Setting:Tri-Sector

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The Tri-Sector

Tucked away in the northernmost stretches of the Galaxy, at the edge of the territories of Mankind, and in the shadowy perimeter of the Astronomican, lie three Sectors. These Sectors, the Drumnos to coreward, the Cloudburst to rimward, and the Naxos to spinward, are the frontier of the Galactic North in the Segmentum Ultima, and the home of many hundreds of billions of humans in the service of the Emperor. Each has its own unique history, challenges, defenders, and occupants. Each has its own terminology, its own infrastructure, and its own enemies. The most noteworthy of their features are mentioned here, and all information contained within is fully compatible with the Warhammer 40000 roleplaying games, including the array of Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Only War, Black Crusade, Inquisitor, and Wrath and Glory rulebooks. Although the Cloudburst Sector is the core and focus of this material, the other two sectors of the Tri-Sector area are covered in broad theme and some specific content. The neighboring Cloudburst Circuit and Oldlight Exo-zone will be detailed elsewhere.

The Cloudburst Sector, the Enemies of Man, and the Blue Daggers

The Cloudburst Sector and Institutions

This young, expanding region of Imperial space takes its name from its capital moon now, but that is a recent development. Although individual Imperial colonies existed in the area once known as the Oldlight Proximate Circuit for thousands of years prior to its formal establishment as a Sector in M39, its overall barrenness stems from several factors that initially prevented it from reaching Sector status. Originally, the band of inhabited worlds that comprised the Hapster Subsector along the extreme eastern edge of the Circuit was the extent of the coordinated human holdings in the region. The Subsector was, at best, an outlier of the nearby Naxos Sector, and even then, only on paper. The remains of an ancient supernova had littered the region with thick gas, all of it radioactive. Though quiet Cognomen sat alone in the voids of the Circuit, there was little else to offer the Imperium out there in the hot gasses. All of that changed with the discovery of the Dawn-break, Triune, and Septiim systems, by the renowned Mechanicus Magos Explorator Justin MacDonald, in M39.012. The sudden awareness of five shirtsleeves-habitable worlds, that close to Naxos and unclaimed by aliens, shook the local Rogue Trader and Explorator fleets to their cores. How had they missed such wealth? How had five worlds for the Imperium gone wholly unnoticed? A veritable gold rush of exploration trips began at once from the Naxos Sector Forge World of Fabique, and a hundred ships sailed off into the gas storms and dark stars of the Oldlight Proximate Circuit.

Discoveries and wealth poured into the Forge World’s hands. Archaeotech caches, contact with dangerous aliens, maps of worlds and stars, and more disturbingly, the wreckage of well over ten thousand Imperial and alien ships were found within mere years of the exploration craze beginning. The Inquisition’s name came up in frightened whispers more and more, between Rogue Traders and Free Chartists that spent their gold in the orbiting coaching house Star Gilt over Fabique’s shipyards. What had driven humanity from the Oldlight Proximate Circuit in the past? Captains and Traders saw the sheer number of dead worlds and dead ships in dark zones on the map with increasing unease. Clearly, humanity had lived in the Circuit once. Some of the dead ships that Rogue Traders found floating idly through the void were post-Unification Imperial, some even with Legionary markings. The Inquisition’s Ordo Hereticus stepped in. Sending a Longstrike cruiser and fifteen smaller vessels off on the heels of Magos MacDonald’s fleet, the Inquisition established a temporary Seal of Verboten Passage on the Circuit, while it went to investigate the anomalous findings.

Months stretched into years. Finally, twelve of the sixteen ships abruptly returned unheralded with MacDonald, and set in at the Inquisitorial Palace of Naxos. Weeks of sharing and deliberation followed. When the silence was at last broken, the message that the Spire of Astral Choirs at the Palace Naxos sent out was not what the Captains of the Circuit had expected. MacDonald, the Inquisition declared, was a hero of Mankind. His fleets had pushed past the radioactive remnants of an ancient and unthinkably colossal supernova and supernebula, and found a rich bounty of lost treasures, lost worlds, and lost opportunities. Further, on his travels, he had found an additional ten shirtsleeves-habitable worlds to be earmarked for immediate scientific inspection by the Mechanicus, and for Rogue Traders and Administratum Colonization Department colony ships to prepare for Imperial habitation. The shipwrecks, the Inquisition publicly claimed, were from a potent Warp current that had carried the remains of vast battles from the Great Crusade to the edge of current Imperial space. The finding of these wrecks was not an ill omen, the Inquisition soothingly insisted to the superstitious Captains and Lords Trader. They were, instead, a sign that the mercy and love of the Emperor was upon them, and it was time, in His Divine estimation, for Mankind to expand to the realms that the galaxy had previously barred to human entry. Further, they declared, a new Sector would form in the Circuit, and loyal Humans of the Segmentae Ultima and Solar would settle it. Great ventures of manpower raising and construction would begin in the hives of the Segmentae, and ships would travel in the wake of the Administratum and Traders to begin the process of building the new sector. The Hapster Subsector would become a part of this new Sector, and a Sector Overlord chosen from the office of the Master of the Administratum Ultima.

Reassured by the Inquisition’s uncharacteristic full disclosure and prodding to do what they did best, Rogue Traders and Explorators took off by the hundreds, following the markers left by MacDonald’s trailblazers. New worlds were charted, and in the span of a mere five hundred years, the new Sector was declared established, In Nominae Imperator.

What the Inquisition, perhaps sensibly, did not disclose was what MacDonald had found beyond the Oldlight Proximate Circuit. Pushing past the radioactive clouds at the trailing edge of the Circuit and into the Oldlight Exo-zone proper, MacDonald had found an unspeakable charnel house of dead ships and planets. He had spent several years mapping this non-illuminatur region (so titled because it was outside the direct light of the Astronomican at its extreme northern edge). In that time, he had found psychic scars on planets, so intense that they left physical marks on their crusts. He had found totems and messages in alien languages, composed entirely of the power backpacks of Mark 2 Crusader armor, and at least three hundred planets subject to psychic or physical Exterminatus-level disasters. On one world, he had found over four hundred thousand skeletons of alien creatures, all fully made of metal. Weeks of study had yielded the horrifying truth behind them: they were the remains of cybernetic skeletons from vat-grown and cyber-augmented alien soldiers, locked in place and left to desiccate by an incomprehensibly powerful electronic warfare device. Such a device would have eclipsed even the Warp-tainted Electron Freezer of Moravec in power, especially since lingering radiation on their skeletal bodies suggested it had been triggered from eighty-two light years away.

Weeks of dangerous, slow, and violent travel by his Inquisitorial pursuers followed. When the Ordos of the Inquisition finally caught up with MacDonald at the edge of the Oldlight Exo-zone’s western border, at the very outskirts of the Astronomican’s light, he was researching a world-sized labyrinth of tunnels and metal tubes, apparently constructed by an Old Ones machine long ago and repurposed by the Eldar as a Webway technology test bed. The Inquisition was loathe to simply kill MacDonald for his knowledge, especially since the Inquisition actually knew less about what filled the Oldlight Exo-zone than he did, at that point. A deal was struck and sealed between the Mechanicus and Holy Ordos in the shadow of that ancient xenotech. MacDonald would return to the Proximate Circuit and lend his aid to the Rogue Traders that explored his findings, and the Inquisition would forget that MacDonald had ever come to that haunted place, in exchange for his findings and an oath not to return without the explicit permission of the Ordo Xenos.

On their return journey, however, a new discovery was made. The combined convoy of MacDonald’s Astra Explorators and the Inquisitorial ships halted over a world in the very center of the Oldlight Exo-Zone, where the light of the Astronomican was largely blocked by the many Warp Storms between their location and Terra. While taking a routine Navigation check, MacDonald’s ship sensors detected a colossal concentration of gaseous carbon and oxidized metal on the world below – a sure sign of a battlefield. After pestering the Inquisition to allow him to scan the world more closely, the Explorator began sweeping the planet with his mighty Grand Cruiser’s systems.

What he found horrified him. Below, on the surface of the planet that he immediately named Cladh in his ancestral language, he detected well over fifteen million human and alien bodies, decomposed to gas and powder. Millions of suits of alien and human Power Armor, thousands of wrecked tanks, a complex of psi-reactive crystals, an enormous dragon statue made from human teeth, and the remains of alien bio-horrors so complex that his systems couldn’t even tell what they were; they all lay in ruins on a vast plateau. The plateau, his cogitators helpfully informed him, had been created by the Lances on an Imperial Gloriana super battle barge, firing in Continual Discharge Mode, which would have reduced them to slag after only a few minutes. The Lances had boiled a canyon around the plateau, and judging from the heat damage on the Power Armor nearest the impact sites, at least some Crusade troops – including Astartes – had been alive and running towards the beams at the time of impact.

At this point, the Inquisition determined, a decision had to be made about MacDonald. A quick vote from the five Inquisitors present determined that disclosure would be more helpful than execution, and the Longstrike class cruiser hailed MacDonald’s ship.

The Emperor Himself after the culmination of the Rangdan Xenocides had quarantined the region, the Inquisitors explained. This particular world was unknown to even them, they hastened to assure him, but the evidence was clear enough. MacDonald looked at the surface below and immediately agreed to silence on the issue; he recognized the armor below as belonging to the Iron Warriors. Suits of armor belonging to at least five other Legions lay draped over a toppled building, originally shaped like a planarian worm or something akin to it. MacDonald agreed to keep the secret of what had happened here, and the convoy departed for the Circuit once more. The Inquisition, aware of the history of the Rangdan Xenocides and now the Exo-zone, were content to know that MacDonald, at least, would probably not realize that they had flown over the site of the opening of the Labyrinth of Night. MacDonald, his curiosity sated, compacted himself to the terms of the Inquisition’s bargain, and flew back to Naxos with the Inquisition. When the conclave was over, he ‘humbly’ accepted the Inquisition’s accolades, and set out once more, to catalogue the worlds of the eminently less classified Proximate Circuit. He achieved phenomenal success, ultimately categorizing twenty more systems in a mere decade. Eventually, his stellar rise to glory landed him a position as the Archmagos Explorator of the Sector, and a permanent posting on Cognomen proper.

Eight Subsectors, each named for an inhabited world around which their Control Fortress orbits, were created once the size of the Sector became clear. They are, in rough order from galactic east to galactic west (spinward to trailing): Hapster (by far the oldest), Cognomen, Celeste (which also contains the capital), Delving, Maskos, Thimble, Nauphry, and Rampart. The world now known as Brotherhood was once considered for a Subsector capital, but the decision ultimately favored Nauphry; this may have been a factor in the tragedy that befell Brotherhood. To compensate for the lengthy travel times between clusters of systems and the fact that several systems of the young Sector had multiple habitable bodies, System Overlords are generally installed instead of or in addition to individual Planetary Governors, and the Order Famulous is given the chance to render commentary on all high-profile Overlordship appointments. Overlordship is revocable only by unanimous consent of the Subsector and Sector Masters Administratum (the Overlord’s own peers), and is therefore a rare event, if the Ordo Hereticus doesn’t take matters into its own hands. Notably, the Sector Overlord’s entire family was deposed under a century ago.

The specific policy of the Sector Administratum is to integrate worlds of the nearby Cloudburst Circuit directly into the Sector proper, and is by no means adverse to creating a new Subsctor if need be. The problem is that Cloudburst is on the very edge of the projection range of the Astronomican as of M41, and further colonization in the renamed Circuit will be dangerous at best. The radioactive gas left over in the region from the ancient supernova that blinded the Imperium to the Circuit’s potential in the first place is just thick enough to make non-psychic travel or communication difficult, and pirates roam by the hundreds of thousands. While plans exist to colonize some worlds Rogue Traders have secured for the Imperium in the Circuit, and a few worlds of cave dwellers and regressive primitives exist for potential acquisition, the majority of the Circuit will have to be far better mapped before the Administratum commits any more resources to the area than it already has. However, the Cloudburst Sector has lost two Agri-worlds in recent centuries, which has forced it to start importing food from neighboring sectors. With the loss of Chlorit to the Glasians and Scalding to Chaos, the sector’s food now either comes from the worlds where it is needed, or from Cassie’s World, Forender, Grendel, and Combine. Naturally, these worlds require constant defense from invasions. It is not helpful that the more powerful nearby Sectors sometimes drive retreating foes into Cloudburst to become their problem.

Today, Cloudburst is a triumphal example of the latter-day Imperial ability to keep expanding, despite having every reason to stop. Though its defenses were not particularly important prior to the arrival of the Glasians, it is now fortifying at a dizzying pace. Missionaries and Techpriests rush to worlds on the slightest hint of archaeotech or un-converted primitive humans. The stronger the Imperium’s arms and more thorough its faith, they preach, the better the odds that the Emperor will smile on them, and the Sector will survive another Glasian Migration. Rogue Traders and Explorators, rivals at the best of times elsewhere in the galaxy, work together to find more worlds and treasure for the sector. A full Space Marine Chapter digs in, deep in the sector’s heart, preparing for the worst, while ruthless armies of Astra Militarum and Skitarii ferret out enemies of the sector, within its borders and beyond them. The vast Forge World of Cognomen is now remorselessly disregarding stricture against Knight manufacture, while the Ecclesiarchy Cloudburst arms its Sisters on their beachfront palace. PDFs across the sector kiss their Aquila pendants and pray for mercy, while furious Nurglite Cultists strive mightily to break Tzeentch’s stranglehold on cult activity nearby. The Inquisition and Arbites burn all sign of corruption or heresy from the overtaxed populace of Cloudburst, even while fresh worlds are brought into compliance by the high-tech armies of Solstice and Septiim. All the while, vile alien beasts stare unblinkingly at the stars of Cloudburst from their time-stasis prisons; their very cells realigning to the dark curiosity of foul Tzeentch. Cloudburst is a place of dynamism, violence, and perfidious hope. None know its fate, none but Tzeentch know when Tzeentch’s evil experiment shall end, and even he does not know what he will do with the Sector after he is finally done.