Vigilus - Vigilus: Vigilus is an Imperial Hive World in the Vigilus System of the Segmentum Obscurus that represents the terminus of a key route -- the Nachmund Gauntlet -- through the Great Rift from the Imperium Sanctus into the Imperium Nihilus.As a result, Vigilus has become a heavily contested strategic location and the source of conflict between several of the different starfaring species and factions of the Milky Way Galaxy in the early Era Indomitus of the 41st Millennium. The campaign to claim Vigilus became known as the War of Beasts and in its later phases the War of Nightmares. After its start, Vigilus was designated a War World and a Sentinel World by the Imperium.Xenos forces including Genestealer Cults, Orks, the Drukhari and the Craftworld Aeldari all launched assaults on the world. Even worse, the Black Legion Chaos Lord Haarken Worldclaimer, a Raptor, was sent to claim Vigilus for Chaos in the name of Abaddon the Despoiler.The planet Vigilus had always been famed as a strategic linchpin of the Segmentum Obscurus. When the Great Rift opened, its status escalated from important to indispensable. So vital was Vigilus to the Imperium that when a teeming WAAAGH! of Orks burst from the Great Rift, the system's defenders responded with terrific force.The Astra Militarum and Adepta Sororitas forces already stationed on Vigilus contained the Ork invasion and kept it from wrecking the densely populated hivesprawls, while several Space Marine Chapters sent reinforcements from the Stygius Sector and beyond. The latter waves were led by none other than Marneus Augustus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines, and with him came some of the finest minds in the Adeptus Astartes.These counter-assaults pulled Vigilus back from the brink. The psychic apocalypse of the Great Rift had disabled the planet's defences and made it vulnerable, allowing the Orks to raid from the wastelands, barging through each defence perimeter to wage war in the city sprawls. In conjunction, a great uprising of Genestealer Cultists was triggered, revealing an infestation that had festered upon Vigilus for hundreds of Terran years.As the various starfaring races of the galaxy desperately tried to prosper in the horror-filled reality of the Imperium Nihilus, millions of eyes turned towards Vigilus. Were it to fall, so would the hopes of all trapped in the Dark Imperium. With the Cadian Gate broken to the west and War Zone Stygius raging to the east, Vigilus was wide open to invasion by the forces of Chaos.That invasion ultimately came in the form of the Black Legion and Abaddon the Despoiler. The Despoiler was determined to seize Vigilus and eliminate the innate properties that allowed it to hold open the Nachmund Gauntlet with the aid of the altered blackstone deposits located in its crust and that of its counterpart on the other side of the gauntlet, Sangua Terra.Yet the forces of the Imperium held firm despite these challenges, and ultimately maintained the Emperor's grip on the planet. Though various xenos and Chaos factions remained among Vigilus' myriad hivesprawls, the locus of conflict between the Imperium and the Archenemy moved elsewhere in the galaxy.Though Vigilus suffered appalling destruction and loss of life, in the wake of the War of Beasts it took its first step on the long road to recovery. It remained a key route of resupply and communication with the Imperial forces fighting to take back the Imperium Nihilus.