Orpheus Sector

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Template:Infobox Sector The Orpheus Sector was famed Sector Imperialis only recently revoked by orders of the High Lords of Terra, following its devastation in the still ongoing Orphean War. The planets of the Orpheus Sector are counted amongst the oldest celestial bodies within the galaxy, planets whose soil until recently hid a dark secret... Yet, for four millennia, the Orpheus Sector has been a powerhouse of Imperial might, a stonghold at the outer borders of the Imperium of Mankind. Located in the Dark Marches region of the Segmentum Tempestus and boasting its own warfleet and proud history, the Orpheus Sector was only established in M.36 following the famed Dark Marches Crusade. Although its days of glory long rest in the past, the Orpheus Sector has defiantly stood on the Imperium’s frontier despite being plagued by several strange warp phenomena, xenos raids and Chaos-led uprisings. However, everything changed when an old menace in form of the Maynark Dynasty awoke. Belonging to the vile breed of Xenos known as Necrons to the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition, this foe would lay waste the entire sector in a few short months, ravaging its worlds and conducting genocidal campaigns of extermination on planetary scales. With so many arrayed to combat the threat of the Tyranids in the Ultima Segmentum, the Imperium was left ill-prepared for the emergence of this new theat on its southern border and was left with no other choice than to abandon the sector and eventually reclaim it when enough troops and vessel could be gathered to launch a proper Imperial Crusade.

History

Contrary to many of the Imperium’s domains, which have existed for the last ten millennia, the existence of the Orpheus Sector as a fully recognized Sector Imperialis only dates back to the last century of M36. Like others regions in the galaxy, the planets of what would eventually become the Orpheus Sector were however colonized by humanity during its first galactic expansion in what is referred today as the Dark Age of Technology. Contact with the wider Imperium was also established during the Great Crusade as somewhen between 570 and 750.M30 the legendary Rogue Trader Lady Arica Orpheus ventured further than the Mandragoran Stars into the Sector that would eventually bear her name.

Rogue Traders usually function as scouting elements for far larger and military-minded fleets, and in this the voyages of Lady Arica were no exception. Soon expeditionnary forces of the Great Crusade followed in Lady Orpheus’ wake, bound on reestablishing contact with those few scattered human civilisations that had survived the Long Night and the baleful attention of xenos raiders. Some of these races had successfully established their own pocket empires and would need to be exterminated but for the most part the Dark Marches as they were then still called were a barren and desolate streak of galaxy. The vast majority of these worlds were tremendously old, uncapable of sustaining human or xenos life, but many bore the tell-tale signs of former biospheres and indeed unknown civilisations for the surviving records of the Lady’s later voyage - now safely guarded within the Great Covenant Navis Temple on Holy Terra - indicate many findings of gargantuan xenos ruins. It was also at this time that the world of Amarah Prime was colonized by Lady Orpheus’ fleet, acting both as a supply point and safe haven for her own later voyages and the forces of the Great Crusade tasked with pacifying the region. It is worthy to note that even in this distant time, Imperial forces suffered from frequent raids from the Dark Eldar which have probably been preying on the worlds of the Dark Marches Region for a long time. As Lady Arica ventured further and further to the galactic border, she finally reached the turbulent regions known as the Veiled Region which proved too dangerous to cross, thus marking the outer limit of her voyages.

While the Rogue Trader’s work was now completed, the work of the Imperial Army and Legiones Astartes was not. Unfortunately the Imperium would then descend into a time of chaos and anarchy known as the Age of Darkness that followed the Horus Heresy.

The Horus Heresy

While the Imperium is torn apart by the civil war that followed the Warmaster’s betrayal, the Orpheus Sector is largely abandoned to its fate, neither Loyalists nor Traitors showing much interest in this far-flung region of space. Those xenos domains not yet eradicated by the forces of the Great Crusade surged forward and the Dark Marches quickly became a lawless borderland where renegades and xenos corsairs roamed freely. Only the outpost on Amarah Prime continues to enjoy some sort of stability, which however would not last indefinitely. Somewhere during the first century of the 31^st Millennium, a traitor warlord by the name of Dynat Mal -- originally belonging to the Alpha Legion -- elected the Dark Marches as a safe haven to escape the press of those armies loyal to the Emperor which had by now launched a new crusade known as the Great Scouring. Having gathered a thousand strong coterie of renegades, heretics and diabolists around him, Dynat Mal's warband took the name of "The Shadowed Ones" and destroyed the outpost on Amarah, plundering its stores and stockpiles after having massacred the outpost’s entire population. Several punitive expeditions launched by the reemerging Imperium are destroyed through the use of guerilla tactics and the use of baleful powers.

With the destruction of the outpost on Amarah, any Imperial claim to the region is effectively severed. Yet the Imperium would not so easily let a known enemy roam freely and especially the Raven Guard Chapter still sought to avenge the deaths of their fellow Legionaries during the Battle of Lyx, for which Dynat Mal was responsible. In the 170’s of M32, the Raven Guard dispatched a sizeable taskforce under Captain Kallengier to bring Dynat "Crowbane" Mal to justice. Yet, despite intensive researches the Alpha Legion still eluded the vengeful Raven Guard until the taskforces reaches the heart of the Orpheus Sector. There, in the deep jungles of the world of Apollyon the discovered the broken hull of a Strike Cruiser quickly identified as the Occam’s Razor, known to have belonged to the XX^th Legion’s fleet. While the Strike Cruiser’s demise could not be ascertained for sure, the surroundings of the broken strike cruiser were still more unsettling: like a grim tombstone or grave marker, the Occam’s Razor stood over a valley filled with the bones of the dead. The corpses mostly belonged to mutated humans but also to the Eldar, to the Khrave and to several unidentified xenos forms. Most disturbing were however the sundered warplates of the Legiones Astartes which not only bore the colors of the Alpha Legion, but also those of the White Scars and the Iron Hands. Who had perpetuated this massacre remained unclear and the Raven Guard did not linger long for their Librarians’ visions told of an impending doom should they stay too long. Their vengeance denied, the Raven Guard departed the baleful valley, their questions unanswered.

For the millenia that followed, the Dark Marches were utterly neglected by Imperial authorities and left to fight for themselves. Very few facts can be verified for what indeed ocurred in this region as the Segmentum Tempestus is frequently isolated by powerful Warp storms and other stellar phenomena. It is only in the wake of the Age of Apostasy that the eye of the Imperium rested again on those worlds that would soon become the Orpheus Sector.

Notable Campaigns

• The Voyages of Orpheus (ca.570-750.M30) - As part of the Emperor’s Great Crusade, the Rogue Trader Lady Arica Orpheus mounts several far-ranging expeditions into what would eventually become the Orpheus Sector. With the foundation of the Imperial outpost on Amarah, the Imperium officially claims the Dark Marches Region. Several military campaigns follow to exterminate identified xenos threats, but the Sector is still not entirely pacified when the Horus Heresy plunges the Imperium into galactic civil war.
• The Sundering of the Imperium (005.M31-020.M30) - Following the Great Betrayal and the descent of the Age of Darkness upon the domains of the Imperium of Mankind, both fractions entirely retire from the region, leaving its colonists to fight for themselves. Although no great battles are fought in the Orpheus Sector, the population suffers from the resurgent xenos and Dark Eldar raids.
• The Scourge of Dynat Crowbane (pre 100.M31) - Driven outwards by the resurgent armies of the Emperor of Mankind after the Battle of Terra, an Alpha Legion warlord known as Dynat Mal, the main architect behind the Raven Guard’s shaming defeat at the Battle of Lyx seeks shelter in the Dark Marches. Having raided and destroyed the only semblant of organised resistant in the region, the Imperial outpost on Amarah, Dynat Crowbane and his warband reign over the Sector, "The Shadowed Ones" - as they’ve come to name themselves - repelling several punitive expeditions set to destroy them.
• Vengeance Denied (ca.170.M32) - A punitive taskforce of the Raven Guard Chapter under Captain Kallengier is despatched to seek and destroy "The Shadowed Ones" and their master but only discover the ruins of Crowbane’s ship, the Occam’s Razor, buried in thousand of tons of bones and corpses.
• The Child of the Beast (552.M32) - As part of a great migration of Orks that plague the entire Imperium, an Ork-crewed Space Hulk known as "Da Iron Worm" vanishes in the Dark Marches region after having laid waste to several powerful worlds in the Uhulis-Sector.

Topography of the Orpheus Sector

Notable Celestial Phenomena

• Hesod Nebula - The Hesod Nebula encompasses large parts of the Orpheus Sector northern approches. It has long served as a safe haven for Dark Eldar corsairs and pirates which Battlefleet Orpheus had thus far failed to eliminate. This would however change with the beginning of the Orphean War as the raiders either perished at the hands of the Necrons themselves or were forced out of hiding onto the guns of the Imperial Navy and the Minotaurs Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

• Shattered Deeps - Located at the very South of the Orpheus Sector, the Shattered Deeps form a Warp/real-space anomaly akin to the famous Maelstrom or the Eye of Terror although of much smaller magnitude.

• Veiled Region - Located to the galactic South-West of the capital, the Veiled Region marks the Segmentum Tempestus outer border, a final obstacle before the immensity of the Outer Darkness. The region carries its name well as dense nebulas, great debris fields and turbulent gravitic forces make navigation utterly impossible and even "veil" the light of the few existing stars left that are only orbited by Dead Worlds. It would seem however that at least a portion of the Necron invader indeed came from the Outer Darkness and thus passed through this region of space to reach the Orpheus Sector. How such a feat was possible remains entirely unknown.

Notable Sub-sectors

The size of the Orpheus Sector is such that to ease its ponderous administration, the sector was divided into three primary sub-sectors and several indepedent administrative regions.

• Capitoline Sub-sector - As its name indicates the Capitoline Sub-sector is the most important division of the entire Sector, englobing both the Sector Capital of Amarah and the populous worlds of the Arcantis Cluster. These heavily industrialized and populated worlds heavily rely on the imports from the semi-autonomous domain of the Barren Stars and the Agri-world of Hydrogast that lies therein to survive.
• Deluvian Sub-Sector - The Deluvian Sub-sector lies to the galactic South-East of the Capitoline Sub-Sector and is perhaps the second most important region of the Orpheus Sector. Following the Orphean War, the Deluvian Sub-Sector has suffered the less and still defies the invaders.
• Drucillan Sub-Sector - The worlds of the Drucillan Sub-Sector were by far the least advanced of the Orpheus Sector, yet suffered perhaps the worst during the eons as the outlying worlds fell one after the other to the baleful presence of Xenos species, adorators of the Ruinuous Powers or others perils. Being located to the galactic South-South-West of Amarah where the Orpheus Sector touches the lost Leyak Sector, the Drucillan Sub-Sector was the first to fall before Necrons of the Maynark Dynasty and is considered utterly lost by the Imperium’s tacticians.

Notable Exclusion Zones

Subjected to many strange Warp phenomena, the Orpheus Sector counts many worlds upon which the Inquisition has placed a ban and where no citizen of the Imperium should dwell. The true reasons for this ban are however most often kept secret. Most tellingly, those prohibited worlds are all located on the exterior of the Sector, close to the Segmentum’s borders with the Outer Darkness. In this there is only one notable exception, the Chemarium Exclusion Zone. Both words of the Chemarium-system had simultaneously entered a state of open revolt against the Imperial rule and had been cordonned off in awaiting of sufficient reinforcement to pacify these worlds which seemed to have fallen to the sway of the Powers of Chaos. Those reinforcment were hastily redeployed at the outset of the Orphean War.

• Altun [Dead World]
• Carocol [Dead World]
• Chemarium [Industrial Worlds] - Located in the Deluvian Sub-Sector, Chemarium I and II were both heavily industrialized worlds whose output principaly went to Amarah itself, the Hive Cities of Decapolis and the Forge World of Myre. On both worlds the civilian population had risen against the rule of the Divine Emperor, warranting a blockade of the entire system which became known as the Chemarium Exclusion Zone. Although the baleful influence of the Ruinous Powers has been confirmed it is unknown how the taint had spread so long unnoticed.
• Cutlar [Dead World]
• Nightshard - Located at the very edge of the Veiled Region, the world of Nightshard is a scientific enigma and has therefor been declared Prohibita by the Sector’s Conclave of Ordos. Nightshard’s celestial mass is highly anomalous for a planet this size.
• Utmal [Death World]

Sources

• Imperial Armour Volume Twelve : the Fall of Orpheus, pp.12