Ghoul Stars - Ghoul Stars: The Ghoul Stars, also known as the Ghost Stars, is a mysterious region of space that is a part of the Halo Stars located beyond the furthest reaches of known space, northeast of the Segmentum Ultima of the galaxy beyond the Eastern Fringe.This vast tract of relatively unexplored Wilderness Space was once home to a number of Human-inhabited worlds. However, some ancient threat is believed to have been responsible for the destruction of these worlds, which accounts for the large number of Dead Worlds found within the region.This region of space lies almost entirely beyond the light of the Astronomican, which is used by Imperial Navigators to guide vessels while travelling in the Warp. With the guidance of this vital psychic beacon severely weakened, Navigators have a difficult time sensing its guiding light and are often forced to resort to navigating blindly. Navigators often refuse to travel into this region for this very reason, for it is extremely hazardous to do so.Within this dire realm of Dead Worlds lit by the cold rays of dying suns, tread creatures out of a primal nightmare such as the bat-like humanoid xenos known as the Cythor Fiends, the Togoran Bloodreeks and other creatures so alien as to be seemingly born out of the legendary nightmares of Mankind.Yet there is a horror that far outpaces even these fiendish creatures -- the Bone Kingdom of Drazak. This desolate realm is a haunt of the cursed Necrons known as Flayed Ones who are blighted by a hunger for living flesh. They stalk through the desolate streets of the Dead World of Drazak fighting over gobbets of rotting meat and shards of bone. They are ruled by the only one amongst their number who has proven to be immune from this realm's pervading madness, the cyclopean Necron Lord Valgûl, the Fallen Lord.During the dark and terrible times known to later historitors as the Nova Terra Interregnum, when the Imperium fractured into warrior factions during the 34th Millennium, there exist in what records remain from this era scattered and veiled references to a great threat arising from the Ghoul Stars known as the Pale Wasting.Much of the extant evidence relating to this threat has been censored or purposely destroyed, but there are contradictory indications which describe the nature of the threat as both a "Star-spawned plague" that swept away scores of worlds and as "Nightmare engines" slaughtering the worlds of entire sectors. The Novamarines Chapter took part in the campaign to quell the threat of the Pale Wasting, and though this is one of the Chapter's earliest recorded battle honours, the Chapter's own chronicles are curiously empty of any reference to this conflict.Stationed beyond the frontiers of the Imperium, the Death Spectres Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes currently maintains a constant vigil to ensure that the inhabitants of the Ghoul Stars never again threaten the galaxy.At the very edge of the Iquathan Deeps in the northern Ultima Segmentum, near the border of the Ghoul Stars, sits the Sentinel World of Orask. A most terrible assault occurred in 977.M41, when a splinter of the eastern hive fleets of the Tyranid menace appeared, disoriented and twisted by its passage through the Ghoul Stars, and fell on the Orask System like a ravenous beast. A great battle ensued that proved brief but bloody. The stoic defenders of Orask were backed by a full company of the Red Talons Space Marines and a Titan maniple from the Legio Magna.Despite horrific casualties that reached into the tens of thousands sustained within a mere matter of solar days, the valiant defenders were able to push back their monstrous attackers. Eventually they contained the threat and purged the vile xenos from Orask's blasted surface. Evidence persists that some harbinger Tyranid organisms like Genestealers escaped to the outer systems.