"Blasphemy is an older pursuit of Humanity than piety. It is rooted deeper in the soul, and from there, it is likely to hatch when the mind proves too weak for the horrors of this universe."
- —Witchfinder Paulos, in the First Principles of Persecution
Eleusis is a former Imperial Shrine World located along the path of the Orpheus Salient of the Achilus Crusade in the Jericho Reach.
Eleusis is a world of shrines and piety whose light flickers in the enveloping maw of Hive Fleet Dagon and where fear threatens to overturn holiness in favour of the promises of false gods. In the time before the so-called "Age of Shadow" fell across the Jericho Sector, Eleusis was a Shrine World of the Adeptus Ministorum.
Most of the surface of Eleusis was covered with great seas, and on its few land masses, ten thousand temples and glass-blazoned shrines to the God-Emperor were built, forming the great "shrine cities."
These wonders basked in serene holiness for five thousand standard years, becoming a place of pilgrimage for aspirants from as far afield as Macragge and Salem.
With the coming of the lost Jericho Sector's "Age of Shadow," the devotions of the shrine priests, priestesses, and attendants were twisted to the worship of the Dark Gods of the Warp as death stalked the temples and the profane overcame the pious. When the forces of the Achilus Crusade retook the planet in the late 41st Millennium, every inhabitant was ordered to be burned and the heretical shrines cleansed by fire.
Since then, the Ecclesiarchy has spent solar decades rebuilding the shrine cities and making Eleusis their new seat of power for the re-conquest of the Jericho Reach.
Perhaps, however, the stones of Eleusis remember the dark past and whisper to the priests who look up at the night sky. They see the dark shapes moving among the stars, and already there are rumours of murderous fiends stalking the crypts of the shrine cities.
News of the oncoming Tyranids has brought panic in some, but reaffirmed the zealous devotion of others, while some who hear the whispers in their dreams are tempted to forsake their beliefs and turn once more to the aid of the old false gods for their protection.
Sources
- Deathwatch: Core Rulebook (RPG), pp. 342-343