Screaming Vortex

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The Screaming Vortex is one of the blighted regions in the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 where the Warp breaches into real-space, creating a realm ruled by the followers of Chaos. It is the setting of Black Crusade... no, not that one, the other one, the roleplaying game for Chaos players created by Fantasy Flight Gaming! It is comparable to the Calixis Sector, Koronus Expanse and Jericho Reach.

History

The zone of the Great Warp Storms now known as the Screaming Vortex is said to have once been a particularly pradisical region of space, a place perhaps inhabited by the Old Ones and then passed on to their Eldar creations, only to be annihilated by the birth of Slaanesh.

Astro-Geography

The Screaming Vortex is divided into three rough zones, depending on how close you get from real space to the breach that lets the madness of the Warp pour into reality.

The Gloaming Worlds

The furthest reaches of the Vortex, the closest to real-space.

Xurunt: A world of great landmasses divided by small, acidic seas favored by Khorne, inhabited by brutal tribes of barbarians called the Xur, whose long, hot summers revolve around herding the Xurunt - a reptilian beast that may be a mutated subspecies of grox - and warring with each other for the favor of "Baphtar". They obtain metal by butchering mechanical monsters called Orin that emerge from deep below the earth, said to be the product of a hidden race of stunted, deformed, dark technomancers called the "Svartlings". Possibly a Chaos-corrupted descendant race of the Leagues of Votann?

Q'sal: A rich and prosperous world of magitek-fashioning sorcerer-technocrats under the dominion of Tzeentch.

Asphodel: A dim, swampy world of treacherous mires inhabited by devolving tribes of kroot. Its orbit sporadically brings it within range of Berin by flying beast, leading to a great invasion. Also home to Krootors, Kroot Alligators.

Berin: A harsh, scorched world of wind-swept, chemical rich deserts inhabited by tribes of orks who fight constantly for the sparse waterholes and metal veins. Its orbit sporadically brings it within range of Asphodel by the primitive rockets, triggering a great invasion.

The Hollows: A planet literally cut in half by the efforts of the Dark Mechanicum.

The Writhing World: A world made of intertwined worms of continental scale, inhabited by master biomancers who use their sorcery and organic technology to dominate the local tribes.

Kurse: A post-apocalyptic wasteland of a world, devastated by nuclear inferno and now inhabited by legions of savage mutants.

Malignia: A Death World in the form of a perpetually twilit jungle teeming with killer beasts and carnivorous flora.

Sacgrave: An impossibly fortified hub for the Vortex's traders and pirates.

The Wreck of the Kasserkratch: A legendary haunted Space Hulk.

Messia: A blasted rocky world where a single day takes a year, leaving its "day" side a scorched, radiation-soaked desert and its "night" side a frigid, misty fungus forest, its inhabitants continually rebuilding their cities to stay in the "dusk" line.

The Tyrant Star: A mysterious wandering Daemon World also seen in the Calixis Sector.

The Cat's Cradle: A particualrly warp-saturated spot in the Gloaming Worlds.

The War Moons of Talax: Three moons orbiting the remains of four planets that were fused together by the Vortex's birth, inhabited by warlike techno-barbarian artificers who worship Khorne.

Ghibelline: A Forge World devoted to Slaanesh, where fallen machines of war lie amidst surprising natural beauty.

The Forbidden Portal: A terrifying and enigmatic world fiercely guarded by Eldar Harlequins that lies just at the very cusp of where the Screaming Vortex begins.

The Ragged Helix: An astroid belt filled with pirates and Slaaneshi cultists that lies at the fringes of the Gloaming Worlds and the Inner Ring.

The Inner Ring

The "middle" of the Vortex, where the warp and reality intermingle most firmly.

Aphexis: A bleak, grey world of half-dead plains and eerily apathetic inhabitants.

Melancholia: A cursed world of eternal rains where no stone will stand atop another.

Mire: A famine-gripped world of clammy swamps and sucking mud plains.

Mammon: A world that has been reduced to rubble between warring factions of the Imperial Faith who refuse to stop until they have genocided their "heathen" counterparts.

Furia: A dark waterworld whose population inhabits floating cities above oceans filled with aquatic Daemonic Beasts.

The Flaming Tomb: A volcanic wasteland of a world where pyromancer-led tribes of ferals scrape a living amongst seas of lava and literal firestorms.

Dread Korvaska: A mysterious world whose surface constantly changes and which revolts against intruders as if the world itself is alive.

The Gates of Moment: A gloomy and frigid world that seems to move freely around the galaxy, even outside of the Screaming Vortex.

The Lower Vortex

The deepest depths of the Vortex, the last bastion of reality, a realm of Daemon Worlds before one enters the true Warp.

Crucible: A Daemon World devoted to pain, with how that is enacted depending on which of the Dark Gods is ascendant.

Contrition: A Daemon World in the form of a vast city divided between and warred over by the factions of the four Gods of Chaos.

The Frozen Heart: A mysterious realm said to be the very heart of the Screaming Vortex.