vizn3r/warhammer40k-lore huggingface dataset:
Screaming Skulls - Notable Calix Chapter Members: Ghorgoth the Oppressor - Formerly known as Dvar Ghorgoth, he served as the former Chapter Master of the Calix Chapter. He later spat on his oaths of fealty to the Emperor and willingly led his Chapter into damnation following the Massacre of Ravenscar. Becoming known as Ghorgoth the Oppressor, Scourge of World, he later renamed his Renegade Chapter the Screaming Skulls. During the Constantinus Iconoclasm that occurred within the Viridis Sector in 746.M41, he came to the former capital world of Nova Terra, now renamed Constantinium, along with other Chaos Champions and warbands by the dozens, to test themselves against the upstart known as Constantinus the Liberator. Within the capital city's arena, known as the Palace of Testing, they competed against one another. Only the most worthy champions received the honour of engaging in their own trial by combat against the master of Constantinium. The prize they fought for was a worthy reward indeed. The winner claimed all that the vanquished possessed -- his warriors, his wargear, his battlefleets and even those worlds that paid him fealty. But the master of Constantinium had not lost a battle yet, as some said that the Liberator had been marked out by the Ruinous Powers. Unperturbed, the Packmaster of the Screaming Skulls issued a personal challenge to the Liberator to face him in personal combat. Constantinus eagerly accepted and faced the upstart Chaos Lord in a deadly duel. To the victor, the spoils -- the war-host of the vanquished. This included his men, fighting machines, unholy relics, slaves, battleships and all worlds that were his dominion. Ghorgoth accepted the Liberator's terms. With that the two champions brought their weapons to bear, and fought one another in a deadly melee. But ultimately, the Packmaster was outmatched, and was laid low by the Liberator. The war-hosts of the Oppressor passed over into the hands of the victor.
Screaming Skulls - Chapter Colours: The Calix Chapter's colours are not listed in current Imperial records. As the Screaming Skulls, these Chaos Space Marines wore a hodgepodge of armour of conquered victims, or that scavenged during raids on worlds where mighty battles had once taken place.Others combined plate artifice by the Heretek-magi of the Auretian Schism with relics that were rumoured to date back even as far as the Dark Age of Technology. There were those who also still wore pieces of vulgar armour they once brought with them from their primitive home worlds.
Screaming Skulls - Chapter Badge: The Calix Chapter's badge is not listed in current Imperial records, but as the Screaming Skulls they bore the mark of the eight-pointed star of Chaos with a halved human skull set at its centre.
Screaming Skulls - Canon Conflict: In the  Hive of the Dead (Path To Victory #1 Gamebook) by C.Z. Dunn, it states that the Screaming Skulls were a formerly Loyalist Space Marine Chapter that went renegade after being converted to the worship of the Plague God Nurgle by the infamous Death Guard Plague Marine Korpharact the Contaminated during the 13th Black Crusade. It is unknown at this time whether or not this is one and the same Screaming Skulls warband, or an entirely separate entity.
Screaming Vortex - The Maw: The common factor linking the Calixis Sector, the Koronus Expanse, and the Jericho Reach is the Warp conduit known as the Maw. Initially, the Maw consisted of the route connecting the Calixis Sector to the Koronus Expanse, but in later solar decades it was found to be much more.Deep within the Koronus Passage, Imperial explorers discovered a huge, crescent-shaped structure of utterly alien origin floating in the deep void. Thanks to the actions of the courageous scouts, the object was found to be one terminus of a xenos-built Warp Gate, a stable passage through the Warp with the other end and an identical object situated thousands of light years away beyond the Eastern Fringe in the Segmentum Ultima. Traversing this vast distance takes mere solar seconds through the gate. The passage made possible by the stable route is known as the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate, and its existence is of such strategic importance to the Imperium of Man that travel through it is one-way for all but the most trusted individuals.While the strategic value of being able to ship entire armies from one end of the galaxy to the other is all but unsurpassable, so too is the risk of invaders attacking the Eastern Fringe penetrating into the Imperium's heartlands by way of this route. To reconquer the Jericho Reach, the Imperium has committed vast reserves of troops, dispatched in secret to a warzone that scant few know is not in the Calixis Sector, but on the other side of the galaxy.
Screaming Vortex - 13th Station of Passage: While the existence of the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate is known only to a select few within the upper echelons of the Imperium's ruling institutions, other secrets yet await within the churning passage between the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse.One such place is the legendary 13th Station of Passage, a location within the Maw known only to those who walk the path to glory of the Dark Gods. Who discovered it remains a mystery, though surely it must have been some mad Renegade Navigator or perhaps a Warp-lorn Rogue Trader whose soul he had sold in return for such terrible knowledge.Some link the discovery to both the infamous Haarlock and Winterscale dynasties of Rogue Traders, though no solid evidence exists for either assertion. The exact location of the station is unknowable to non-sorcerers, for it takes the form of an empty region in the void several hundred kilometres in diameter. Over the centuries, this empty space has come to be orbited by a dark halo of debris, countless frozen corpses from sacrifices dedicated to the Ruinous Powers.The 13th Station of Passage represents a point of confluence, where the raging tides of the Maw and the tendrils of the Screaming Vortex meet. It is, in effect, a branch of the Koronus Passage, and the only route into and out of the Screaming Vortex its denizens routinely utilise (though there are certainly others).Other routes are too dangerous for most, and the 13th Station of Passage is only attempted after due obeisance and sacrifice has been made, as is born witness by the halo of twisted, bloodless corpses slowly orbiting it. In fact, so dense is the cloud of offerings that vessels moving into the confluence to make Warp jumps must push through it while the frozen bodies can be heard to thud against the outer hull.Via the 13th Station of Passage, the denizens of the Screaming Vortex can access both the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse. Furthermore, they can, if they are extremely cautious, pass through the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate into the Jericho Reach in the Eastern Fringe, though most prefer secreting themselves on Imperial transports to sneak through the powerful Imperial Navy blockade.
Screaming Vortex - Daemon Worlds: Daemon Worlds, of which many can be found in the Screaming Vortex, were once planets created and ruled by the processes and laws of nature. Yet, through some cataclysmic incursion, they are now entirely claimed by the Warp, forming permanent islands of the Immaterium in the midst of realspace.A Daemon can move unhindered from the Warp to one of the Daemon Worlds and the four great Ruinous Powers of Chaos continuously compete to possess them. Armies of Daemons and their living, mortal allies fight huge and bloody battles to determine which of the Chaos Powers will hold sway. These battles often last for hundreds of standard subjective years, so that the entire world becomes little more than a gigantic arena where the opposing forces are pitched against each other.They represent the eternal conflict known as the Great Game between the Ruinous Powers, manifested in a very real way through the deeds and drives of those who would serve them. The generals of these armies are Greater Daemons and Daemon Princes, the latter because they were once alive as mortals and understand the nature of both the material universe and the immaterial Realm of Chaos. Once a Daemon Prince has conquered a world, they claim it as their own to rule in their divine patron's name as they wish.When a Daemon Prince takes control of a hard-won world they use their mighty powers to reshape it to a form that pleases them. Because of this, every Daemon World is different and all are equally spectacular in their own way. Some are host to oceans of bubbling viscera, while some are shaped into grinning skulls visible from millions of kilometres away.Some have landscapes that could only be possible in the Warp where physical laws do not hold, such as mountains floating in the sky or volcanoes into which rivers of lava flow backwards. The mortal population of a Daemon World serves Chaos in two equally important ways. Mortals provide the manpower for the armies of Chaos, especially for the armies that invade the material universe. Mortals worship the uncaring Chaos Gods and in so doing swell their presence and power in the Warp.Although the Screaming Vortex seethes with almost perceptual war, not every mortal creature is necessarily harnessed to battle. Only those who are brave enough to fight their way to freedom from the slave-pits, prayer gangs, and black factories may fight in the name of Chaos and so draw power from it. The remainder serve through work and worship. Slaves are rewarded in the bitter way of Chaos, learning to love the lash.They become frenzied with pleasure as they approach extremes of self-sacrifice, trying to outdo their neighbours in their efforts to please their overlords. Many populations labour not in the Daemonic foundries, but in planet-sized prayer-hordes. Countless millions are whipped into a fervour of devotion, the Warp resounding to their frenzied prayers while the Ruinous Powers grow all the more powerful through their sacrifice.
Screaming Vortex - Screaming Vortex Denizens: The Screaming Vortex encompasses a vast region of the void, a far larger area than was originally occupied by the Old Ones' Heaven-worlds, if even the smallest part of that ancient legend is to be taken as truth. As its currents wax and wane, so other worlds have been dragged into its depths and many still exist in a damned state, beyond the knowledge of the Imperium.The peoples of many of these worlds have never known the Emperor of Mankind, their lands having been sucked into the Screaming Vortex long before the coming of the Imperium to the region in the Angevin Crusade.More importantly, the dimensions of the physical universe cease to apply within the Vortex. It is said that the outer storms that form the boundaries of the Vortex are "as thin as a curtain and as thick as a thousand generations," and that is the best description to be found of this region. Truly the worlds of the Screaming Vortex may be so close that a Heretic can jump from one to another, yet so far that such a leap may take a hundred standard years subjectively to complete.No form of unified government can possibly exist amongst the denizens of the Screaming Vortex and, even if it could, very few would consent to be ruled in such a manner. In the Vortex, men and women are either slave or master, for any other existence is anathema to a region ruled according to the whims and horrors of Chaos.
Screaming Vortex - Screaming Vortex Astrography: To the distant observer in realspace, the Screaming Vortex appears as an area of roiling, lambent energies flickering in the darkness of interstellar space. The Voidborn know not to look too long at such things, for to do so is to invite insanity at best and damnation at worst.Some say the swirling energies coalesce into screaming mouths as large as entire star systems and terrified eyes open wide to implore the onlooker for mercy. Commonly, vessels navigating through realspace in the vicinity of the vortex and other, similar empyrean phenomena lower their Warp-shutters and raise their Gellar Fields as they would in the depths of the Warp itself, so that none may become soul-tranced by the whirling energies.Were a vessel to close upon the Screaming Vortex, it would be buffeted by ever more violent tides of outpouring Warp energy until navigation became all but impossible. At that point, the vessel would be cast upon the currents of the perpetual Warp storm and washed up wherever the capricious and unknowable energies of the Immaterium willed (if it was not destroyed outright).The arrangement of the interior of the Screaming Vortex is beyond describing in sane or rational terms and only the most Warp-scathed Navigator would attempt to map its depths. Despite this, there are those steeped in forbidden knowledge who perceive patterns and forms in the roiling depths and who have come to understand something of the great Warp storm's ways.Over countless generations, insane astromancers and Warp-readers have come to recognise certain features and pronounced names for the various regions within. The terms such mortals use to describe the inner workings of the Screaming Vortex are as rabid blasphemy to the scions of the Navigator houses, who renounce them utterly.Such terms of reference include the "fluvial disjunctions," the "antecedent counter-configurations," the "paradolian observances," the "atemporal conjurations," and the "amalgam horizons." All of these features can be broadly categorised as belonging to one of the three known zones within the Screaming Vortex -- the Gloaming Worlds, the Inner Ring, and the Lower Vortex.
Screaming Vortex - Gloaming Worlds: The Gloaming Worlds represent the outer fringe of the Screaming Vortex -- a shell consisting of several hundred star systems. Such worlds are well beyond the reach or the desire of the Imperium, for they are so steeped in the fell psychic energies flowing from the Screaming Vortex that none save the most insane lord militant would consider invading them.The Gloaming Worlds hang trapped in the eerie, flickering glow of the permanent Warp storm, as precious as flawed jewels suspended in lambent amber. Those few Navigators who have dared cast their Warp Eye towards the Gloaming Worlds know of those closest to the Koronus Passage from the Calixis Sector into the Koronus Expanse, yet the vast majority are entirely unknown, and indeed unknowable, to the Imperium.None can say for sure how many of the Gloaming Worlds are inhabited, and such is the ebb and flow of the Warp Storm that a planet teeming with life on one sighting may show no sign of ever having harboured a single cell the next time it is seen.Some are fought over by insane megalomaniac warlords, while others are avoided at all costs. So unpredictable are the currents of the Screaming Vortex that even these outer worlds are isolated from one another and few warlords have ever managed to capture and control more than a handful at any one time.Still more of the Gloaming Worlds exist in little more than name, including cursed Arbuthnot, hated Dwimmer, the bitter binary twins Sturm and Drang, murderous Guelph, jealous Ghibelline, and blasted Hindrance.
Screaming Vortex - Ragged Helix: At the very edge of the Gloaming Worlds, where reality bleeds away on the approach to the Inner Ring of the Screaming Vortex, is to be found a region known as the "Ragged Helix." Entrapped within the impossible energies that mark the convergence of the two regions is what appears to be a chain of asteroids many millions of kilometres in length.Each asteroid has its own atmosphere -- some breathable, others instantly deadly to Human life. Each rock, which can vary in size from a planetoid to a tiny island, is linked to the next by an invisible anchor and a tendril of atmosphere, allowing mortals to step from one to the next without voidsuits. While some of these wild islands of rock are mere metres apart, others are many kilometres, forcing travellers to cross unseen bridges through the void, never quite knowing what might await them on the next island.The larger of the islands of the Ragged Helix are fought over bitterly, and many host mighty fortresses. A number have been turned over to the production of weapons and warships, attended by the fell minions of the Dark Mechanicum. These islands are an awesome sight indeed, mighty ships of war tethered to the slowly dancing rock islands in preparation for battle against their masters' foes, or the servants of the Corpse-God of the Imperium.
Screaming Vortex - The Hollows: Within the Screaming Vortex lies a peculiar world that could not otherwise exist, taking advantage of the vortex's unusual eddies and tides of Warp matter and energy. This world is known as the Hollows, and the name aptly describes its bizarre nature -- from afar, the Hollows resembles a half-eaten fruit, little more than a single hemisphere with a thick stem of rock extending beneath it.Once, the Hollows was a relatively normal planet, but the rivalry between two Dark Mechanicum magi has stripped enormous amounts of the planet's once-abundant resources until nearly half of it was fully consumed by massive-scale deep core mining. The planet's molten heart cooled and congealed long ago -- were it not suspended in the reality-bending realm of the Screaming Vortex, the Hollows would have long since been broken apart by the force of gravity into asteroids.On one side of the Hollows' remaining hemisphere lies Forge Castir. This is one of two Dark Mechanicum installations on the planet that constructs twisted devices that are often possessed by daemonic entities or are designed to manipulate Warp energy as both weapon and power source.The undisputed lord of Forge Castir is a Dark Magos known only as the Exospectre, a towering creature of slithering Mechadendrites wrapped in mouldering, ragged robes. Some claim that the Exospectre was once a trusted archmagos, possibly one of the near-mythical Lords Dragon who police the Adeptus Mechanicus from within.Forge Castir is ever at war with its twin, a sprawling complex on the other side of the hemisphere known as Forge Polix. Designed and controlled by Magos Onuris, Forge Polix is a frenzied centre of heavy industry, creating finely-crafted suits of protective power armour, lumbering war engines, and various voidship components that are traded to numerous warbands and Warp-entities alike.No one is certain what began the conflict between the two forges, but the Hollows are constantly beset by battles erupting across its remaining hemisphere. Orbital strikes, tech-assassins, and teeming hordes of Tech-renegades are among the most mundane of weapons wielded in this struggle for supremacy. For the last solar decade, the Exospectre has held the upper hand, and Magos Onuris grows ever more desperate to secure a gambit that will achieve victory over his hated rival.
Screaming Vortex - The Writhing World: A number of legends surround the worlds of the Screaming Vortex, many of them cautionary tales or nightmarish parables of death and despair. Upon seeing the Writhing World for the first time, there are few who would dispute that this blighted planet has inspired many such dark stories.From orbit, the Writhing World appears as a dirty-brown orb, its surface in constant subtle motion. The planet is seemingly composed of huge, continent-sized tendrils of worm-like flesh, perpetually slithering by small degrees in a bewildering pattern that has driven many strong men to madness.There are no certain records of what may lie beneath the ever-squirming layers of the planet's surface, but there are dozens of theories that either describe the Writhing World as the birthplace of some ancient, malevolent god or the battleground for an apocalyptic battle, and that the planet itself is a long-forgotten weapon from that conflict.Regardless of these speculations, the Writhing World has somehow become home to a number of scattered, feral Human tribes, eking out a primitive existence amongst the tendril ridges and flesh-mountains. Massive, mobile organic constructs called "crawling citadels" scuttle across the planet's surface, each a mighty tower controlled by a powerful sorcerer or biomancer. These sorcerer-kings sometimes approach wanderers and Chaos warbands with offers of safe passage across the treacherous worm-wastes in return for technology or secret knowledge.Another minor mystery related to the Writhing World is the existence of four small moons in its orbit, each verdant with primitive plant and animal life forms. Although these moons are uninhabited, each is claimed by one of the sorcerer-kings as his private reserve, and there are many stories amongst the tribes that the moons are home to the souls of the damned and the source of the sorcerer-kings' power.Between these moons lies a thick chain of asteroids and a ring system. Those who fly within the rings find that each chunk and particle is also made of worm-like tendrils on a smaller scale, aping the planet they orbit.
Screaming Vortex - Kurse: A baleful, guttering ember of a world, Kurse lurks like a canker within the Screaming Vortex as a common port-of-call to many Chaos warbands and Chaos-worshipping pirates. Untold ages ago, Kurse was once a thriving Civilised World, rich in machines and lore from the Dark Age of Technology.Ultimately, the world was embroiled in a firestorm of savage war, where unspeakable weapons were unleashed in search of a final victory. Thus, the world as it was had been cast down, its great cities and centres of learning smashed to rubble, its advanced civilisation reduced to brutality.Ongoing toxic chemical reactions have created seas of simmering fire, and the remaining continents are marred by massive irradiated pits, many of which extend down to expose the planet's molten core. The majority of Kurse's environment is completely uninhabitable, with only a few regions spared the ravages of cataclysm.The planetary population is mostly composed of mutants and cannibals, surviving on the remnants of their former glory, carefully hidden away before the planet's ugly fate or unearthed from the rubble afterwards.A ring of asteroids in near-orbit have been fitted to sustain life by the dark magi of Forge Castir, and a number of these habitats serve as crude gladiatorial pits where mutants and other survivors from Kurse are pitted against one another for bloody sport. Chaos Hounds, Ogryn brutes, and other such creatures are common amongst these makeshift arenas to add particular spice to the contests or to serve as slaves or bodyguards.Kurse's true value to the denizens of the Screaming Vortex is as a breeding ground for warriors and mutants to fill the holds of Chaos pirate vessels or to serve in the armies of Aspiring Champions of Chaos. Occasionally, some warbands make their way to Kurse in order to plunder lost archeotech or ancient data-vaults from the ruins on the planet's surface.
Screaming Vortex - Malignia: Largely dominated by thick temperate and tropical-forest growth, Malignia appears at first to be a stable and welcoming planet that could easily be found in nearly any region of the galaxy. This appearance is a deceit, a lie to tempt and seduce the unwary into the lush, green hell of Malignia's ecosystem. Beneath the treetop canopy, Malignia is a twilight maze that rarely glimpses any sunlight.These forests are home to a vast variety of fierce predatory life-forms, so many that they have never been fully catalogued. Some of the more well-known creatures include the bloated sabre-lion, the cunning shade-mauler, and the utterly lethal poison of the crawling death. Malignia's plant life is no less dangerous; twisted growths of bone and ivory intertwine with waist-thick vines and sword-like, iron-hard thorns.Many legends claim that the warlord Sikari the Vile constructed a pleasure-palace on the southern continent, a hunting lodge built from the bones of his enemies. If true, then the warlord's plentiful servants and wealth may abide there still, defended by ancient Void Shields, automated defence guns, and the warlord's coterie of concubine-witches.
Screaming Vortex - Tyrant Star: The Tyrant Star, also called Komus, is a baneful phenomenon that appears randomly throughout the Screaming Vortex, bringing doom and destruction wherever it appears. The coming of the Tyrant Star signals catastrophe, its baleful appearance in the heavens a dire portent to sorcerers, shamans, and spirit talkers across the Gloaming Worlds.The Tyrant Star may not be a true star at all, for it appears as an utterly black star, eclipsing actual stars that provide light to worlds, so that only their crackling corona appears around a perfect eclipse. However, the star emits its own, terrible light, a malevolent lambency that allows sight without illumination. Under the light of the Tyrant Star, worlds are ravaged by strange phenomena; time can run backwards, inanimate matter may become murderously animated or the dead may rise even as horrific plagues and waves of uncontrolled mutation beset the survivors. Slavers and scavengers often descend on worlds shattered beyond all recognition by the Devil Star's passage.The reaver bands that plague the Calixis Sector tell stories about how the worlds there have also been beset on occasion by the Tyrant Star. They claim some of the Imperium suspect the forces of the Ruinous Powers at work in its manifestation. However, no Chaos Champion or warband leader within the Screaming Vortex has boasted of this deed. To date, even the Choir on the Mountain in Q'Sal have not discovered the origins of the Tyrant Star (much less what it actually is), despite many sacrifices to their masters.What impels the Tyrant Star along its course is unknown. Many believe the Tyrant Star to be a conscious entity, a god or Daemon from the Inner Vortex travelling through the Gloaming Worlds. Some pray for their realm to be visited by this harbinger and given the true gift of enlightenment, or purgation or Chaos unleashed according to their creed. Some pray for their world to be spared and sacrifice their first born to appease the Tyrant Star when it shines black in the sky. For most, the Tyrant Star is only another terror in a lifetime filled with strange and terrible occurrences, and they try to eke out their existence and survive its coming as best they can.
Screaming Vortex - The Cat's Cradle: The Cat's Cradle lies at the innermost reaches of the Gloaming Worlds, a tortured region of space heavily influenced by warps, currents raging at the boundary of the Inner Ring of the Screaming Vortex. The laws of the physical universe break down completely so close to the worlds of the Inner Ring and are usurped by Daemonically-driven whimsy. The region is rife with worlds, some orbiting stars of their own, some drifting alone in space as rogue planets. Many of them are illusory, others bear glittering civilisations of Humans that rise, expand, and disappear like soap bubbles, and most are mired in a fey, superstitious medievalism and completely unaware of the existence of anything beyond their own realm.Interstitial paths through the Warp exist between the worlds here so its possible to literally walk from one to another. Possibly they are remnants of older paths rent from the Webway in the Fall of the Aeldari, or perhaps more naturally occurring fractures in reality that can be exploited to move from place to place. Some Aethermancers have speculated that the Cat's Cradle was formed by the collision of two star systems as they were drawn into the Screaming Vortex. They believe the death agonies of their inhabitants mired the area in its own complex set of reefs, calms and crosscurrents within the Screaming Vortex.Strange, Daemon-inspired enclaves of various sorts exist in the Cradle, moving in some unknowable pattern from place to place. A few sorcerers of great power choose to make their homes in the region and are greatly feared by its inhabitants. Those seeking the Inner Ring must pass through the Cat's Cradle and the sorcerers try to entrap any such petitioners out of sheer spite and petty malice. Unable to muster the courage to seek the deeper truths of the Screaming Vortex, the sorcerers of the Cat's Cradle bar the route to others with webs of trickery and deceit.
Screaming Vortex - The Inner Ring: Beyond the porous, outer shell of the Gloaming Worlds is to be found the zone of the Screaming Vortex referred to as the "Inner Ring." This region of the Screaming Vortex represents a wildly fluctuating Warp/realspace overlap, the star systems within it existing in a blasphemous hybrid where neither the laws of the material realm nor the anarchy of the Immaterium fully hold sway. Reality in the Inner Ring is a malleable thing, a hybrid medium shaped by the whim of the denizens of the Empyrean, and by those few mortals with the strength of will to impose their own desires upon it.There are six major inhabited worlds within the Inner Ring and numerous other planets; all are so beset by the raging Warp storm they are beyond the ambitions of even the most insane warlord. These worlds all exist in a wild flux. At times they become so instilled with the raw power of the Warp that Daemons and other immaterial creatures can walk upon them freely and the mad whims of the Empyrean rule supreme.At other times, the Warp appears to recede or recoil from them, and the inhabitants experience a painfully brief period of relative calm. In truth, however, the tides of the Warp always return, and so the worlds of the Inner Ring exist in a kind of purgatory, standing on the very edge of the precipice. Perhaps one day the Inner Ring will collapse and the Warp will claim its worlds for all eternity.Some say that the planets of the Inner Ring and beyond were once a clutch of Maiden Worlds of the ancient Aeldari Empire, twisted beyond all recognition at the moment of the birth of Slaanesh and the creation of the Screaming Vortex. Countless Warp-whisperers and arcano-prognosts have lost their sanity and their souls attempting to scry such things, and most with an ounce of insight avoid such knowledge at all costs.
Screaming Vortex - Aphexis: The outer-most of the Inner Ring's major planets, Aphexis is a bleak world of grey, half-dead plains. Its skies know neither day nor night, and the star around which it orbits never quite rises above the horizon, no matter where on the surface the observer might be.Aphexis is inhabited by a fairly large population of Humans, the people every bit as grey as their world. Seemingly devoid of individual character or will, the people of Aphexis lead half-lives, shuffling across the ashen plains of their world and barely interacting with one another at all.Many Chaos warlords have imposed their will over bleak Aphexis, yet rarely found the effort worthwhile. On numerous occasions, the people have been rounded up and enslaved, made to work or fight in the names of new and uncaring masters. It seems the Aphexis people accept such turns of fate without comment, yet have such scant regard for their own lives that they soon invoke the wrath of their overseers.Those who have enslaved the Aphexisians have often resorted to flogging thousands to death as an example to the rest to work harder, yet always they have found such methods entirely unsuccessful.
Screaming Vortex - Melancholia: The second major orb of the Inner Ring is a windswept planet beset by hailstorms and driving rains. Its peoples exist in a seemingly permanent state of misery, forced by the cruel whim of the denizens of the Warp to live their lives bereft of even the barest necessities of life. By some unnatural law, no stone may be set upon another on Melancholia, and so the population may never find respite from the driving, freezing winds that assail them every solar minute of their pitiful lives.Despite outward appearances to the contrary, the inhabitants of Melancholia harbour such desires as would make the most brazen of the Dark Prince of Chaos' devotees blush. Inside, they seethe with lust and yearn to spill blood, yet their environs constantly dampen their lust and reduce their lives to cold misery and drudgery. It is said that to remove a man or woman from Melancholia and take them elsewhere is to unleash the beast they have nurtured in their heart their entire life, and such individuals make the cruellest, most bloodthirsty, and most imaginatively blasphemous Chaos Champions of the Ruinous Powers in all existence.
Screaming Vortex - Mire: Beyond Melancholia is to be found the world of Mire -- a fetid, clammy planet of swamps and endless plains of sucking mud. The inhabitants grub about the stinking depths of the mud flats for what little sustenance they can find, ever encrusted with layer upon layer of hard-packed filth. So scarce are sources of nutrition on Mire that when even the smallest grub or root is uncovered, entire tribes go to war with one another. Incoherent and barbarous, the savages brain one another with precious rocks or pull one another down into the cold depths where they share a hideous, mutual demise.On several occasions, Chaos warlords have taken tribes of Mirens away, forcing them to serve as slave-warriors in their hordes. Mirens make brutally effective foot soldiers and are known for their propensity to rip open the bellies of those they have slain, plunging their arms inside the corpses in search of the choicest meats denied them on the world of their birth.
Screaming Vortex - Mammon: The world of Mammon is a rubble-strewn wasteland, its surface blasted by a war that has raged since the beginning of time. Mammon is bereft of natural resources and its populace is divided into two opposed factions, each coveting what riches the other has managed to amass over the millennia. The war is fought with every possible means, from blunt clubs made of the bones of the fallen to arcane technologies traded from other worlds within the Screaming Vortex. Yet, no ruse or stratagem has ever amounted to any gain other than that measured in the lives of the fallen.While the peoples of Mammon are amongst the most warlike and aggressive to be found anywhere in the galaxy, in outward appearance they are quite the opposite. Men and women go to war in the vestments of some debased clergy and bedecked with the symbols of the Imperial Creed. Their leaders are at once generals and demagogues, their glittering cloth of gold robes ragged and bloodstained.Clearly, some cruel jest of a truly cosmic scale must be at work on Mammon, for its inhabitants believe themselves true servants of the God-Emperor of Mankind. They offer praises to Him on Terra even as they slay one another and rob the bodies of anything that can be carried away. The cities of Mammon are constructed of loot taken from the enemy, teetering fortresses, and unsound towers of riches undreamed of forming the residence of the ruling Cardinals-Militant. Such places rarely stand for long, however, as the eternal tides of war sweep them away.
Screaming Vortex - Furia: Furia is a world of black skies above even blacker, depthless oceans, the preternaturally calm waters haunted by creatures that most believe to be some vile hybrid of natural beast and Daemon. The populace clings to existence on ramshackle floating shanty-skiffs made from the flotsam and jetsam of the galaxy's countless wars. How such debris washes up on Furia none can rationally explain.The people of Furia are adept at fashioning everything from junker warships to shelter-arks from the shells of burned-out tanks and the hulls of the wrecked starships that continuously bubble up from the depths.The people of Furia exist on the knife-edge of oblivion, fighting a battle for survival against the vile Daemon leviathans that rise without warning from the glass-calm seas to drag entire floating towns to their deaths. Thousands of sucker-clad tentacles rear up from the waters and diamondsharp beaks snap and rend.Only those floating communities that have managed to salvage and repair functional ranged weaponry have a chance of surviving such attacks, using rusted old Heavy Stubbers and guttering Lascannons to keep the beasts at bay another solar day longer.
Screaming Vortex - The Flaming Tomb: Beyond Furia, the boiling energies of the surrounding Warp storm intensify on the approach to the so-called "Lower Vortex." The last of the major worlds of the Inner Ring encountered before reaching that boundary is the Flaming Tomb, a planet of blackened rock islands afloat on oceans of flaming lava. The air is filled with clouds of noxious gas so dense in places they can kill with a single breath.Tsunamis of raging magma rise up to swamp what little solid ground exists and when the empyric tides of the Screaming Vortex wax and the screaming obscures all other sounds, beings of solid lava are said to rise from the searing seas and stalk the land, their footprints glowing orange in their passing. Needless to say, life on the world known as the Flaming Tomb is a brutal and often short affair.The population of Humans exists as feral refugees, each determined to hold on to what little territory they can win. The tribes of the Flaming Tomb are aided in their ceaseless battles by a caste of pyromancers able to manipulate fire in all its forms, and use it as a weapon against their enemies. The most powerful of these sorcerers are able to summon firestorms capable of razing the lands of their foes to ashes and calling blazing comets to crash down from the burning skies.The services of the pyromancers of the Flaming Tomb are highly valued by the Chaos warlords of the Screaming Vortex, who will pay any price to have one at their side when marching to war against their foes.
Screaming Vortex - Forbidden Portal: Upon the sides of a black and blasted mountain torn from the surface of some long extinct world lies an imposing gate into the Webway, wrought in psychoplastic wraithbone by the fair hands of long-dead Aeldari artisans and sealed from within so that none may pass.Numerous are the Chaos warlords who have raised millions-strong armies of deluded mortals, and expended them upon that unbreakable gate inflicting no more than a scratch. What lies beyond the gate can only be guessed at, but there are tales in the vortex that it periodically opens to allow the passage of small troupes of Aeldari warriors from many of their different kindreds into the Screaming Vortex utterly dedicated to the defeat of Chaos in all its forms.
Screaming Vortex - Gates of Moment: All across the Screaming Vortex lie small irregularities, rip-tides, and eddies in the Warp through which countless souls have attempted to journey and subsequently been lost. A few of these are genuinely linked to other places and, in the case of the Gates of Moment, other times.The Gates of Moment is actually a moon within the Screaming Vortex, one that orbits the worlds of the Inner Ring, randomly spinning from one world's embrace to another at a moment. It is a normally unremarkable worldlet, with a harsh atmosphere and scrubland climate. However, what makes it fascinating is that this world seems to exist in multiple locations at once.Those wandering the surface of this world may randomly find themselves walking on the surface of the Gates of Moment deep within the Hadex Anomaly, across the galaxy in the Jericho Reach. Those within or near the Anomaly say the Gates of Moment has existed within the Anomaly for as long as they know and to walk across their moonlet's surface may pitch them into the Screaming Vortex. Some travellers also claim that they have walked across the surface of the world and ended up in other parts of the galaxy, or even in other galaxies entirely. Nobody knows just how many times and places the Gates of Moment are truly linked to.It is said that the worlds swallowed up by the Hadex Anomaly exist in a time frame all their own and cause and effect follow no law there. Some travellers might find themselves visiting the ancient capital of the old Jericho Sector, Verronus itself, long before its fall. Others find themselves flung far into the future, into or beyond the final battle said to await all the intelligent civilizations of the galaxy.One legend states that an obscure and secretive group of Imperial Inquisitors were consumed attempting to close the Gates of Moment permanently, though most dismiss such stories as myth.
Screaming Vortex - Lower Vortex: At the heart of the Screaming Vortex is to be found a region that defies all logic and explanation. Those steeped in Warplore refer to it as a zone of icy calm, an eye about which the relentless energies of the permanent Warp storm ceaselessly rotate. They claim that there are numerous cursed worlds located within, worlds entirely consumed by the energies of the Warp.The so-called "Lower Vortex" is a zone where the raw stuff of Chaos is -- if the Warpseers are to be trusted -- so densely packed as to exist in an almost solid state. In truth, mortal frames of reference cannot begin to conceptualise such a phenomena, and it is doubtful that any who have witnessed the place have survived to recount anything of their experience.Only three of the worlds locked within the depths of the Lower Vortex are commonly known, though there are doubtless many more. All are what the Imperium's scholars term "Daemon Worlds." They are not true planets so much as aetheric, otherworldly realms, existing at once within and beyond the area of realspace occupied by the Screaming Vortex. They are entirely subsumed within the Warp, as one with the Realm of Chaos, and, as such, subject to the whims of the Ruinous Powers and their most powerful Daemonic servants.They are constantly reshaped according to the eternal battles raging between the Dark Gods in the Great Game. One instant they may be planet-wide plains of dried bones, the next oceans of putrefaction. Time has no meaning whatsoever in the Lower Vortex, and even the subjective perceptions of the onlooker are twisted beyond all recognition. What seems a solar day might last an aeon, while a lifetime passes in the blink of an eye. The Lower Vortex is the abode of Daemons and gods, and it is theirs' to do with as they please. Mortals have no place there, this side of death at least, and woe betide he who seeks to impose his will upon its denizensIt is said that the boundary between the Inner Ring and the Lower Vortex is guarded by a cadre of Greater Daemons, and that any mortal seeking to cross over that rubicon must find a way around them. They must face the wrath of a Bloodthirster of Khorne and be tempted beyond mortal tolerance by one of Slaanesh's Keeper of Secrets.Following that, they must overcome the most virulent plagues one of Nurgle's Great Unclean Ones can concoct and, finally, resist the reality-splitting insanity of a Lord of Change in service to Tzeentch. Such trials take a myriad of forms, and no two are ever exactly alike. Most end in the utter destruction or damnation of the intruder's soul, but a bare few are allowed to pass into the Lower Vortex and to tread the Realm of Chaos itself.
Screaming Vortex - Crucible: The first of the known Daemon Worlds within the Lower Vortex is known to Warp-seers and Heretics as Crucible, and it is a realm of pain and torment beyond anything even the most debased of mortals can imagine. This pain, so it is said, is born of that experienced by the original denizens of the Heaven-worlds at the moment their existence was ended and, no matter which of the Ruinous Powers is in the ascendance in the Great Game, that pain is so relentlessly intense it can never be erased.The nature of Crucible depends on which of the Dark Gods and their Daemon legions has control over it. When Khorne is in the ascendance, it is a realm of crude violence and savage anger meted out on the souls of mortals who died in battle. When Slaanesh rules, the violence is enacted tenderly, as a gift between lovers. When Nurgle gains power over the Daemon World, the entrapped souls experience an eternity of decay and rebirth. When Tzeentch resides on Crucible, the pain is that of sanity torn asunder as the self is lost amidst seas of madness.
Screaming Vortex - Contrition: Beyond Crucible lies what many Heretics believe to be the penultimate world of the Screaming Vortex: Contrition. The realm exists as a Daemonic city, its structure continuously cast down and rebuilt as each of the Dark Gods gains and loses ascendancy over the world. Daemons are said to hold court in the City of Contrition, concocting the most imaginative lies they whisper into the hearts of mortals. It is said that the entire Daemonic metropolis resounds to the cacophonous lies of its otherworldly populace, the Daemons vying continuously with one another to invent ever-more-preposterous schemes to ensnare the souls of Mankind and the other mortal races of the galaxy.Those mortals entrapped by the Daemons' duplicity are said to be dragged back to Contrition, to be imprisoned within the dungeons deep in its bowels. What fate awaits such entrapped souls in those grim oubliettes is beyond the imagining of even the most Warp-touched Heretic.
Screaming Vortex - The Frozen Heart: At the very centre of the Screaming Vortex lies the Daemon World legend names the Frozen Heart. If Crucible and Contrition are beyond mortal experience, then the Frozen Heart is entirely unknown, though numerous, and often contradictory myths and visions make mention of its nature. Some say it is a realm populated by the shades of the most vile of traitors, once mighty heroes whose souls have been blasted by their fell deeds and who now exist as insubstantial and ever-fading remnants of all they once were.Others say that in the Frozen Heart the eternal struggle of the Great Game between the Dark Gods is in perfect balance, and as such the Warp itself is eternally motionless. Some have even claimed the Frozen Heart is the graveyard of ancient gods, consecrated ground upon which none but the immortal may tread. In truth, all of these things and none of them may be true; and besides, mortal minds could never comprehend the truth and stay sane.There is a legend concerning the Frozen Heart. It is said that within the centre of the world is the unknowable dynamo that keeps the Screaming Vortex in its perpetual raging state. It is even said that if someone could master this power, they could calm portions of the Screaming Vortex, allowing Chaos fleets and armies to escape its grasp and burst forth to conquer and plunder the realm of the Corpse-Emperor in a great and terrible Black Crusade.