Noctis Aeterna

The Noctis Aeterna, also known as the Blackness in Low Gothic, was a catastrophic event which consumed the Milky Way Galaxy and the Imperium of Man beginning in 999.M41 and lasting well into the 42nd Millennium. The Blackness began following the fall of Cadia at the climax of the 13th Black Crusade and the eruption of the Great Rift that cut the Imperium in half, and was marked by the loss of access to the Astronomican for FTL navigation and a disruption in all astrotelepathic communications. This period saw more devastating events consume the increasingly isolated worlds of the human-settled galaxy than at any time since the Age of Strife.

Such was the turmoil during the creation of the Great Rift and the period following it that there could be no reliable accounts. As limited communications returned, Historitors and Chronotechs struggled to understand incoming reports. With the influx of Warp energies into such vast region of realspace, time passed strangely, speeding up in some sectors, slowing in others.