Immaterium - Warp Storms: The Warp is an extremely volatile medium. At times, disturbances can turn areas of the Warp into raging storms of incomprehensibly destructive fury that can breach the dimensional barrier into realspace. These storms can last for solar days, months, or even standard centuries.These "Warp Storms" can isolate star systems and entire sectors from each other, by making the Imperium's normal methods of interstellar travel and communication impossible as the Warp surrounding those regions becomes too chaotic for a starship to safely travel through or for an astropath to send or receive a telepathic message through the psychic "interference."These storms can last for any amount of time, ranging from solar weeks to Terran centuries, and can occasionally break out into the material universe, creating a temporary Warp rift that can result in an incursion by the forces of Chaos into Imperial space.Starships caught in these storms are likely at best to be driven far off-course and emerge back into realspace thousands of light-years from their intended destination in uncharted areas of the galaxy.More often, such vessels find themselves trapped within the Warp, a terrible fate for its passengers as they become playthings for the dark creatures that inhabit that malign realm when their protective Gellar Field finally fails.While uncommon, some starships, after making their way through the Empyrean for only a short time, will emerge from the Warp only to find that entire Terran centuries have passed in realspace.Such an occurrence is more likely to happen when a vessel is travelling through a region of the Warp affected by a Warp Storm or unusual psychic turbulence. However, the Warp is a dangerous and chaotic place at the best of times; every use of a Warp-Drive is perilous, no matter how routine.The Great Rift, or Cicatrix Maledictum in High Gothic, has recently split reality asunder in the wake of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, gouging a scar across the galactic north.The light of the Astronomican can no longer reach through this fissure, and from the dreadful gouge, the energies of the Warp pour unimpeded into realspace.Many of those planets in the vicinity of the Great Rift have disappeared entirely, or been so corrupted that they are now labelled as Daemon Worlds.No one fully understands the origins of the Great Rift, though there are many theories: the breach of the Cadian Gate during the Despoiler's recent 13th Black Crusade, the sorcery of the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red during the Thousand Sons' invasion of the Fenris System, catastrophe in the Webway, mass bloodshed and fire in the Damocles Gulf -- all may have caused or contributed to it.Its emergence was a literal galaxy-shattering event, which threw the Imperium of Man into chaos and ushered in new wars across nearly every world in the Emperor's domain.So powerful and far-reaching was this Warp rift that the very laws of physics fray at its edges as the inconsistencies of temporal fluctuations, once largely localised to larger Warp Storms such as the Eye of Terror, now spread across the galaxy.Some worlds felt standard centuries go by in an instant while others were all but frozen in time, and still others have suffered constant temporal shifts.With the coming of the Great Rift, the galaxy has been riven with Warp Storms of unprecedented fury as reality itself begins to fracture under the strain. Some permanently circle the Great Rift, while others travel in an almost sentient fashion all over the galaxy, obeying no known rules of solar current or winds.Such storms cut worlds off from the light of the Emperor, and countless civilisations caught in their shadow have been terrorised, enslaved, or altogether destroyed by the Daemon legions, or otherwise suffer from mutation and corruption.There can be no doubt that a dark new era, the Age of the Dark Imperium, has dawned...