System Anfortas

Anfortas is the devastated system where there lies the Star Machine, the titanic foundry encompassed now entirely by the ruins of its Dyson shells. These ruins tell the story of the fall of old humanity, the strife of a millennia-long siege that ended in the utter devastation of the once utopian megastructure.

To most worlds of Sector Gondwana and the Imperium beyond its mere existence is shrouded in myth and legend, as even the ruins are enough to swallow almost all light and radiation from the star. Thus, Anfortas remains hidden on most charts of the stars, mentioned at best as half-forgotten lore of Gondwana with no material consequence.

## Astrography

Located on the northern end of Pahmn's strait, Anfortas lies out of the way of most major trading routes, and close to the expanding tendrils of the Glacial Nebula, where cosmic snow threatens to swallow many lesser systems. Its precise location is known only to a select few scholars of the Triumvirate, the Navigators whose third eye can make out a signature of destruction in the warp, and the Dyson Clade itself, governing the spheres.

## Star Machine

Forming the very heart of Anfortas, now as well as at the height of old humanity's might, the Star Machines clings directly to the burning sun. It is a massive star lifter installation, kept intact by gargantuan shield engines, which are powered by the heat of the star itself. The machine sites atop the sun like an iron crown, siphoning matter, and energy from the corona and the outer layers. In this way, the star machine produces a virtually endless stream of resources and limitless production capacity for whoever controls the arcane monument.

## Regions

The ruins of the Dyson spheres enshrine the entire inner system Anfortas, having been constructed roughly at the distance where Jupiter orbited sacred Sol. The vastness of a million ruined worlds lies on the inner surface of the spheres, more than the entire Dyson Clade could explore even in its entire history of nigh ten-thousand years.

### Anfortas Techno-Nature

The vast majority of all regions on the ruined Dyson spheres remain hostile and impenetrable despite all efforts of humanity. They are ruled now by the creations that were first unleashed in the war between humankind and the sentient machines. Both sides brought autonomous weapons to bear, unleashed half-intelligent swarms of hunter-killer drones, robotic servants, and species of semi-organic soldiers. For more than ten millennia since the ultimate fall, those remnants of the war have festered and grown into their own kind of vicious, abominable nature.

Much of the ruined spheres are covered now by these half-engineered, half-evolved creations and they have grown into a life of their own, attacking anything and anyone that would dare come close to their shells.

Few expeditions were ever mounted to free sections of the shells from these monstrosities, and every time it cost the Dyson Clade a notable percentage of all manpower and industry. By the forty-first Millennium, these efforts were given up almost entirely, in favor of creating new and safer worlds with the power of the Star Machine.

### Automata Rapture

Amid the endless hostile nature which evolved from weapons of the long-forgotten war, there is one peaceful meadow. Even though it encompasses a mere fraction of the great old spheres, the Automata Rapture amounts to the surface of several hundred planetary worlds, cleansed and freed of the machine corruption that had consumed the ruined Dyson spheres whole.

How the rapture came about remains a mystery, perhaps even to the Dyson Clade despite its intense study for the past millennia. They regard the Automata Rapture with utmost caution and distrust, safe for the most radical among them who have come to worship the rapture as the ultimate promised land of the Omnissiah.

Because the safety of the Rapture is not guaranteed by the formidable forces of the Dyson Clade itself. Instead, the defense of this safe haven is comprised of countless automata and other war-machines, ones not possessed by the abominable intelligence of old, but dutifully fulfilling solely the function for which they were created.

Countless times the Dyson Clade experimented with these specimens, finding them to contain no trace of abominable intelligence. Some groups within the Clade took this as a sign of the Machine God to trust in the fortitude of these creations, but others were quick to point the apparent impossibility of the findings they had made. Because, despite the seemingly docile nature of each individual machine, the automata defending the safety of the rapture display great feats of anticipation and strategy, judgment and even ritualistic phenomena, sure sign that they are guided by one abominable hive-intelligence at least.

Yet despite the doubts and discord sown by differing opinions about the rapture, all of the Dyson Clade has for millennia agreed, that it is a wonder beyond the reckoning of mortal souls, and that it would be wrong to disturb these wayward children, as their guiding intelligence might be, after all, a rare true avatar of the Omnissiah.

### Garth Ironclad

The Garth Ironclad is sometimes called the garden fortress, as it constitutes Anfortas' greatest collection of habitats devoted to Agri-culture, defended by legions of tech-priests and automata, to ensure the bare demands of the flesh are met, the workers fed and provided with what organic matter they need.

The crops grown in these gardens and horticulture are spliced genetically for best possible yield, foregoing any notion of color or flavor, variety, or culinary value. The Dyson Clade has no love for any organic growth, and so their extend is minimized as much as possible.

However, there exist a few exceptions of the most influential magi of the Star Machine, who create vast parks and beautiful gardens to study the engineering feats of nature.

### Abyssal Hold

The riches overflowing from the Star Machine are captured and stored within the abyssal hold. This complex of ancient bunker cities, reclaimed from the techno-nature through a heavy price of blood, was chosen as the treasure chamber for the star machine's most dangerous creations. Experimental war-machines, specimens of abominable techno-nature, rejected designs and exotic weapons of war are stored here in separated chambers, heavily guarded each by a garrison force of its own.

### Fallen Worlds

Craters and gashes of the ancient siege still scar the shells of nigh impenetrable scrith, telling stories of the fall that consumed these megalopolises and the souls of their inhabitants, of which some may still haunt this solemn place.

Nowhere are these signs of destruction stronger than they are in the Fallen Worlds atop the scrith. These are the old capital cities, the industrial nation-states and war camps of entire species grown for war, remnants of the conflict between humankind and sentient machines.

### Fissured Gates

The ruined spheres and their melded realms shut Anfortas off almost entirely from the remainder of the universe. Few gates and fissures remain where there exist passages through the ruins and to the inner shell of the Star Machine. All of these entry points are now heavily guarded by the Dyson Clade, and most of their positions are well-kept secrets known only to the upper echelons of the priesthood. Only one pathway exists officially and is open to select few visitors. These are the fissured gates, site of the red and silver havens, the sole point of contact between the Dyson Clade and the outer universe.

Ages ago, these gates were a mere tertiary entry-point for fleets of old humanity. Even so, their scope is so vast as to admit entire interstellar fleets of the Imperium and to accommodate the vast external guardian forces operated by the Dyson Clade.

The proper gates were closed in the siege many thousands of years ago, and since then could never be re-opened, as their mechanism was destroyed and strange-matter bombs fused shut most of the scrith-plates. But deep impacts created craters and fissures big enough for capital ships of the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Mechanicus to traverse, allowing a narrow entryway and ideal defense position for the Dyson Clade to take.

Even so, few vessels are ever permitted to make the journey inside. Not only is this rule based on the mistrust and isolationism of the tech-priesthood-within, it is only a matter of protection for any lesser vessel that might be easily torn apart by the shearing forces from the ruined shells. For space within the shells of Anfortas is a treacherous and disruptive force, making it impossible for an unexperienced captain to keep any ship alive for long.

### Explorator's Keep

Despite their apparent capitulation before the overwhelming force of the ruined shell's techno-nature, the priests of the Dyson Clade maintain a stronghold on the frontier of the undiscovered ruined shells. This Explorator's keep is of vital strategic import, both for the operation of supply lines across the inner system, as well as for any potential defense against an intruding enemy. Consequently, the Keep is exceptionally well guarded and fortified, having withstood the onslaught of technological wildlife for many centuries since the last time it was overrun. For many soldiers of the Skitarii Legions, this is the place where they learn to fight, for, at the walls of the Keep, one can experience all true horrors of war. And the horrors there displayed sit deep, as they are true echoes of perhaps the greatest conflict ever fought by the humankind.

### Melded Realms

The outermost layers of the ruined Dyson Spheres are dominated by the melded realms, where even the technological un-life of abominable nature ceases. From sections of the inner sphere, through to all the outermost layers of the shells, every material, form, and erstwhile machine have been fused into one amalgam mass, a terrible, endless relief sculpture depicting the horrors of the greatest war.

Those souls among the tech-priests displaying streaks of artistry will often come to write vast descriptive works of the blackened outer layer, spending tens of thousands of tightly written pages, spinning tales, and legends from the incidental sculptures of destruction they saw.

No mere starships, entire fleets, and worlds are fused with the Dyson shells, shards of planetary bodies that were thrown to break the lasting siege. Where these cosmic projectiles hit, they ignited fires that would burn for centuries, before even the vacuum of interstellar space could stifle them, leaving the scorched and melded realms behind.

### Ecliptic Equator

One of the few features remaining on the ruined sphere's outer hull is a deep canyon indicating where the ecliptic plain of the Anfortas System would have been. This, so the priesthood of the Dyson Clade believes, would have been the primary point for military installations, ports and weapons emplacements, and the seat of mass accelerators.

All traces of this hardware have long been fused into one, for the canyon now is black and homogenous, marked only by its exceptional destruction.

## Routes

No official routes lead into or out of the system Anfortas. For most of its history, the Dyson Clade had stood alone and sought no contact with the other worlds except rare rogue trader expeditions and a single delegation, once per century, sent from their brethren of the Forge World Cambria.