User:Montonius/Sandbox - The Great Rift: Before the onset of the conflict known as the War of Beasts, Vigilus witnessed a cataclysm so great it allbut split the galaxy in half. The Cicatrix Maledictum ripped from the Eye of Terror in the galactic northwest to the Hadex Anomaly in the southeast. Aside from a few corridors, the rift was all but impassable.When the skies split around Vigilus, many feared the planet would be consumed forever. Instead, as the swirling nebulae dissipated, it seemed that Vigilus had held the Cicatrix Maledictum at bay. The planet's strange aegis linked it with the Knight World of Dharrovar and the distant planet of Sangua Terra to form the corridor known as the Nachmund Gauntlet.Whether it was faith, the Emperor's will, a fluke of quantum entanglement or some other phenomenon that kept this rift passage open, none knew. But the route from the reaches of the still-functional Imperium to the desperate realms of the Imperium Nihilus remained stable. Vigilus became more vital than ever, and not only to the Imperium. Traitor generals and xenos masterminds looked upon it with covetous eyes, and hatched secret plans to conquer it.Drukhari raids struck from the arctic Webway portal located in the southern polar region of Kaelac's Bane, whilst Craftworld Saim-Hann sent emissaries to warn of a doom to come.A dark new era dawned across Vigilus' desert wastes and overpopulated hive cities. With the sky rent in twain by a Warp rift that bled purple light into the heavens, and civil unrest reaching new heights, draconian laws were put into place by the planet's governing bodies.It was forbidden to look at the night sky on those rare occasions it could be glimpsed through the thick banks of cloud that choked the stratosphere, and a strict curfew was imposed that ensured all citizens would be indoors by nightfall -- or flogged for a full solar hour.The repression that resulted saw many civilians look to new cults and underground orders for succour. Ironically, it was this heavy-handed lawmaking that sowed the seeds of anarchy. With the Warp rift of the Cicatrix Maledictum scarring the Vigilus sky, the doom that many had feared would consume the planet from outside instead began to take its toll from within.Though the worlds of the Vigilus System had not been entirely cut off from the rest of the Imperium, it became ever more obvious that a new and darker phase of existence for its people had dawned. The Great Rift was visible only as a purple blur during the daylight, but at night the immensity of the Cicatrix Maledictum glowered across the sky, its curling extremities and swollen central mass seeming to form screaming mouths and deformed faces when glanced at out of the corner of the eye. It stole sleep and distorted rational thought, even affecting the chronoslates and data-webs of the Adeptus Mechanicus with its anarchic emanations.On Vigilus, the Great Rift became particularly prominent at night, and hence curfews were put in place across all of Vigilus' hive cities. In every hivesprawl it was forbidden to be outside after sunset, lest the Cicatrix Maledictum take that person's attention for so long they become infected by its strangeness and rendered susceptible to psychic phenomena.Even with these precautions, the shape of the Great Rift -- a serpentine mass with the channel of the Nachmund Gauntlet across it -- began to appear in the daubings of madmen and the idle scrawlings of those who thought themselves to be concentrating on something else. More disturbing still, it appeared in natural phenomena as well.After-images of the rift manifested behind the eyes of those who had looked upon it too long, but unlike those caused by strong natural light, they did not fade.Parents looked in horror as they found birthmarks on infants born directly under the night sky when the rift glowered bright, each red weal broken by a thin white line of unblemished skin. Mildew growths and water stains on the walls and ceilings of the Hollows water purification plants formed in shapes that were uncannily similar, if not identical, to the rift in the sky above.The purge-squads of the Ecclesiarchy, operating out of Saint's Haven, tracked down such phenomena with cold efficiency and zealous verve. But soon even they found themselves growing desperate, for as standard years went by, these phenomena became more pronounced. Where the planet's earthquakes rent the land, chasms would fall open in shapes that echoed that of the Great Rift, complete with thin land bridges that corresponded to the position of the Nachmund Gauntlet.To one extent or another, every citizen of Vigilus soon found themselves harrowed by dark dreams and recurring nightmares. The sleep deprivation and foul tempers that resulted spilled over into a hundred new conflicts every day, from small skirmishes and beatings in alleyways to industrial strikes, organised uprisings and spates of assassinations that scoured the upper spires. It was in this state that the world met the first invasion of xenos that would mark the start of the greater conflict remembered as the "War of Beasts."