Orpheus Sector - The Time of Woes: While the Orphean Admiralty focussed on surveying their border with the Leyak Sector and dousing the brush fire revolts within the populace that steadily destabilised the sector over the following centuries, the Orpheus Sector was also the source of countless inexplicable tragedies. By the beginning of the 38th Millennium, the Orpheus Sector had effectively become a tinderbox, waiting for the inevitable spark to ignite it. This spark was not an alien attack from without as Segmentum authorities had feared, but from within, when the Renegade Von Mallas pronounced his war of faith.Originating in the Segmentum Pacificus, the teachings of "The False Saint" or "The Transgressor" as he came to be known in the years that followed, fell upon fertile ground within the Orpheus Sector and in other locations of the Segmentum Tempestus. Entire star systems and worlds declared for the Transgressor as did both the Hive World of Colkasth and the Agri-World of Epirus. The regiments and troops bound to survey the sector's borders soon were called upon to prosecute a campaign against what the Ecclesiarchy had dubbed the Von Mallas Black Crusade.War soon engulfed the Orpheus Sector. Resistance proved fierce, especially on Epirus which was devastated by the fighting and would take decades to recover even a shadow of its former productive capacity. When the Renegades were finally subdued, the sector authorities founded the Penitentiary World of Morros Lachrymal to harbour those who would rather toil in atonement for their sins than face the pyres of the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus.While the immediate crisis had been adverted, the devastation of Epirus would prove to be an entirely separate catastrophe. The loss of the Agri-world's output bore heavily on the sector's trade. The loss of an entire harvest could perhaps have been borne, but the reconstruction of Epirus would take many standard decades, thus considerably affecting the supply of foodstuffs to the Capitoline Sub-sector. Famine and pestilence soon became the Orpheus Sector's worst enemies as increasing Warp Storms made importing goods from other sectors more dangerous and expensive.This did not fail to breed considerable bitterness within the sector's population, which gradually turned away from the orthodoxy of the Imperial Creed. Heretical cults and sects rose in power during these dark years, the most notable of which were the Celestarii. First encountered in 715.M38, the Celestarii were heavily persecuted by both the Adeptus Arbites and the Ordo Hereticus but proved to be extremely difficult to root out, for the cult preyed on the desperation of the common folk. What made the Celestarii so subversive was that they had renounced the Emperor's divinity, claiming that the galaxy's true masters were in fact immortal beings that had fallen into an eon-spanning slumber but would eventually rise again and reward their followers with immortal life.To those that would oppose them, these sleeping gods would bring only death. The cult, which several investigations revealed indulged in cannibalistic rituals, had taken some of the xenos artifacts that the sector harboured in great quantities as their sacred relics. But, in truth, the cult mostly worked to further the power and enrichment of its inner circle rather than openly challenge the central place of the Imperial Creed. The Celestarii's ranks were considerably reinforced following the mysterious fate that befell the world of Tlaloc.Located at the very edge of the Orpheus Sector in the Drucillan Sub-sector where it borders the Leyak Sector, the world of Tlaloc has always been regarded as a dangerous place. Segmentum and sector authorities still remembered the lost colonisation fleet that vanished in the 36th Millennium near the world, but this left them unprepared for the events of 889.M38. Garbled distress signals emanating from Tlaloc were received by the Imperial authorities, which promptly rerouted a squadron of Battleships from Battlefleet Orpheus to investigate the matter. Before being abruptly cut off, the distress signal had warned of an impenetrable darkness and unspeakable massacres.Upon its arrival, the squadron found the world in ruins -- Tlaloc had been turned into a charnel house. Landing parties reported blood-splattered streets and walls and still-burning ruins. Neither bodies nor data could be recovered from the remains. Whatever brought Tlaloc to its knees had done so in a matter of a few solar hours. Tlaloc's proximity to the lost Leyak Sector spawned much speculation in the Imperial High Command, which warranted an official investigation led by Inquisitor Kussan of the Ordo Xenos.The Inquisitor interpreted the lack of physical remains of the victims on Tlaloc as evidence of the actions of Drukhari corsairs. Yet, the Orphean Admiralty and the sector's other Inquisitorial Ordos disagreed with Kussan, fearing the involvement of a very different force, perhaps the unknown enemy who was also responsible for the loss of the Leyak Sector. As a precautionary measure, the sector's Imperial Commander decided to quarantine what remain of Tlaloc, a quarantine maintained until the beginning of the Orphean War.The Orpheus Sector entered the 39th Millennium in the same state as it left the tumultuous 38th: on the verge of open conflict. While the sector no longer suffered from agricultural supply issues and no famine had visited the Orpheus Sector for many standard centuries, the worlds of the Orpheus Sector -- still burdened by the arduous military tithes they were subjected to--were fractured, no spirit of kinship or loyalty existing between them. The sector governorship had long since passed from the extinct line of House Orpheus to the stewardship of the House of Laan, distrusted by many due to its scions' reputation for intrigue and excess.To some extent, the sector was kept solvent only by the tireless efforts of the officers of the Battlefleet Orpheus, which successfully averted several crises that might have plunged the sector into chaos. For instance, in 160.M39, a powerful Ork-fleet, led by a gigantic flagship -- the so-called "Mega-Kroozer" -- entered the Orpheus Sector from the galactic South. Battlefleet Orpheus tirelessly engaged the enemy, fighting the Orks in a running battle for nineteen solar weeks on the edges of the Deluvian Sub-sector.With the help of reinforcements from the Adeptus Astartes, including contingents drawn from the Revilers and Red Seraphs Chapters, the Greenskin threat was eliminated. Yet some of the Orks managed to escape destruction and found shelter in the great debris-fields on the edge of the Sub-sector, raiding and harassing Imperial worlds and convoys. But even though the Orks proved a recurring thorn in the side of the sector's trade and commerce, its worlds lacked the common will to pull together and expunge the threat once and for all.