Marauder's Grave

"Run away, hide away Captain Cutthroat's out to play"

-Nursery rhyme from Oestala V

Near the edge of the Halo Zone, where Oestalan space seems even darker than seems possible and the stars are scarce and dim is the ill-omened star system only known as the Marauder's Grave. Lit by dully shining twin stars, Marauder's Grave was once home to an unknown xenos empire in the distant past, their only remaining testament being eroded ruins laying scattered upon the lifeless, poisoned world of Upas in the cold outer reaches of the system. There are two more planets orbiting the twin stars, a yet nameless gas giant surrounded by rings of dust and a small, freezing world with a thin atmosphere of corrosive gas and the remnants of a sturdy Ork settlement, but no signs of life otherwise.

It is not these planets of dubious value for which the system is known, however. In the inward regions of the star system, amidst dust clouds impenetrable to telescope and auspex alike lies a cosmic graveyard, a resting place for voidships both ancient and young, be they of xenos or human design. Garbled distress signals echo across the cloud of drifting hulks, and the flickers of plasma engines and comatose machine spirits flicker on the auger readings of anyone who enters this realm of the dead: the Marauder's Grave. At the heart of the cloud, five vessels stand out- a fleet of heretical design and dark history. These ships once played a crucial part in thrusting the Oestalan Sector into darkness and destruction after it has been engulfed by the Warp storm millennia ago.

Led by the heavy cruiser Cutthroat's Prize, this Chaos Reaver fleet preyed on the defenseless planets of the Oestalan sector in the years of darkness and isolation from the Imperium, bringing misery and destruction in its wake everywhere, seemingly unhindered by the raging Warp storms that made travel impossible to all else. Yet in an ironic twist of fate, the name and true likeness of the bloodthirsty leader of this fleet has been lost: The surviving cultures of the Oestalan Sector only know him as the Cutthroat Captain, He Who Descends From The Dark Sky, to wreak terrible havoc upon worlds and enslave those who do not fall to the blades of his men or have their blood spilled upon perverse altars dedicated to thirsting gods, and many a child grows up fearing this bogeyman of distant legend. Yet evidently, one day the raids stopped. The Cutthroat's Prize never cast its baleful shadow upon another world again, and the memory of the horrors it inflicted upon the sector faded- but not even the centuries were enough to completely wipe it away.

What fate befell this 'Captain Cutthroat' and his nightmarish fleet is ultimately unknown. Only the drifting Reaver hulks remain to tell the tale, but those few who found their way to the Marauder's Grave and dared board them only whisper of distant screams of torment echoing across the airless corridors, and blood that still seems fresh dripping down the rusted bulkheads...