Quarry World

A Quarry World is an official planetary designation given by the Administratum of the Imperium of Man to those worlds which are home to very important strategic resources vital to the continued survival of the Emperor's realm.

The Imperium has many planetary designations, from industrial Forge Worlds to verdant Agri-worlds, barren Dead Worlds and Hive Worlds teeming with billions of human lives. Of late, a new category has been recognised by the Administratum: the mineral-rich planets known as Quarry Worlds, sought after by the empires of Mankind and xenos alike in the dark days that face the galaxy in the wake of the birth of the Great Rift.

Quarry Worlds are those rich in an incredibly valuable strategic resource. Since the opening of the Great Rift and the fall of Cadia in the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, the most vital of these is considered to be blackstone. Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl in particular pursues the mineral with incredible acquisitive vigour, and there are many theories amongst his Adeptus Mechanicus peers as to why. Some amongst the higher orders of the Tech-priests call it the "Pariah Stone," believing the mineral is a physical incarnation of the Null gene that lends the Culexus Assassins and the Sisters of Silence their unsettling soulessness and potent anti-psyker abilities. Others maintain it is stone mined from within cosmic singularities, and that it originates from another dimension all together.

The most abiding of the numerous theories concerning the nature of blackstone is that it somehow resonates with the psychic energies of the Immaterium and, if correctly machined, can even manipulate the raw energy of Chaos. Cawl's Theory of Empyric Polarity posits that blackstone is not inherently possessed of Chaos energy, nor is it anathema to it. However, much like ferrite metal can be polarised to bear a magnetic charge, blackstone can be charged under the right circumstances to interact with the metaphysical energies of the Warp.

The monoliths of blackstone that formed the Cadian Pylons, the obsidian slabs found inside the wreckage of the Gates of Kromarch, and the Eldritch Needles of Nemesis Tessera -- all these are thought to have been negatively charged, and hence able to hold back the the encroachment of the Warp upon their respective world's locations.

The Blackstone Fortresses captured by Abaddon the Despoiler during the Gothic War are thought to be positively charged with empyric energy, and hence are extremely destructive machines of war that can discharge beams of Chaos essence if correctly weaponised by one who knows their secrets.

Small wonder then that the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Crypteks of the Necron race both scour the galaxy for this material with every means at their disposal. If this theory has even a grain of truth to it, then blackstone could theoretically be used to shore up the invisible barriers between realspace and the nightmare realm of the Warp, quarantining the Cicatrix Maledictum that now cuts the galaxy in half and perhaps even sealing it forever.