Askellon Sector - Askellian Incursion: Later in the 41st Millennium, at a time when the armies of Askellon were still reeling from the losses of the Vaxi genocides, not one but dozens of space hulks appeared within its borders. This event coincided with a massive increase in Warp storm activity nearby, leading some Warp-seers to claim that the Pandaemonium was gorging itself on the souls of those slain during the genocides, though most dismissed such claims as the ravings of madmen.Regardless, the sector's resources were so depleted that even a single space hulk would have been a challenge to deal with in the prescribed manner. As it became apparent that multiple star systems were reporting their appearance, deep dread settled over the sector's high commanders. Worse still, it was evident that the appearance did not follow some random pattern born of the ebbs and flows of the tides of the Sea of Souls. Rather, each of the reported space hulks had appeared along a Warp route that, if projected along known empyreal conduits, would see them converge in the sector's core region. Clearly, some dark intellect or intent was at work. Across Askellon, every possible force that could be mustered was deployed in response.At the Ferrom System, an entire army group was raised from the massive worker population, issued las carbines drawn from emergency stocks many standard centuries old, and ferried in the cargo holds of bulk haulers to the space hulk that had appeared out-system. Entire companies of these worker-soldiers were crammed into shuttles rated to hold a tenth of the number of passengers and fired across the void to board the vast hulk. For ten solar days, shuttle after shuttle deployed company after company until at length a hundred thousand and more soldiers were scouring the dark tunnels with orders to engage any enemy they encountered and to report any unusual finds as soon as they were made.No such reports were ever made, for as one, the vox-feeds and tacticae relays fell silent. Those remaining attempted frantically to raise the boarders, and while the links were determined to be functional, no data was being passed along them. Increasingly fearful, the overseers of the mission debated a dozen and more responses to the situation, but a solar hour later, the decision was made for them. With a burst of light of no hue known to sane minds, the space hulk was dragged back into the Empyrean. At the moment of translation, every soul on board cried out in such anguish that every psyker within several light years felt their pain, many suffering seizures, some even perishing. Of that hundred-thousand-strong army, not a trace was ever discovered.At the Myros Kappa System, a space hulk dove out of the Immaterium perilously close to one planet, destabilising its moons and setting off punishing tectonic upheavals. Stricken by tidal waves, earthquakes, and constant storms, the world's primary settlements were subsequently abandoned, and tens of thousands of Departmento Munitorum serfs perished along with vital Astra Militarum war materiel. Eight solar days later, it vanished uninvestigated, all nearby resources diverted to desperately evacuate any survivors.Far worse occurred at Menoetius-Delta. The space hulk that emerged in that star system did so not at its outer edges, but far in-system. Menoetius-Delta was host to a subsistence-level Human society that had never truly taken its place in the sector and, thanks to the space hulk, never would. Three solar days after it was detected, the gigantic conglomeration of metal and rock smashed into Menoetius-Delta, triggering an extinction-level kinetic event that rendered the surface nigh uninhabitable to Mankind.It was later estimated that approximately fifty million souls went to the Emperor's side when the space hulk collided with Menoetius-Delta, and the same number perished in the standard years that followed as its ecology collapsed. No mission was ever launched to evacuate survivors, and it is likely their descendants live there still, eking out a miserable and short life beneath the churning black clouds, the light of the star of Menoetius merely a myth passed down through the generations.Of all the space hulks that appeared within Askellon's borders that year, only a single one was met with anything approaching a successful response. At the Hulee System's outer fringes, a space hulk was codified Assassin of Pride and it was investigated not by some ad hoc local force, but by a rapidly deployed Kill-team of the elite Deathwatch. Who or what called these Adeptus Astartes to deploy here remains unknown, and the alien hunters made no account of their mission to any of the Ordo Xenos Inquisitors operating in the Askellon Sector at that time.All that is known is that the Kill-team must have been successful in its operation, and that when the black-clad Space Marines departed they were carrying a cargo of obviously high import, which they took with them when they left in their strike cruiser. Furthermore, in the immediate aftermath of the Assassin of Pride boarding operation and removal of the mysterious cargo, every single space hulk still within Askellian space abruptly fell back into the Immaterium.Following this burst of activity, the Pandaemonium began an unprecedented period of relative quiescence, and the Immaterium in the region strangely becalmed for several standard years, during which Aeldari activity peaked markedly. It was not to last, and soon after the Pandaemonium began the turbulent cycle in which it is now engaged, a cycle so all-consuming that some say it may never end.When word of this mass space hulk incursion reached the ears of certain savants, they simply nodded sagely to themselves. To such as they, who have been declared mad by their peers for seeing the hidden hand of the Aeldari or some other xenos strain in the Vaxi Atrocity, every woe that befalls Mankind is a potential doom wrought by the hand of the alien. One day, no doubt, they shall be proved correct.