Phaenonite

“In blood consecrated, in grief blessed, in iron bound, in tears bathed and with souls fed! Bless’d engine of woe, I abjure thee: Awake!”
–The Incantation of Anima Malifica
This malevolent Xanthite splinter faction, reviled
even by their fellow radicals, has long been declared
excommunicate traitoris by the Ordo Malleus. Once
thought utterly destroyed in more recent years, the heretical
Phaenonite creed has reared its head again and taken dangerous
new shape in the Calixis Sector. Unlike some Radical factions
whose existence is at least tacitly tolerated within bounds by
their peers in the Holy Ordos, the Phaenonites stand as a
declared enemy of mankind. To harbor one of their number,
even for an Inquisitor, is an inviolable death sentence. Cast
out and persecuted for their unthinkable blasphemies and their
unprincipled callousness towards the Imperium’s citizenry,
the renegade sect has been charged with the breaking of
commandments laid down in the Imperium’s very early days
and of turning their faces from the God-Emperor’s divinity.
The fact of this faction’s survival---despite the might of both
the Holy Ordos and the Adeptus Mechanicus being turned
against them---is a testament to their insidious nature and
the crucible of dark power at their core. Just what governing
force or intelligence first founded and perhaps is still guiding
the Phaenonites’ actions remains unknown even to the high
councils of the Inquisition.
The faction’s first powerbase at the very edge of what would
later become the Calixis Sector was brutally smashed and their
ranks purged from the Inquisition and the Adepta with great
effusion of blood. However, their cancerous creed did not die.
The Phaenonites’ long-slumbering evils have come again,
drawn to a sector already beset by troubles and conspiracies,
ill-prepared to confront their subtle and dark powers.
Since rumors first began to be heard of their appearance,
the Phaenonites have very slowly gained fresh converts to
its dread cause both within the Inquisition and among other
powerful hereteks and renegade groups within the Calixis
Sector. In their current incarnation, the Phaenonites operate
as pure conspirators, insidious whisperers, and murderous
shadows. Hiding their presence and actions behind shrouds of
secrecy and deception, they are swift to conceal their true nature
behind the persona of loyal members of the Inquisition, or by
simply leaving no witnesses alive to tell of their passing.
There are few Radical factions of the Inquisition more
hunted, more loathed, or more deadly.
Since their excommunication and purging more than two
millennia ago, Phaenonism is thought to have become a
growing influence in the Calixis and Ixaniad Sectors, where
their operatives have been engaged slowly spreading their
corrupt influence and questing after dark lore and forbidden
artefacts to further their power. One thing is certain; if the
Phaenonites are slowly being reborn, it is a matter of dire
import for a Calixian Conclave already consumed with intrigues
and threats aplenty of its own. Where the Phaenonites pass,
history has shown that hell and death follows with them.
== The Art of Destruction ==
No mere group of shadowed conspirators and outlaws,
Phaenonism is also an ideological doctrine, and its followers
believe fanatically in the fundamental rightness of their cause.
Inquisitors (Radical or otherwise) are by their very nature
usually men and women of conviction, and the Phaenonite
creed is centered on the mastery of the warp via technology
for a reason beyond the power it may grant---for the future
fate of all humanity. For those that come to it, the Phaenonite
path offers the only viable way that mankind can survive the
horrors and growing threats that assail the Imperium on all
sides. For them, the weapons and tools of the past and the
prating ideologies that would offer no more than a retreat
into superstition and fear are antiquated and useless. A truly
visionary way is required to ensure the future dominion of
existence rests in human hands.
At the core of the Phaenonite philosophy is the harnessing
of the warp and the enslavement of the daemon by use of
arcane technological processes whose nature has been
long forbidden to the Imperium. The doctrine---which as
an outgrowth of the Xanthite ethos which focused on a
technological method rather than an entirely occult one to
achieve their goals (as the Xanthites are wont)---rapidly and
quickly mutated into something far worse, taking onboard the
most extreme doctrines of Monodomination. The Phaenonites
quickly cast aside the creed both of the God-Emperor and the
worship of Chaos, and instead came to the conviction that
mankind’s destiny lay as a fusion of man and machine, united
and made immortal by the limitless and protean energies of
the warp. If the Phaenonites can be said to have any god at all
it is ambition, for they do not bend their knees to worship but
crave instead to be worshipped, to crush the cosmos beneath
their heel and become lords of all that is or will be.
The Phaenonites see the Imperium reborn under their
leadership and see humanity shaped in their hands as clay
on the potter’s wheel to become the ultimate masters of
machine, flesh, matter, and spirit. For this to come to pass,
the Phaenonites know that the body politic of the Imperium
must be decapitated and replaced, and the deluded slaves of
the Ruinous Powers must be destroyed entirely to make way
for their new order.
Recognising that their numbers are few and their enemies
many, the outlawed faction’s first goal has been to acquire
and develop superior machineries of destruction in order to
accomplish their ends. This quest has lead them to gather the
darkest of hereteks and renegades to their hidden forces and
pursue knowledge and malevolent invention unfettered by the
dictates of the Imperium, the ancient traditions of the Adeptus
Mechanicus, or the restrains of morality and sanity. In doing
so, they have fast forged for themselves tools and weapons of
shocking power and also great risk even to themselves. These
weapons are made all the more dangerous by the Phaenonites
who use them with all the subtlety and guile that might be
expected of members of the Inquisition.
== Weapons of the Phaenonites ==
The Phaenonites’ power is best manifested by their brutally
efficient armaments and their skill in wielding them. To
this end, their organized cells have a tendency to stockpile
weapons and equipment, and the members boast a high degree
of individual augmentation, both of a mundane and more
esoteric quality. As a result, Phaenonite Inquisitors and their
Acolytes rarely take to the field unprepared, often concealing
their most fearsome wargear, daemonically-infused cybernetic
systems, and warp-augmented weapons until they are needed,
giving them an unforeseen and terrifying advantage over
their foes.
Although they have been known to make use of ancient
Terran and xenos designs, the principal obsession of the
Phaenonites is the fusion of technology with the occult lore
they have acquired, thereby investing it with the power of
the warp---a development they consider ultimately superior
to all other systems. Though dangerously unpredictable,
this often–nightmarish category of devices is referred to as
maletek by the Adeptus Mechanicus and can prove extremely
effective and difficult to counter. Such technology can range
from bolt ammunition that unleashes mutating Chaotic
energies to aetheric signal generators capable of disrupting
psychic powers and decimating psykers over a wide area.
One of their more recent developments is rapidly becoming a
signature---the Maletek Stalker. It is an assassination engine,
a human killer or death cultist which has been augmented
with proscribed bionic systems and graven with runes of
occult power, combining a human’s mastery of lethal skill
with unyielding metal and a daemon’s fury.
==Mark of the Phaenonite==
“...As you can see, the warp-mutant’s regenerative powers allow us to conduct a live vivisection to explore the extent that we can successfully inculcate the biomechanical feeding tubes into the nervous tissue, where a normal human would quickly die of shock. Of course I have had to sever and completely cauterize the vocal cords, as I find the incessant screaming such a distraction...”
–Phaenonite Magos Barabbas to his students
The Phaenonites are one of the darkest and most malignant
radical factions of the Inquisition, obsessed with harnessing the
powers of the warp and mastering the daemon though the use of
twisted and long forbidden technology. Declared Excommunicate
Traitoris for its many crimes and from turning from the worship
of the God-Emperor in favor of its own megalomaniacal quest
for power, the faction was brutally suppressed and purged, but
not destroyed. Operating now entirely under a shadowed veil
of secrecy like a slowly spreading cancer within the Inquisition,
the Phaenonites, though few in number, are growing again in
power and influence within the Calixis Sector.
Thanks in part to their outlaw status and the extreme
paranoia of the secret Phaenonite Inquisitors, it has become
the faction’s practice to mark their most trusted inner circle of
Acolytes as their own. This mark takes the shape of a painful
series of electoos burned onto the subject’s flesh that—once
implanted—are invisible until triggered by the conscious will
of the recipient. The occult geometry, warding sigils, and
malefic warp runes that make up the electoos pattern are unique
to each marked Acolyte and serve both as a secure means of
identification so that the Phaenonites may know each other and
as a covert means of enforcing an Inquisitor’s control over his
followers.
The mark’s presence also indicates one who has been inducted
into the heart of this excommunicate and sinister faction and
begun to learn its secrets, and who has likely done and seen
many terrible and fearful things in order to earn it.
Restrictions: The character must swear allegiance to the
Phaenonite Inquisitor who grants him his mark, an act that
places him under penalty of death should this ever be exposed to
the wider Inquisition. This Elite Advance should only be made
available to an Acolyte who has become the trusted servant of a
Phaenonite Inquisitor.
Advance Cost: 350 XP
Effects: The effects of the Phaenonite Mark are as follows:
*Gain 1d5+1 Corruption Points and 1d5+1 Insanity Points.
*The character reduces all further Corruption Points they incur (after the initial penalty for taking this advance) by –1 per incidence.
*+10 to Tests to resist the effects of Fear, psychic probing of the mind, and interrogation.
*The character may ‘trigger’ the electoo at will, displaying its glowing runes dancing across his flesh and augmetics, identifying himself and his ‘patron’ to fellow Phaenonites.
*Geas: The character must pass a Difficult (–10) Willpower Test to resist a direct command from the one who gave him the mark. (The GM may alter this difficulty to provide a bonus to resist the effect of commands that are harmful to the character as appropriate.) Should the character ever successfully resist such a command by a margin of three degrees or more, this effect is permanently broken, although the mark’s other effects still apply.
*Phaenonite Advances: A character with this mark has access to the Skills and Talents shown on Phaenonite Advances at the listed additional XP cost from this point on.
== The Death of Phaenon Prime ==
The Phaenonite Schism can be traced to a recent and specific
point in space and time; the rebellion of the Vanderveken
Trinity in 367.M39 during the bleakest periods of the Angevin
Crusade. The Cluster was situated in an otherwise desolate
area of space at the edge of former domains of the perished
Madragora Sector, along the Spinward edge of Ixaniad and
what several bloody years later would be formerly recognized
as the Calixis Sector.
A trio of systems centered around the isolated hive world
of Phaenon Prime suffered from pirate activity, xenos slaver
raids, and much worse---the region was often cut off from
aid by warp squalls---its situation only worsened during the
crusade years as what little Imperial protection it received was
cut away to aid in Angevin’s wars.
Increasingly embittered, Phaenon Prime’s Lord Commander
declared the trinity’s secession from the Imperium during the
Crusade’s weakest ebb. He bargained that the authority’s
preoccupation with the bloody toll of the ongoing conquest of
the Calyx Expanse would protect him from swift retribution.
The renegades soon crushed any resistance from their
neighbors with the aid of ships from their new pirate allies,
and in an orgy of bloodletting, he threw down the blessed
icons of the Ministorum and raised the foul idols of Chaos in
their place. However, the traitor governor of Phaenon Prime
had badly miscalculated the Imperium’s response.
Already on the way to reinforce the floundering Crusade
effort was an Inquisitorial taskforce under the command of the
notorious Xanthite and warlord Kobras Aquairre. Along with
his own private warfleet and a strike cruiser of the Charnel Guard Astartes Chapter, Aquairre was quickly re-diverted to
quell the rebellion with extreme prejudice. Smashing aside
the raider ships and crippling the planetary defenses, the Lord
Inquisitor’s judgment on Phaenon Prime was as harsh as it
was merciless, and he deployed the Life Eater virus without
delay. A hive world of fourteen billion souls was slaughtered
in punishment for their pride and blasphemy unto the last
living thing. In the aftermath, Aquairre deployed a force of
several Inquisitors from his personal staff and their retinues as
well as an Adeptus Mechanicus detachment from his forces to
the now-dead planet in order to discern what could be found
from the wreckage. He was particularly interested in the
daemon-tainted war machines deployed against the crusaders
during their assaults. Kobras Aquairre swiftly moved on to
join the war for Calyx, restless as ever for new conquests and
fresh horrors with which to do battle. By his order, Phaenon
Prime was given over as a dominion of the Holy Ordos.
After the Crusade once again gathered strength Rimward and
pushed into the terrors of its Hazeroth and Adrantis phases,
the planet---emptied of life and conveniently isolated---quickly began to be used as repository for captured weapons
and prisoners to be studied by the cabal of Xanthites drawn
to the distant, dead world.
== The Phaenonite Schism ==
Within a space of only a few decades after Phaenon Prime’s
establishment as an Inquisitorial base, disquieting reports
began to reach the senior Inquisitors both in the Crusade
forces and the nearby Ixaniad Sector that darkness and
heresy had taken hold on the dead world. Troubling reports
of the impiety and strange doctrines being espoused there
were placed by Adepta and Inquisitors using the world as a
way station, whilst covert investigation by agents of the then
newly founded Calixian Conclave reported that a number of
self-professed ‘Phaenonite’ Inquisitors based there had begun
traveling through nearby sectors and slowly gaining converts
to their cause. With measured subtlety, the Calixian Conclave
chose a known ‘renegade’ among its numbers---Inquisitor
Phibes (an ardent Xanthite whose actions had earned him
official censure in the past)---to infiltrate this growing faction
and uncover the truth. Phibes and his acolytes conducted
their intrigues for more than three years, traveling between
Phaenon Prime and the still turbulent corners of the newly
founded Calixis Sector where the Phaenonites’ agents were at
work. For a long period of time, Phibes was considered missing
and presumed dead.
However, he returned unexpectedly to
the newly constructed Tricorn Palace on Scintilla with the
hounds of hell at his heels, his flesh burned down to the bone
and kept alive only by the fruits of his own warped genius.
His testimony to the Conclave revealed the awful extent and
enormity of the Phaenonite’s crimes and heresies; chief among
which were the denial of the Emperor as divine, and the
pursuit of warp-tainted sciences and the horrors of the Dark
Age of Technology. Phibes also revealed that the Phaenonites
had infiltrated and taken over several fledgling Chaos cults,
Heretek cabals, and renegade warbands that had been thrown
up on the edges of the new sector to further their dark aims.
The Phaenonites had been the hidden forces behind numerous
pirate attacks and raids on Adeptus Mechanicus facilities in
order to feed their requirements for fuel, ammunition, and
other such vital supplies. Phibes explained that Phaenonite
agents had suborned several fledgling governments in the
sector and used ongoing pacification conflicts at the edges
of the Halo Stars in order to conduct their blasphemous
experiments. There, they had secretly tested corrupt weapons
directly against human Imperial colonists. Worse yet, they
had armed the forces of the archenemy from behind veiled
intermediaries in order to test the efficacy of their designs.
In response, the Phaenonites and any who aided them,
whatever their degree or station, were declared Excommunicate
Traitoris by the a specially convened Grand Council of the
Calixian Conclave in 427.M39. This sparked an immediate
schism and open warfare within its own ranks and that of
the Conclave Ixaniad. A bloody and merciless purge within
the local Inquisition soon followed along with a supporting
Carta of Extermination ratified by the Chamber Inquisitorial
of Holy Terra whose writ still holds to this day.
As for Phaenon Prime, some within the Malleus judged
that the corruption of so many hardened to the wiles of the
Warp so quickly could be not be coincidence. Some dark force
dwelled there, they believed, although whether it had always
been so or that something that had been brought there to
fatally spread its influence like a virus remained unknown.
In any case, the Priesthood of Mars were happy to grant the
Calixian Conclave’s’ request. By the dictate of the Fabricator
General himself, they marshalled the power of their city-sized
voidships and tore a moon from its natural orbit to strike
Phaenon Prime, smashing the planet to fragments.
== The Shadow of the Dark Mechanicus ==
The Adeptus Mechanicus hold their darkest hatred for those
renegade forces of their own brethren that turned on them
during the Horus Heresy, traitors who live on to this day as
the Dark Mechanicus. The forbidden histories of those terrible
days show that the destruction wrought by the traitors on Mars
and in a dozen other spheres of war was unparalleled, and
have left a stain of the soul of the Omnissiah’s priesthood that
has never been cleansed. In the aftermath of the Warmaster’s
fall, many of the Dark Mechanicus who survived found
sanctuary with the various Traitor Legions and in dark corners
of the Imperium where their terrible arts have prospered and
their undying hatred of the Imperium has festered down the
millennium. The forbidden psycho-sonic weapons of the
Emperor’s Children, the gene-atrocities of the hated Fabius Bile, the malign perversion of the techno-viral technology
used to create the terrible Obliterators---all have been laid
at the Dark Mechanicus’ door. Hellish forge worlds bestrode
by cyber-daemonic overlords deep within the Eye of Terror
ceaselessly churn out the weapons and munitions that arm the
forces of Chaos and fuel the dreaded Black Crusades.
The Phaenonite faction looks on the Dark Mechanicus with
jealous eyes and covets its ancient and twisted designs for their
own use. They also see the Dark Magi themselves to be an
object lesson in the inherent weakness of the tech-priesthood,
regardless of who or what its serves. The Phaenonites believe
them to be no more than deluded and enslaved pawns of
Chaos, no better than their parochial counterparts of the
machine cult. To the Phaenonites, the Dark Mechanicus and
the Traitor Legions both are small-minded fools who have
squandered the power in their grasp and now dance to the
sound of the laughter of the Chaos Gods, who gave them all
they desired until it choked them.
== Current Conspiracies ==
“If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo down through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always preferable to ignominy.”
–Fabius Bile at the Desecration of Kanzuz IX
The current goals of the Phaenonite faction are threefold;
infiltration, expansion, and acquisition, all geared towards the
end of regaining their fallen might and ultimately to exceed
it. From their small remaining seed, they have long planned
to spread their Radicalism to the Calixian Inquisition and
subvert it from within, until one day the shadow can consume
the substance---fitting vengeance against the force that once
all but destroyed them.
Driven almost to extinction by Inquisitorial purge two
millennia ago, the few Phaenonites that remained were
scattered and much reduced, but it was a fatal mistake for
the Calixian Conclave believe that they were powerless
and effectively destroyed. Cast out of their stronghold,
the survivors fled, bearing with them terrible weapons and
forbidden lore from the shattered Phaenon Prime, some
taking refuge deep within the anonymity of distant sectors
whilst others took to the limitless voids beyond the edge of
the Halo Stars, there to purse their nightmare sciences beyond
the writ of the Imperium to interfere. Nor were all their agents
ever fully rooted out and purged. Instead, sinking into secret
obscurity, they watched and waited. With spider-patience,
these agents slowly spun their webs. So the sleeping cancer
of the Phaenonite conspiracy slept deep in the marrow of the
Calixis body politic, and as the sector grew and history took
its course, the Phaenonites became lost almost to Inquisitorial
myth. Their transgressions were deleted from the records,
their enormities replaced in the minds of the Conclave by a
succession of more immediate threats and conspiracies down
the centuries. So matters remained, until events came into
configuration to herald this monstrous faction’s return.
== Evil calls out to Evil ==
Drawn back from the outer darkness, the agents of the
ancient Phaenonites returned in subtle force to the Calixis
Sector by the actions of one man; the renegade Explorator Archmagos Umbra Malygris, whose recent rebellion had
riven the Calixian Cult Mechanicus with civil war. An insane
genius and master of arcane technology beyond all measure,
the Phaenonites had hoped to make an alliance with Malygris
and perhaps offer him safe haven elsewhere to carry out his
work. The Phaenonite cell quickly re-established contact
with those who had kept their ancient faith. Identifying and
making alliance by insidious corruption and malign force with
Calixian Inquisitors who might be suborned to their cause,
the Phaenonites mounted their own shadowy pursuit of the
renegade Tech-Priest. Although the Phaenonites made contact
with Malygris, he proved to be too dangerous and erratic for
even the Phaenonites to manipulate or control, and crossing the
dark Archmagos’s path nearly resulted in the Phaenonite cells
complete destruction. In fact, the operation partly exposed the
Phaenonites’ returned presence to the Calixian Conclave for the
first time.
==The Spread of the Phaenonite Taint==
Even though their primary mission had failed, the Phaenonites
decided they had indeed made a wise choice in coming to the
Calixis Sector. They found it rife with corruption, conspiracy,
and dark lore, its Conclave turbulent and sown with factionalism
and discord. This afforded the Phaenonites many opportunities
to hide in the shadows, further their pursuit of power, and
expand their influence. Soon, the surviving cell members and
their agents were in pursuit of the plethora of ancient secrets
that lay buried beneath the Calixis Sector’s civilized façade
on the damned worlds at its fringes that still echoed to the
footsteps of older races than man. In the short span of years
since then, the Phaenonites have sunk their claws into both the
Calixian Conclave and the Adepta, corrupting some, converting
others and outright murdering and replacing a few. Few in
actual number, there are perhaps no more than perhaps a dozen
true Phaenonite Inquisitors in the Calixian Conclave and none
openly known as such by their fellows, but these are the tip of
the iceberg for the Phaenonites’ organization. They have in a
short span of years proved frighteningly adept in building up
their powerbase, and possess resources extraordinarily extensive
for a faction of their size, bankrolling several minor noble
houses and free trade captains, and now have agents highly
placed both in the Commercia and the Cold Guild. They have
also proved more than able to deal with opposition in the shape
of local cults, and other more wisely spread conspiracies and
rivals for the main part, able to call both on their own dark
might, and the veneer of Inquisition authority when needed.
== The Infiltration of Idumea ==
The greatest inroads the Phaenonites have made into
the governance of a Calixian world have been into the
Machine Cult on the minor Forge World of Idumea. Long
disadvantaged by its location on the edge of the Hazeroth Abyss and lack of strategic importance, the Forge Masters
of Idumea have for centuries considered themselves to be
sidelined and undermined by the central authorities of the
Lathe system, a disaffection the Phaenonites have been quick
to exploit. Much of Idumea’s upper echelons were hopelessly
entrapped by the Phaenonite conspiracy, corrupted by the
offer of forbidden lore and coerced through a concentrated
program of targeted murders and sabotage. The Forge World
itself now houses numerous secret facilities for the faction,
as well as serving to provide a steady supply of manpower,
experimental subjects, and a hidden port.
The Phaenonite infiltration of Idumea and its activities on
nearby worlds have caused the Phaenonites an unforeseen
problem---the Amaranthine Syndicate. The Syndicate is a
mercenary alliance of far traders and smugglers operating
within the deeps of the Hazeroth Abyss. At first, it seemed a
perfect target for the Phaenonites attention. However, as they
moved against the group, it quickly became apparent that
they had made a grave error. The Syndicate proved already
to be the cat’s-paw of another, darker force more than able
to take on and destroy the Phaenonite agents with almost
contemptuous ease: the Slaugth. Rather than fight a war against a power
whose nature and extent they did not fully understand the
Phaenonites are now giving the Syndicate a wide birth where
they can until they can find out more. This reversal has placed
them in an invidious position, and so now they must thread
a tightrope of bringing other, more legitimate Inquisitorial
authorities to bear on what is a clear threat not only to them
but to the sector itself, and do so without exposing their
own true nature in the process. Regardless, the Phaenonite
conspiracy’s pride and power has been directly challenged,
and it will see the Amaranthine Syndicate and its mysterious
backers destroyed at any cost. The Syndicate is not the only
group with unseen masters stalking the dark stars beyond the
Imperiums’s borders that be called on if needed...
== The Altar of Genocide ==
A fragment of dark lore that has obsessed several of the Calixian
Phaenonite’s since the faction’s arrival in the sector concerns
what some sources name as the ‘Altar of Genocide.’ Referred
to repeatedly but obliquely by the fragments of techno-arcane
lore left behind in the wake of the insane Archmagos Umbra
Malygris, the ‘altar’ is reputed to be a hidden vault containing
the master templates for all of Malygris’s dark creations, as
well as dread artefacts recovered or seized in his long career as
an Explorator out beyond the Emperor’s light. The myth has
brought the Phaenonites into conflict both open and covert
with other seekers for its nightmarish treasures that have
included rival Inquisitors, Explorators, and----most bloodily---the rival heretical tech-cult, the Logicians. A widespread and
powerful conspiracy of uncertain origin, the agents of the
Logicians have battled the Phaenonites elsewhere and quickly
recognized their rivals for what they were. Since then, the
Logician presence in the Calixis Sector has plotted to expose
the Phaenonites’ presence to the Holy Ordos, hoping that the
Inquisition will do them the service of wiping out this hated
rival, whilst the Phaenonites have likewise plotted to do the
same in return from within the Conclave.
== The Forgotten Apocalypse ==
There is an ancient myth attached to the cold and darkly fabled
stars at the edge of the Segmentum Obscurus of an ancient
war with no remembered name fought in the depths of the
Imperium’s history. This war was unequalled in ferocity, and
so terrible that every mention of it has been purged from the
Imperial record, save perhaps for a few fragmentary references
in most heavily restricted archives of the Holy Ordos, the
cycles of certain Astartes battle sagas, and ancient Mechanicus
data-canticles. This myth, discredited and dismissed by many
pursuers of dark lore, has become an obsession of many
among the Pheanonite faction. They seek both the possibility
of supreme power and an apotheosis of their own desires in
the ancient secrets left over from that war.
Scattered fragments of stories hoarded by heretics and
other apocryphal sources tell of a great and terrible conflict,
erupting by some accounts in the mid of the 32nd Millennium,
a legendary time of anarchy for the post-heresy Imperium.
According to the legend, a strange artefact---a vast labyrinthine
contrivance seemingly spun of dust and magnetism---was
encountered by Explorators somewhere deep in the Halo
Stars beyond what was then as the Calyx Expanse (though
other sources place it in the dread Mandragora region or even
as far a-field as the Unbeholden Reaches). This great and
mysterious artefact they designated the ‘Echoing Vault.’
This vast artefact—perhaps an embassy from an unknown
realm of existence---unleashed a wave of horror never
before seen on an unsuspecting and unprepared mankind.
The xenoforms which mercilessly ravaged forth, if in truth
they could be called such, were creatures of such abhorrent
terror they are referred only obliquely in the records as ‘The Harrowing.’ These entities disobeyed known physical laws,
and close proximity to them alone was enough to kill or drive
the unprotected mind insane. The Harrowing mercilessly
ravaged all in their path, and no force could stand against
them. In a few short years, the deaths of a thousand inhabited
spheres---both human and xenos---were laid at their feet,
along with unprecedented losses for the Adeptus Astartes
and the Inquisition lead forces trying fruitlessly to check
them. According to a version of the legend favored by dark
hereteks, ultimately the Holy Ordos found only a fusion of
archeotech and sorcerous lore could hold the Harrowing so
that the Imperium could strike; although at supreme risk to
the Inquisitors that employed them. Suffering defeat, the
Harrowing fled back across the carcasses of dead worlds to
the Echoing Vault, where it is said the Mechanicus employed a
forbidden weapon of the Dark Age of Technology to destroy
their foothold and seal the breach between dimensions
through which they had passed.
So terrible was the conflict and its implications that
afterward, all records of it were purged from Imperial
histories, and its remaining traces all but lost in the turbulent
years that followed. Some heretic adepts point to the sudden
weakening of Imperial power in those long forgotten days
and the vast deserts of lifeless worlds on the eastern Fringe
as proof of the Echoing Vault’s existence. Most (including
many in the Holy Ordos) scorn this legend as either outright
fabrication, misinterpretation, or a lie designed to cover some
other, darker truth. However, in more recent years, some
within the Calixian Tyrantine Cabal have drawn parallels with
this long discredited legend and the phenomena known as
Komus, the Tyrant Star, whilst others instead favor different
explanation of the myth---a mangled misinterpretation of a
Chaos incursion, a short lived warp rift or even some long
forgotten Tyranid precursor hive. Some few who know of
the story wonder if somewhere in the vastness of their silent
other realm, removed from both euclidean realspace and the
empyrean seas of the warp, the Harrowing yet wait patiently
for their hour to return.