Watch Fortress Erioch - Great Ossuaries: The Great Ossuaries are a staggering testimonial to the Vigil of the Deathwatch onboard Watch Fortress Erioch. The high-arched, oval tunnels that make up the majority of the Ossuaries are lined on walls, floors and ceilings with the countless polished bones, teeth and claws of slain aliens.Some fragments may be inscribed with details of a xenos type or who slew it and when, but most lie bare and unadorned in mute witness to the passing of their owners. Looping corridors connect a handful of larger sepulchres that display the bones of truly gargantuan monstrosities too big to fit elsewhere.Other macabre decorations can be found in these places too, chandeliers made of alien skulls and spines hang beside fluted pillars of chitin and bone. Tattered sheets of xenos hide hang like banners beside intricate mosaics of calcified shell. Centuries of accumulated slaughter have covered many kilometres of corridor already and the work is ever-expanding.Any battle-brother is free to contribute to the Ossuaries and this practice becomes a source of great rivalry for some battle-brothers while drawing scorn from others in equal measure. The Master of the Vigil has final say in such matters and some take a dim view of such self-glorification. In the past, Masters have closed the Ossuaries for lengthy periods to curb the hubris they felt was being promoted by excessive trophy-hunting.Nonetheless, if questioned, long-serving battle-brothers will recall places where the corridors were once much wider before the passing years brought their own drifts of xenos bones to clothe the walls. Most Space Marines of the Deathwatch find the Great Ossuaries to be a deeply spiritual, even meditative place. Here they may stand amongst the works of the brothers that came before them and rejoice in their triumph over the alien.New arrivals to the fortress will commonly be invited to tour the Ossuaries to gain some silent measure of the enormity of the task the Deathwatch performs and their part in the Long Vigil. Ordinary Humans visited with this honour tend to find a trip through the Ossuaries a strangely oppressive, frightening experience for all its dark wonder.Space Marines know no fear, but the bonded mortal serfs of the fortress avoid going into the Ossuaries at all if they can. Cleaning and maintenance is undertaken by mono-task Servitors shuffling along pre-set routines. The dusty husks of failed Servitors lie undisturbed in some halls, victims of a subtle jinxing effect that seems to persist despite the unguents and imprecations of the fortress' Tech-priests.Perhaps it is no wonder that the Ossuaries are rumoured to be cursed by unquiet alien spirits. Millions must rest in the corridors and sepulchres of the Great Ossuaries, perhaps billions, unified in death. Entire alien species obliterated by the Deathwatch at the command of the Ordo Xenos line the walls, and are ground beneath the armoured boots of their slayers where they line the floors.Those touched with psychic awareness report that the Ossuaries hold a miasma of pain and impotent rage, its bone-ribbed corridors echoing with a psychic babble of alien pleas, curses and prayers in forgotten tongues.