and burn other palaces and strip them of supplies and food. In time only a few of the many colony palaces were left, and these had become ugly fortresses against the predatory raids of the few others that persisted. When even raiding could not feed those who remained, they turned to eating their dead -- first those who had been slain, and then those who still lived. So it is that the few debased colony palaces harbour those who eat human flesh, and they are always hungry. Some have beacons that broadcast distress calls out into the void, seeking sustenance from unwary travellers.

Rain
"There is no hope now; I have heard the voice calling. It is calling to me from the storm in the sky, and spoke of trespass and blood, and hearing it I know it is the truth."

- extracted from the final astropathic message broadcast from prospecting colonies on Rain

Rain was a colony world of wet grasslands and high plateaus in the Foundling Worlds, its flora and fauna inedible but otherwise harmless. Small prospecting and bio-augury colonies were established by a number of Rogue Traders in the late 8th century of the 41st Millennium. They found little of interest in the ecology of the planet and even less of value beneath its covering of loamy earth. The last scraps of astropathic reports from the prospecting colony talked of structures they had found in the dense forested areas of the planet but gave no other information except a note that the rain made a strange noise when it fell near them. Nothing more was ever heard from the colonies apart from a single garbled astropathic broadcast that raved about pale figures in the rain and sleek shapes in the clouds.

Iniquity
"By this blood I swear my soul and heart to the blackness and to the Iron Scourge."

- from the oath of the Iron Scourge fraternity

Iniquity is a world of huge mountains rising from an acid sea, orbited by a fractured moon. In warrens burrowed into the dark rock of the mountain lurk thousands of Renegades and scum of the worst kind. It is a world that exits to feed its feral packs of Chaos raiders with metal and supplies, who return with captured prisoners to toil in the foundries and poisoned mines. There is no lore on Iniquity save the lore of might and murder, and its brutal society is split into fraternities bonded by blood and pledges made in unholy tongues. These fraternities control the mining and smelters in the deep reaches beneath the mountains and watch over the toiling armies of captives whose lives are best if they are short.

Long ago mines were established on Iniquity, burrowing into the mineral-rich rock despite thousands of lives lost to rock falls and poisoned gas pockets. That time was ended when the indentured workforce rose up and slaughtered the mine overseers and daubed the dark walls of the mine workings with their blood. Some attempt may have been made by the backers of the mining operation to regain control of Iniquity, but if there was, it remains unrecorded, and its failure is obvious from the evil tales that seep like a blood stain though rumour and whispers even to Port Wander. To this day none has ever succeeded in cleansing Iniquity -- though many have tried and failed to return.

Charnel Stars
"Only we few shall see what lurks beyond those terrible passes and beyond those dark and glittering gulfs. Be it death or ancient majesty, we shall tread the void and see what lies that little further."

- Aleana Howsian, Rogue Trader, address to the crew of the Samarkand

The corpse-embers of the Charnel Stars beckon explorers of the Foundling Worlds, promising dead worlds and unknown treasures. No Rogue Trader is known to have found a route through the twisting, malicious Warp of that region, not yet. The secrets and riches that wait in the baleful light of those evil stars have beckoned to explorers for centuries, but all have failed to penetrate into the Charnel Stars. Many of the boldest have perished in their attempt to approach the seemingly unassailable void.

Accursed Demesne
"Pride has conducted us unto death, and torment awaits all who follow in our steps."

- attributed to Faith Laithmon

In ages past, man believed that all evil and corruption in the Koronus Expanse emanated from the Accursed Demesne: ills in the Warp, energies that blasted life from worlds, clusters of stars that seemingly died together in unnatural cataclysms, misfortunes, ghost-vessels, and the ravening Ork. Wise Rogue Traders shun these voids even now, and little is known of the worlds deep within the Accursed Demesne. Common voidfarers live in terror of the Demesne and the ill fortune that flows from it. They whisper tales of xenos tombs upon Lathimon’s Death, cursed Dolorium, and the domain of the fearsome Ork beyond.

The Accursed Demesne is a vast and uncharted region into which few have voyaged and returned. Few routes into the Demesne exist, and those which are likely to be accurate are jealously guarded by the Navigator clans who first found them. Other fragments of Warp navigational information are highly inaccurate and likely to prove lethal to both Navigator and voidship, should they be followed blindly. Those who decide to voyage into the Accursed Demesne do so in the knowledge that they are stepping into the true unknown where their fate is subject to the wildest chance and where they may find ruin as easily as fortune. To a bold and ambitious soul, however, the Accursed Demesne is a place of possibility poisoned by a dark reputation.

Lathimon's Death
"Above the tomb were scrawled in blood, that had dried and flaked in the wind, words I will take to my own grave, and I fear even there I will find no release from their dread import."

- from the personal journals of Balastus Irem

Lathimon’s Death orbits one of the Cineris Malificum; a string of star embers surrounded by shells of thinned star-matter cast out from their ancient demise. This chill world, upon which Faith Lathimon and a hundred others died in ways that were never recorded, bears great cyclopean structures, columns, and avenues spread across its darkened surface, so worn and covered by the dusts of time that they appear to be hills and valleys. Only a few are said to have visited this dread world, their names including Balastus Irem, slain by the Inquisition, and Rafe Longinus and Eduard Majessus, who vanished without a trace into the dark regions of the Koronus Expanse.

Processional of the Damned
"Have you never wondered where the lost go? Not the dead, but those lost to hope, and lost to all that holds us to these tattered fragments of life? No, I see that you do not think on this. Neither do I, for I have seen that place, and know that to it I must go in time, as will we all."

- from the last confession of Navigator Conrad Nostromo before his execution by the Ordos Calixis

There are dark places amidst the Halo Stars, cursed or beyond understanding, where the very voids reject the hand of man. The unnamed star system that hosts the Processional of the Damned is one such place; it is a blighted void, a few barren worlds circling a bright and turbulent star. Closer in to the solar energies is the Processional: a thin orbiting chain of wreckage, Warp-crushed Space Hulks, and dead vessels of a hundred different xenos origins. If the myriad docks of the Segmentum Obscurus each launched a new vessel at the very same time, that vast fleet might approach the scope of the Processional. The currents of the Warp have cast these uncounted thousands of sorry wrecks and ship-ruins here, perhaps for longer than Mankind has travelled the stars -- perhaps for longer than Mankind has existed. Ghosts and other Warp-echoes orbit with the Processional, bound to the wreckage and the dust of their remains.

There are many tales of the Processional. The past crew of Rogue Trader Wrath Umboldt spins one such yarn about how his vessel, the Righteous Crusader, came silently to the outer reaches of the Processional system whilst upon an expedition far beyond cursed Dolorium. The very void of the system was haunted: presences stalked the crew on darkened decks, foreboding patterns swirled in the Auspex grids, and the Crusader’s Machine Spirits become disturbed. Moaning Astropaths of the Crusader’s choir were sedated whilst devices failed and unexplained energies crackled about the Warp-Drive. Umboldt pressed onwards into the Processional, and at his order men packed themselves into salvage craft and launched into the Processional. Some returned with great treasures and strange xenos artefacts, some with crew driven mad and babbling, but most did not return at all, swallowed by the Processional of the Damned, or lured into frozen emptiness by Auspex-ghosts and failing tech-devices.

Undred-Undred Teef
"There are beasts among the stars, beasts that would crush our lives, make ash of our worlds and break all that we hold sacred. The beasts wait in the dark and shunned reaches like the things glimpsed in the forests of old, things that looked out with red, shining eyes and hearts filled with the joy of ruin."

- from Remarks on the Nature on the Unknown by Estivan Mauritin, advisor to Rogue Trader Hiram Sult

The Undred-Undred Teef is a tract of star systems at the heart of the Accursed Demesne that is a nest and breeding ground for Orks. Only a few of the boldest -- or most foolhardy -- of explorers have ventured into this place, but those who have speak of worlds held in an embrace of filth and wreckage, ringed with clouds of debris and wreckage from which Ork voidships arise like flies, their brutal prows bristling with weapons and decked in grinning-skull war paint. Beneath their mantles of scrap and crude defences are worlds poisoned by the spoils of Ork industry and on which the Orks constantly slaughter one another over looted debris, competing to construct weapons, slab-sided forts, and massive machine-effigies. From these worlds the Orks have, in the past, sallied in search of booty and raw materials for their growing armies.

The warring Orks of the Undred-Undred Teef are split into gangs, warbands, and clans that are lead by ever more powerful individual Ork Warbosses. Orks constantly strive to overcome and dominate their fellows, with the most successful and powerful bosses growing in size to mirror their status.

Undred Undred Teef is unusual amongst Ork-held systems -- it is home to many more numbers of rich, arrogant Orks known as Flash Gitz than normal. Some suggest this may be the Orks' evolutionary response to the opportunities of the Koronus Expanse, though no one knows for sure. Flash Gitz are infamous for their love of treasure and are always interested in opportunities to raid and pillage. Flash Gitz are not above treachery, murder, or other shifty strategies to accumulate wealth and more powerful wargear. Some Flash Gitz will even hire out to other xenos races. Many of these Orks take up the life of a Freebooter to get their hands on even more ill-gotten gains. Thus, Undred Undred Teef is home to hordes of Freebooterz, and these piratical Orks dominate the Greenskin hordes of this region.

Hulking Kaptins emerge from time to time, cunning beasts who lead their followers forth from Undred-Undred Teef across the Koronus Expanse in search of new loot for the clans. Mercifully these few powerful individuals have only been able to command a fraction of the Orks of Undred-Undred Teef, but at the heart of this domain something is growing in power.

At the centre of Undred-Undred Teef is a world where Orks have bred in the greatest numbers and where the battle between them is fiercer than on any other. Powerful Warbosses and Freebooter Kaptins gather here to test their mettle in the greatest fight in the Expanse. With every passing cycle of conflict, the number of bosses grows fewer, and those who remain are more powerful and grow to ever greater size. In the brutal tongue of the Ork this place is called Tusk and it is the true heart of Undred-Undred Teef.

Above Tusk’s surface a huge Space Hulk orbits, and millions of Orks and their smaller breeds work under the direction of so-called Meks, fitting engines and weapons looted from the ships of other races or built in workshops scattered across Undred-Undred Teef. No individual Ork knows what compels them to gather here, but in every cell of their flesh they know WAAAGH! is gathering, and all that it waits for is an undisputed boss to emerge from the crucible of inter-Ork warfare. The Orks are poised on the edge of a great WAAAGH! of destruction that, if not stopped, will shake the Koronus Expanse and the reaches beyond.

Heathen Stars
"This is an age for the godless. Better to die a without faith beneath a darkening sun than bend one’s knee to those who would have us call them gods and devour our blinded souls."

- words of the apostate Lucius Greer

The Heathen Stars are a diffuse region of old stars that burn with a darkening light and whose worlds have been inhabited since times long past. Human societies and communities long separated from the greater body of humanity dwell in the Heathen Stars. These communities know nothing of the divine light of the God-Emperor, and some strange cultures harbour unusual technologies from Mankind’s lost past. It is possible that these scattered human domains are the remains of one or more greater empires that have long since vanished, leaving these fragmentary enclaves like detritus left behind the retreating tide.

Tenuous routes have begun to be established from Winterscale’s Realm to Naduesh and Zayth of the Heathen Stars, but the remainder of these fallen worlds are a matter of mystery and rumour. Rogue Traders have barely touched upon the treasures of the Heathen Stars, and have yet to bring the word of the God-Emperor to the human communities. A billion heathen souls await the coming of missionary zealots and great auto-temples dropped from orbit. Some speak of great treasures upon Dead Worlds, whilst others lust after the myths from a lost age kept secret by those who dwell in the baleful light of the Heathen Stars.

Agusia
"Death is a land into which we will all pass in time."

- ancient Terran proverb

Agusia is a Cemetery World that circles a dim red star. A lost human civilisation transported their dead to Agusia for millennia, and in doing so turned it into a necropolis world. The vast ruin-deserts and spire-mountains of Agusia remain desolate, eroded, or half-buried by wind-driven dust, empty of all but the remains of a long-distant past. Every part of Agusia’s surface is buried beneath strata of crumbling edifices and seas of dust eroded from the ancient stonework. Every chamber is a sepulchre of great antiquity, every space a mausoleum. The decaying upper tomb-spires and kilometres of compacted ruins beneath contain the material echoes of a trillion souls.

Agusia remains almost untouched by explorers with the sole exception being a small expedition of the Disciples of Thule sect of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which has penetrated into the catacombs beneath the icy deserts of the northern polar zone. So far the Thuleans have investigated only a small fraction of the world, and vast amounts remain hidden and undisturbed. Yet what the Tech-priests have discovered is both wondrous and puzzling: ornate sloping tomb-fanes, huge dormant prayer-mechanisms of a dozen varieties, mausoleums efficiently filled by stacked biers, impassable walls of blackgreen metal set with intricate silvered magnetic runes, ornate hololithic displays of abstract art somehow still active after millennia. What wonders or terrors lurk in the unexplored portions of the world remain to be revealed.

Naduesh
"We do not know what our ancient ancestors’ purposes truly were. We have only the tools they made to realise those purposes."

- aphorism dictated by Paracelcus Thule

Naduesh is a human-inhabited Frontier World of hot, dry plains and enormous, sprawling megacities that are now little more than ruins but which speak of an awesome and now lost technological achievement. The mega-cities of Naduesh are maze-like warrens beneath an arching dome supported by huge pillars and walls set with massive bastions. Every part of the whole is set with structures that cling like gargoyles and riddled by vaults and tunnels. The bulk of the planet’s population follows a tribal existence away from the cyclopean mega-cities, following herds of herbivores that sustain and clothe them while viciously warring with each other for honour and bloody sport. The people of Naduesh have little understanding of the relics of technology left behind in these ruins, and seem unable to fully rebuild their society. The sounds and structure of the Nadueshi language and culture indicate a distant root in High Gothic and tie the population and its ruined mega-cities to a now lost age of Mankind.

The most influential of the human population on Naduesh dwells in Marajur, an immense enclosure of ruins thirty kilometres broad and three kilometres from ground wreckage to crumbling vaults high above. The interior space of Marajur gapes empty between its support pillars, and the curved ceiling vaults are set with enormous mosaics. The entire structure is large enough for its own weather systems, the haze of distant wall-bastions broken by white cloudsand sudden warm showers. As awe-inspiring as it is Marajur is a shadow of its former self: its base structures are ruined, its upper vault braces failing. With each passing year another of the upper vault structures tumbles down.

Despite its fallen status, Naduesh is used as supply point by many human Renegades and outlaws in search of provender beyond the reach of would-be hunters, trading weapons and slaves in return for livestock and fresh recruits from the planet’s feral warriors.

Zayth
"Of what wars waged beyond the Emperor’s light we will never truly know and can only look at the wreck of the overgrown battlefield and wonder at what has passed."

- remark dictated by Rogue Trader Hiram Sult

Zayth is a War World scarred deeply by constant conflict. Enormous vehicles the size of cities churn the surface of Zayth’s single macrocontinent. Each is a fortress and weapon platform armed with fearsome devices of war and destruction. Within them dwell Zayth’s human population, protected from the radiation and toxins unleashed by long centuries of warfare. Zayth’s surface has been barren for millennia, ploughed and poisoned by shellfire, rapacious, urgent strip-mining, and the passage of hive-vehicles. Despite their weaponry and extraordinary vehicle cities the humans of Zayth have fallen far from the knowledge of their ancestors in all but war, and the knowledge of producing their hivevehicles is long vanished. Great generators and engine vaults are permanently sealed by copper doors or guarded by hereditary Engine Orders who guard the traditions and culture of each clan fortress.

Raakata
"Dreams go astray in the void beyond reason; they become dark and terrible things made of the desires of fools and the artifice of tyrants. When dreams go so astray, it is best to leave them alone."

- from the personal reflections of Inquisitor Hastur Whitlock

Raakata is a ruined world that can only be reached by passing beyond a shifting and treacherous region of the Warp. Its collapsed and empty hive cities are said to be laden with untouched relics of the Dark Ages of Technology, while the void around Raakata is filled with Vox broadcasts of strange languages, garbled binary code, and blurts of static. Its human population is composed of feral and vicious savages who daub themselves in ash and powered rust; the knowledge and sophistication of the ancestors who built the ruined hives and treasures rotting within are long lost to them. All that is known of Raakata comes from the accounts of Toros Umboldt, who claimed its discovery but has subsequently failed to rediscover the world in two later expeditions. All traces of his earlier passage have been erased by the changing Warp, and his standing amongst his peers is diminished greatly as a result.

Vaporius
"What a man believes is more important than what he does. False belief undoes the virtue of any endeavour, and consumes the greatest of achievements."

- from the speeches of Saint Drusus

All that is known of Vaporius and its strange people is gathered from rumours that circulate in Port Wander, Footfall, and wherever explorers and Renegades gather. Vaporius is said to be a world of red deserts, gleaming turquoise seas and great cities of copper towers, enamelled domes, and sprawling buildings covered in brightly coloured tiles of glass, metal, and ceramic. The human population of Vaporius is tall, with proud, almost feline features, and eyes of brilliant cyan. They move about their cities in robes of shimmering fabric that subtly changes hue as they move. The rule of Vaporius is reputed to lie in the hands of Priest-Kings who control the distribution of water that is held as a divine force of life. It is said that decades ago a clutch of Imperial missionaries voyaged to Vaporius to break the rule of the Priest-Kings. Nothing more was heard of them apart from whispers of torture, slaughter, and blood.

Unbeholden Reaches
"So as these realms of stars are, so once were all realms that are now counted amongst the Imperium of Man: rich with the fear and darkness, and rank with the smell of secrets that belong to the dead."

- attributed to Rogue Trader Solomon Haarlock

Beyond the larger nebulae of the Koronus Expanse are regions visited only by the silent Disciples of Thule and few others. Tales are told of ghost-vessels, beauteous but deserted worlds, dust-nebulae that claim the souls of the damned and forsaken -- and of course, wealth beyond measure, awaiting the courageous Rogue Traders who will claim it.

Concanid
"Any who set out on a course from the ravings of prophets and witches are already lost, and any who voyage with them are fools."

- Vilius Hope, voidsman

Concanid is a distant unvisited star that through association with the dying words of a psyker has become a place that both beckons and repels explorers. In 633.M41, an Astropath in Footfall was driven to madness and slow death by terrible visions. Before he died, the Astropath spoke of “dark worms beneath a green-eyed star,” the “sea of molten gold,” and other half-named terrors. Some savants of the arcane suppose the star Concanid in the distant Unbeholden Reaches to be the “green-eyed star.” Concanid regularly flares green for reasons unknown to Tech-priests of the Divine Astrometricum, who toil endlessly to record such celestial events in minute detail. The star remains unvisited, and the full testament of the dying astropath now decays within a few private collections of esoteric works.

Illisk
"Lies, all of it...especially those portions as ring true in the heart when first heard. This is the liar’s craft displayed, and so undone. That is my judgment upon these so-called Thulean secrets."

- Astigos of Far Prol, Seneschal to Morthus Winterscale

The Disciples of Thule possess records that speak of a strange machine world deep in the Koronus Expanse: hidden cogitation arrays are packed beneath every part of its crust in huge vaults descending to the very limits of geoauspex probes. The surface is swept by tumultuous storms and rendered barren by ancient strip mining. Huge towers vent geothermic heat through vast shafts into the turbulent atmosphere, the heat driving frenzied storm belts of churning clouds. Ten citadels project from the crust, each massive as a hive, echoing and empty but for the whispering dust of xenos dead. Corridors tens of kilometres long are crowded with niches in which dried xenos corpses remain, their desiccated flesh still punctured by filaments that link into the vast machines.

Orn
"Though I walk amongst beasts and feel their claws, may the Emperor hear my prayer and let me pass unharmed."

- from the Canticle of Passage of Saint Drusus

The only knowledge that Mankind has of Orn is from the Disciples of Thule, who were drawn to the tangle-forests of Orn by the emanations from a dormant Warp-Drive within a half-buried xenos starship. There the Explorators discovered a warlike, near-feral xenos breed using the strange vessel as a form of township or nest. The xenos wielded tech-devices as though relics, and hunted, tore apart, and consumed surveyor Servitors dropped from orbit. The Thuleans marked the world with the rune of intransigence, declared it anathema to Mankind, and moved onward in their quest.

Rifts of Hecaton
"The light of the Emperor is like a lamp that shines in the dark, but as one passes further from its source, all becomes indistinct, and what one can see seems made of doubt and fear. And at the outmost limit of the light, where all is dark and light but a distant memory, that is where terror dwells."

- Kobras Aquairre

The Rifts of Hecaton are an unnatural darkness in the far depths of the Koronus Expanse, like the anger of gods fallen upon worlds long ago. Their presence casts a long shadow across the Expanse; the Rift stars are guttered and dead, and the bold Rogue Traders who go there do not return. The Rifts long ago swallowed the potent Lord Inquisitor and Rogue Trader Kobras Aquairre, and many suppose the same fate to have befallen the Disciples of Thule who followed in his wake. The stars that exist in the shadow of the Rifts are ill-omened places of which little is known apart from the uncertainties of myths and prophecy.

Melbethe
"Look on my works and despair."

- apocryphally attributed to an ancient Terran king

Near the Rifts of Hecaton lies an angry, churning star. Around it, the void is choked with debris and flare energies. The Disciples of Thule are among the only Imperial explorers to venture this far into the Expanse and return. They hold that Melbethe once hosted a strange xenos civilisation who sculpted black palaces of the asteroids and left vast obsidian sculptures hanging in the void. They are long-gone, vanished to some unknown fate, leaving behind only broken wreckage.

Far Corpse Stars
"There are some ventures that only the mad would undertake -- you will be rewarded only with ashes and the laughter of the dead."

- warning to Kobras Aquairre

Many are the corpse stars of the distant reaches of the Koronus Expanse: the Seven Dooms, the Pyres, and the ragged, nameless embers that drift within the very fringes of the Rifts of Hecaton. These are stars that guttered and died long ago in some vast and sweeping catastrophe. Now veiled by the cast-off gases of their destruction, they await the coming of Mankind. Dire forces, dead for aeons, may now stir upon blasted worlds in those distant regions, and the Warp is troubled.

Power Groups of the Koronus Expanse
"Anyone who looks upon a star and thinks himself the first to do so is a fool. Every planet, moon, or glittering sun is the grave of untold races and the slumbering tomb of secrets lost to the passage of time."

- words attributed to Rogue Trader Solomon Haarlock

The Koronus Expanse is a gulf of darkness in which the few facts known by humanity stand like guttering candles. Within its vast bounds wait worlds and secrets that it would take generations of explorers to discover, and within these vast gulfs of the unknown and uncharted dark other things move and plan with inhuman minds and soulless purposes. From the long-dead makers of the Halo Artefacts to the treacherous Eldar, many other powers have a claim or interest in the Koronus Expanse, and each has its own purposes and knowledge that drives it to act. These motivations frequently bring them into contact with the Rogue Traders who are but the youngest of their kind to walk these stars.

Ork Menace
"An Ork has no fear of pain, is not cowed by doubt or failure, and is single minded in the pursuit of what he wants. That makes him the most dangerous thing I can imagine, and the crudity of their weapons does nothing to dim my own fear of them."

- Marius Lorrt, captain of the warship Victus Gloriana

The Orks are a race of brutish, ugly aliens with an unquenchable thirst for violence. They are a green-skinned blight on the galaxy, constantly spawning, gathering together in huge numbers, and battering through the stars like a bloody fist, looting and destroying all that is in their path. That might is right is an unquestionable and obvious mantra to all Orks and one that they understand in every cell of their being. They constantly fight amongst themselves, and only the strong survive in Ork society. Those who achieve authority over other Orks ("da Boss" as they are known to Orks) do so because they have proven that they are the meanest and toughest Orks around.

An average Ork stands as tall as a human but is hunched with muscle and would tower over most humans if he were to stand fully upright. They have long arms that are knotted with slab-like muscle; they have a thick skull set low on their hunched shoulders with a heavy brow and glittering red eyes. Their mouths are filled with jagged fangs that jut out like a feral predator. The physiology of an Ork is such that they are exceptionally hard to kill and can shrug off injuries that would kill a human, and can survive and recover from having limbs severed and crudely reattached later. Orks speak a harsh guttural language that mirrors their physical appearance and blunt outlook on existence.

Though their technology is crude, they are possessed of an innate understanding and affinity with machinery and weapons. This racial genetic knowledge manifests through the abilities of so-called Oddboyz, who possess a strange quirk of understanding or ability that sets them aside from the rest of the Orks. Of these the most crucial to the Ork war machine are the Mekboyz who create the weapons, armour, and vehicles used by Orks to do what they do best: kill things. Mekboyz are ingenious but unreliable artisans who are masters of creating ramshackle but fearsome starships, war machines, and weapons from scrap and salvage. Even if they do not come out exactly how they were intended, these devices are still terrifyingly effective -- most of the time.

Ork Freebooterz
There are those who would claim that the Orks are not the greatest of spacefaring races, that their voidships and weapons are unreliable constructions of scrap and parts salvaged from the ships of the other star-faring races, crudely refitted by luck rather than judgement. There are others, however, who point to the fact that the Orks can be encountered in every corner of the galaxy and the supposed limitations of their technology have not held them back from being some of the most feared and effective pirates in the galaxy. Their ships are massively armed and loaded with Orks eager for a fight, and an Ork’s natural love of violence and acquisition make him a terror to other space-faring races.

Ork Freebooterz want more of everything: more weapons to grow stronger, more salvage to build ships and war machines, and more wealth for prestige among their kind. While many items captured in raids are of little use to the Orks, such plunder is valued highly by other races that fight and die to protect it. Thus, the value lies in the opportunity for battle, and no Ork shirks from a good fight! Orks rarely organise above the level of a single ship. However, small fleets can form around a particularly charismatic or successful Ork leader, known as a Kaptin. To the mind of an Ork Freebooter, two things are uppermost: battle lust and greed. In the Expanse, Orks are usually encountered in small raiding ships, roughly the same size as an Imperial escort vessel. However, the size of an Ork voidship is deceptive: invariably, the ship is crammed with a green tide of Orks, which ensures that any boarding action is likely to only go one way.

An attack by Ork Freebooterz tends to be brutal and direct, with the Ork ships rushing headlong toward the enemy firing every gun they have before ramming and boarding their victims. The directness of an Ork Freebooter attack does not mean, however, that an Ork Freebooter Kaptin lacks cunning. Orks often lurk in asteroid fields on the edges of systems where they cannot be seen by the sensors of ships passing to or from the void. Ambushes on convoys of supply ships from this kind of hidden position are common, and even small fleets or warships are not unheard of. Should an Ork Freebooter Kaptin feel the need for bigger prey, the crew may descend on an inhabited world or space station, loot and burn it, and withdraw to their ships and the protection of a debris field. If, however, the Orks of a Freebooterz fleet are really spoiling for a big fight, they are likely to brutalise a world or void station and just wait and see who or what turns up to try and stop them.

Ork Freebooterz lurk throughout the Koronus Expanse. From crude space stations built in asteroid fields or debris clouds, numerous Ork Freebooter Kaptins lead their fleets to loot whatever they can find and fight whoever crosses their path. Even the relatively explored systems close to the Maw have all felt the iron fist of Ork piracy; in the past Footfall itself has come under attack from the ships of Ork Kaptins who had become powerful enough to command great swarms of gunships and kroozers. Luckily for those journeying into the Expanse, the presence and predations of the many Ork Freebooter fleets is haphazard and without unified purpose, and they are often inclined to war upon their own kind as much as anything else.

The Orks dominate a tract of worlds within the Expanse known as Undred-Undred Teef. They exist in untold numbers, spawning like a plague within the Koronus Expanse, and the rising tally of worlds and vessels that these pirates have sacked suggests that their numbers are growing. The Ork Freebooterz are becoming a dire threat to the Expanse. The more Orks there are the bigger and meaner an Ork must be to become the leader. The more powerful the leader (called a “Warboss” in the Ork parlance), the more likely he is to gather together a huge force and batter his way across the stars. No such supreme leader has emerged from the mass of warring Orks in Undred-Undred Teef, but it can only be a matter of time.

One of the most prominent Freebooterz in the Expanse is making a bid for overall leadership of Undred Undred Teef -- Morgaash Kulgraz. Morgaash is a cunning and ambitious Freebooter Kaptin. He is taking ruthless advantage of the numerical superiority of the Flash Gitz and Freebooterz in Undred Undred Teef, as well being bigger and harder than all the other Warbosses, to support his rise to power. This brutal Ork leader first appeared in the Koronus Expanse aboard a heavily damaged Space Hulk, the Fist of Gork. Although barely spaceworthy, the Hulk was filled with loot from other parts of the galaxy. None could say how long the Space Hulk had drifted in the Warp before arriving at Undred- Undred Teef, but Morgaash’s impressive arrival was just the beginning of his rise to power.

A cunning master of ship-to-ship combat, Morgaash wrested control of the largest and most powerful ship in the system, a massive Battlekroozer named Da Wurldbraka. Morgaash then got a crew of the strongest, most aggressive Boyz from the other Kaptins, including as many of the psychic Ork Weirdboyz as he could find. Da Wurldbraka quickly became a ship as legendary as its Kaptin, a nightmarish sight that caused panic amongst smugglers and Rogue Traders alike.

Morgaash has struck quickly and forcefully in every raid, allowing handfuls of survivors to spread his infamy across the Expanse. Armed with weapons of baleful and bizarre cast, Da Wurldbraka is constantly surprising its enemies with the breadth of its capabilities. Most vessels in the Expanse can only hope to get clear before the dark xenos warship ends the battle by crippling its opponent and planting its Kaptin firmly on the enemy’s bridge.

Stryxis
"Do not fear, biped. We Stryxis are no threat to you, just poor scavengers and merchants, not like yourself, biped -- with your ship and friends. They are good friends, yes? Good friends, strong and pretty. Are they for sale? We Stryxis have pretties too: deadly weapons, secrets, lies, hatreds, and joys. All of these can be yours, biped. Tell us, what is your pleasure?"

- Sirred Fain, Stryxis Merchant Master

The Stryxis are a sparse, nomadic xenos race with a reputation as untrustworthy traders, wanderers, and sometimes slavers and pirates. Encountered infrequently in Koronus Expanse, their reputation is a dark one. The Stryxis are a truly hideous xenoform to look upon beneath swathes of ragged, bonecoloured cloth and trinkets, described variously by human onlookers as a gangling and multi-eyed creature that resembles a human-sized, skinned, dog embryo. Yet they communicate easily with willing humans through a common language of greed, curiosity, and self-interest. Scavengers and obsessive hoarders, they possess a wealth of technology stolen and bartered from countless races. They delight in trade, attaching worth only by perceived value and rarity of things they can grasp in their bony talons. They seem to care nothing for conquest or territory, abstract wealth, nor even their own species, but are driven instead by avarice and viperous petty intrigues. This being said, they are not to be underestimated and can be extremely dangerous and treacherous. They are creatures wrapped in subtle lies and conceal dark intellects behind their eccentric behaviour and obsession with trinkets and baubles. They will not hesitate to betray those they deal with if they perceive a great profit in doing so. The Stryxis will trade with almost anyone, human or xenos, even the worshipers of the Ruinous Powers, but they despise the Eldar. They will kill them if they can, and avoid them otherwise.

The Stryxis inhabit wandering caravans of starships plying commerce routes between distant worlds. These caravans are often salvaged mishmashes of patchwork vessels and hollowed-out asteroids, fitted with engines and augmented with numerous stolen or traded technologies. These caravans contain relatively few adult Stryxis, along with larger numbers of slaves, mercenaries, "acquisitions," and gene-engineered servant creatures. Aside from the adult Stryxis -- who continuously politic and backstab each other for rank and prominence in the caravans' social hierarchies -- no young, gender variations, or other culture to speak of has ever been encountered. When questioned about their own species, the Stryxis will spin endless and often contradictory lies about the matter.

Stryxis Caravans interest Rogue Traders who do not mind dealing with these nefarious xenos for their myriad opportunities for commerce and profit. In addition, as inveterate wanderers and collectors, Stryxis are often troves of secrets, legends, and information. Their contacts span the Koronus Expanse and beyond -- if the Rogue Trader has the wit to separate the truth from the lies.

Forces of Chaos
"I have seen what the rewards of 'freedom' are: the screams of those not allowed to die, the drip of blood, and the howling of hungry things on the edge of sight."

- from the proclamations of Inquisitor Xerxes, Ordo Malleus