Jove's Descent

It was… a singular experience. Never before have I felt such peace, such serenity, and such nobility of purpose as I felt when I set foot upon that world, as if an echo of our father’s triumph was easing the pain of his death. –Battle-Brother Saraqael of the Blood Angels

Jove's Descent is an enigmatic Feral World found deep within the Jericho Reach, beyond all but the furthest-flung elements of the Achilus Crusade's forces.

Touched by heroes in the earliest days of the Imperium, the world somehow never became anything more than an insignificant footnote in the histories of the Imperium. Instead, all that remains are failed colonies and alien ruins, and the echoes of the long-dead that linger far longer than they have any right to.

Jove's Descent is a haunted and benighted place, yet one that holds many secrets and the interest of those who seek to understand the perils of tomorrow in the tales of long ago. The veil between reality and the Immaterium is particularly thin around the world, and the Warp's unnatural power presses heavily upon it.

History
Believed to be named for the Rogue Trader Hadrian Jove, in the days of the Great Crusade, this world was the explorer's final resting place. His dying command, legend has it, was to send a distress signal to alert one of the Expedition Fleets operating near the region, to summon the forces of Imperium and purge it of the xenos that infested it.

Whatever the truth of the matter, three expeditions are believed to have arrived within the region, headed by warriors of the Legionnes Astartes, specifically of the Ultramarines, Night Lords, and Blood Angels Legions, or so is claimed by the apocryphal records of the era.

Over the course of several years, these expeditionary forces made compliant over a hundred and thirty worlds within what would become known as the Jericho Reach.

Jove's Descent, like many worlds in the region, was in the clutches of the Ghanathaar, an advanced, ancient nonhumanoid xenos breed who were believed to have suffered some cataclysm millennia before to rob them of much of their former power.

Little now remains that refers to the Ghanathaar, save for a few scattered references in the archives of the Blood Angels and Ultramarines, and the myths of those who now dwell on Jove's Descent.

As part of a protracted campaign of extermination, the Blood Angels forces made landing on Jove's Descent, waging a deadly war with the xenos inhabitants that cost the lives of thousands of Battle-Brothers.

The details of this conflict are, alas, unknown to the modern Imperium, and even the Blood Angels themselves have little in the way of lore that speaks of the battles there. What is certain is that the sons of Sanguinius eventually triumphed, scouring the world of the xenos that infested it, and soon after departed the Jericho Reach for reasons unknown.

The centuries that followed saw the Jericho Reach transformed into a fully fledged and loyal sector of the Imperium, and by late M31, the first attempts to colonise Jove's Descent were made.

In the four millennia between the Jericho Sector's founding and the Age of Shadow, eleven distinct attempts to establish colonies on Jove's Descent were made, none of which were successful. Each colony fell afoul of some disaster that left only desperate survivors, reverting to an atavistic state in the untamed wilds after as little as a generation.

When the Achilus Crusade was first proposed, intensive research was performed on the Jericho Sector as it had been, combined with what information could be ascertained from the Deathwatch and from Adeptus Mechanicus Explorators braving the storms over the millennia.

Jove's Descent, and its history of misfortune, were identified swiftly as a potential peril to Imperial reconquest of the Jericho Reach, and upon the commencement of the Achilus Crusade, the Inquisition saw fit to declare Jove's Descent as being under quarantine until a thorough investigation could be carried out.

At present, Jove's Descent is believed to be subject to Tyranid infestation, but this is supposition based on the world's position within the Jericho Reach. None can be spared to voyage out to that accursed world and discover the truth of the matter.

Xenos Dominion
It is believed that at some point in the distant past, before the coming of the Imperium, a xenos species referred to in some sources as the Ghanathaar inhabited Jove's Descent.

They were either wiped out or driven away at some point during the Great Crusade. Records of the time are incomplete at best, and there is no information remaining that describes the conflict, but some traces of them still remain.

Sanctioned psykers of various kinds have noted that many locations -- known to be regarded variously as cursed places and holy sites by the native tribes -- have an odd psychic presence within them; the faint echoes of a campaign fought more than ten millennia before.

Some Astartes, particularly those descended from Sanguinius have reported feeling the presence of their Primarch on Jove's Descent.

Some believe that this suggests the Blood Angels fought at the forefront of the campaign that originally liberated the world from the Ghanathaar, while others warn of warp-spawned lies and illusions, mimicking the presence of the Primarch for their own sinister goals.

The obelisks and scattered, vine-choked ruins in these locations seem to be all that remain of the Ghanathaar's domain, but evidence exists to suggest that the culture defeated on Jove's Descent was little more than a backwards remnant of a far more powerful civilisation, laid low by some unknown apocalypse in the distant past.

Culture
The prevalent civilisation on Jove's Descent cannot easily be defined as any single culture, but rather as a collection of different tribes scattered across the planet's surface.

To date, the Adeptus Ministorum has catalogued only a fraction of the different tribal structures and belief systems to be found on Jove’s Descent. However, amidst that, a number of common themes have been observed.

A noteworthy proportion of the tribes observed seem to fall within one of two main categories: those who worship a primary deity analogous to the God-Emperor, as some remnant of pre-Age of Shadow Imperial civilisation, and those who appear to have fallen to worship of beings believed to be either the Ruinous Powers or the Ghanathaar. Other belief systems exist outside of these groups, but cannot be so easily categorised.

Key Locations
Though little of Jove's Descent is mapped, a few locations are regarded as significant by both the inhabitants and by those few servants of the Imperium who have walked upon its surface.

Angel's Landing
A large clearing in the jungles on the north-eastern continent, Angel's Landing appears little different to countless other locations across Jove's Descent but for the crudely wrought totems and signs that adorn the clearing's edge.

Each of these adornments bears familiar imagery -- angelic figures clad in gold and crimson, the double-headed eagle, and the mailed fist clutching a pair of lightning bolts -- reminiscent of the Imperium in general and the Blood Angels in particular.

Local tribes regard the clearing as a site of religious veneration, their priests -- understood by Imperial scholars to be psykers almost without exception -- visiting it to commune with "the Angels" who they claim once walked upon the world. Angels' Landing, they believe, is the place where these Angels first set foot upon Jove's Reach.

Given the strong psychic presence possessed by many Astartes, and the psychic phenomena so common to Jove's Descent, it seems likely that the Angels' Landing was actually a landing site for the Blood Angels strike force that fought there during the Great Crusade, their presence imprinted upon the world.

The psychic shamans that guide the disparate tribes seem to possess the ability to discern these psychic echoes, gaining insight into a war that happened more than ten thousand years before, of which little record remains.

Needless to say, the prospect of such lore and insight is an attractive prospect to Imperial historians and to the Blood Angels themselves, who believe that it was not only their ancestors who walked upon Jove's Descent, but the Primarch Sanguinius.

No Astartes could ignore evidence of his spiritual and genetic father's legacy, least of all the sons of Sanguinius, and as a result, Jove's Descent remains of particular interest to the Blood Angels.

The Hollow Lands
The ancient and war-shattered ruins of a xenos city-fortress, these broken structures litter an area more than seventy kilometres across. The region is a twisted and corrupted place, covered in dry, ashen earth and black, thorny, twisted foliage, grown over the ruins of black glass structures that are said to have once dominated the horizon.

The local tribes refer to this place as the Hollow Lands, and regard it with great fear and superstition, with only the shamanic priesthood setting foot within its boundaries willingly, as a rite of passage and a test of prowess against the shades and revenants that haunt it.

The ruins that litter the Hollow Lands are thought to have come from one of the fortresses of the Ghanathaar, torn asunder by the Blood Angels during their war so long ago.

Whatever dark science or foul sorcery the Ghanathaar employed during the height of their civilisation corrupted the land around the tower when the structure was destroyed, leaving a soulless and unnatural place, haunted by psychic echoes of the warriors who fought to destroy it, and the creatures that opposed them.