The Dark Coil

The setting (if such a term applies) to the stories written by Black Library writer Peter Faheravi.

Wait... What?

The Dark Coil is a rather unusual setting / concept / sub-setting(?) / something created in novels and short storys of Peter Faheravi. Although they take place on a few common settings or involve a few overarching general organisations, there are few direct links between characters or the main plotlines of each story, and it often takes a little extra work to spot the connections. And given the horror / psychological themes of most of Faheravi's stories, attempting to figure it out can be tricky. Or skub. Or both.

A crucial conceit of the setting is the malleability of reality depending on individual perception, often aided by Chaos shennanigans. Whilst regular lovecraftian Chaos stuff does still occur within the Coil, it's rarely as direct and clear cut as most depictions in the fluff.

Attempting to unpick the Coil is tricky because most characters are either unreliable narrators, mad, delusional, or deliberately hiding things from the reader. This said, there are a few linking factors that overlap over most of the stories.

Linking Threads

• The Angel's Resplendent / Angels Penitent - Originally two seperate chapters that GW gave Fehervari permission to turn into different incarnations of the same chapter. The former were inspiring, humanistic craftsmen. The latter were Judge Dredd calibre fun police. Both incarnations had their dark sides ; the Resplendent apparently thought getting their aspirants to walk through a Chaos haunted forest (and situating their Fortress Monastry near it) was a good idea. The Penitent apparently abandoned most of their duties to the Imperium in favour of removing all stains of their past, despite significant numbers of their chapter still doing forbidden artistic things on the downlow.
• Phaedra - Space-Vietnam. No, not that one, specifically Space-Apocalypse Now. It's a Death World the Imperium and Tau use as a dumping ground for their broken and problematic troops and commanders, keeping them fighting in a contrived proxy war to avoid having to contest a wider area of space. People down there go crazy, if they aren't already. Ostensibly loyal regiments defect to the T'au or otherwise go renegade from Imperial Command. It's all but stated the planet is extremely chaos-tainted, with oddities such as coral temples made by forgotten civilizations around which no vegetation grows, characters being haunted by ghosts, and a tendency to drive any inhabitants but the native population (the Saathla) insane. If they don't get infected by the mutagenic fungus or poisoned by the local fauna. For some reason, the native human(?) population bears a resemblance to the Deep One hybrids from the work of H.P. Lovecraft. The planet also seems to have a tendency to throw certain people across time and space, only to dump them into another twist in the coil.
• Vytarn/Redemption-219 - A shrine world. Originally an endless ocean, bad things happened there and it turned into an ocean of fire. Unknown to everyone who lives there, the planet is effectively a sewer grate for the Webway. It ends up being a magnet for cults of all stripes and creeds - at one point there are at least two competing chaos cults, one genestealer one, and numerous Imperial cults all duking it out.
• Providence - a recent inductee into the Imperium from before the DAOT. It was conquered in a religious crusade, initially made tricky by Providences pro-science stance. Ironically enough, they start discovering Chaos juju after they join the Imperium. Uniquely for 40k, they are unambigously based on pre-20th century United States, with elements of the US Civil War thrown in. A core belief of it's people is that of the "Thunderground" - a point of their lives where they face their greatest challenge that either changes them forever or ends them entirely - sometimes both at once. Other characters in the Coil face similar pivotal moments and such "Thundergrounds" have a propensity to overlap.
• The Sunken Worlds - a system of seemingly oceanic worlds, many of which have a tendency to spawn some of the most fanatical and cruel Imperial Guard regiments. The Leathean Mariners and Iwuji Sharks are some of them.
• "The Emperor Condemns" - A common phrase throughout the Coil as well as an overaching belief ; originally introduced by the Lethean Mariner regiments (imagine Waterworld crossed with Krieg with the fatalism spiced with religious fanatacism). Basically, they believe the Emperor is not the carer of humanity and is instead it's punisher. The Angels Penitent take large parts of their inspiration from the creed and whilst the Undying Martyr who inspired them has possible links to the Lethean Creed, an ironclad link is not certain.
• The Torn Prophet - The inspiration for several rather dark (which is saying something) creeds of the Imperial Faith. Similar to Christianity's Holy Trinity, the Prophet is seen as a septpartite being, with each aspect nominally personifying various virtues, Despite inspiring several orders, churches, and Sororitas Ordos, no one can accurately trace the Prophets true origins or even when they existed and given the way the Coil works, they may never have existed in the first place. As with other beliefs in the Coil, the teachings of the Prophet tend get twisted into either macrabre isanity or unwitting Chaos stuff. Or both.
• Sarastus - A former hive world , now an abandoned urban wasteland. A perpetually dark world, many of it's hives were kept under large domes, partly to keep them warm and partly to provide a sembelence of light. At some point in it's past something bad happened, and the domes were compromised, allowing the Night (note the capital letter) in. Along with a sucession of strange occurences, like the local equivalent of the Rapture but more depressing (random people died suddenly but their bodies didn't decay), and the civilised population all but died later. The feral remnants managed to survive later and the world became a favoured recruiting ground for the Night Lords.
• Olber Vedas - the closest thing to a central character in the Dark Coil, and that is using the term extremely charitably. Whilst he's appeared only twice in person, his influence and action have been felt in almost every twist of the Coil. It's implied that multiple iterations of him are trapped in the Coil and have cycled their actions over repeatedly, sometimes as hero, sometimes as a villain, in hope of either breaking free of the Coil, controlling it, or destroying it entirely.