Chaos - Those Who Live Beyond: A well-established Chaos Cult has the potential to tip an entire world into Chaos in a very literal sense. Their greatest works of sorcery can open the gates of hell itself and unleash the daemonic legions of the Ruinous Powers. As the mutating power of Chaos saturates the world it becomes a realm not entirely of the material universe and not entirely of the Warp: a Daemon World where the laws of nature and reason have been completely usurped by the whims of the major Chaos Powers.Here daemons roam freely and are constantly nourished by twisting winds of magic and mortals become their playthings with a value only as Chaos Champions or slaves. Daemon Worlds are a sanctuary for the worshippers of Chaos with the means and courage to flee to them. The Inquisition never rests in its efforts to eliminate the devotees of the Ruinous Powers, but a Daemon World defies even their shadowy reach.No one knows the exact number of Daemon Worlds in the galaxy, nor whether all of them could truly be said to even exist within the galaxy any more. Imperial Navigators have reported worlds in the deep tides of the Immaterium light years away from any star systems and severe Warp Storms are said to have shifted entire planets across time and space.Certainly the greatest concentration of Daemon Worlds appears to be in the region of the Segmentum Obscurus called the Eye of Terror, the birthing grounds of the Chaos Power Slaanesh, but many other Daemon Worlds are spoken of in myth and legend in different parts of the galaxy.Some hold that every major Warp Storm in the galaxy has one or more Daemon Worlds at its heart, the source of all the dangerous torrents of Warp energy that sustain it and its unholy inhabitants.Untold billions of mortals exist on Daemon Worlds, their lives utterly subject to the Ruinous Powers and their bodies marked by Chaos. Many are destined to form warbands battling for the amusement of their masters, hurling themselves against one another while screaming praises to their Dark Gods.Others are arranged into shuffling prayer gangs that trace the path of vast runes visible only from space; others might sift, weigh, and catalogue grains of sand in vast deserts or endlessly build and then destroy monuments that defy sanity and science. The activities pursued with such vitality and fervour on Daemon Worlds are often nonsensical and contradictory by nature -- and apt to change at a moment’s notice.A few Daemon Worlds are dominated by the remnants of the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions that once followed Horus. They have become training grounds, forges, and armouries for the Legions' continuing prosecution of the Long War against the Corpse-Emperor.Entire regiments are raised and destroyed under their brutal regimes, the veteran survivors reformed and hurled into battle again and again to forge them in the crucible of war. On these hellish worlds anyone is capable climbing up from slave cannon fodder through hardened veteran to valued elite with sufficient skill and élan.The hardiest and most dedicated may some day win a place in the Legion and have their body broken by dark chirurgeons to be remade as something greater than Human -- if a new source of uncorrupted Astartes gene-seed can be secured.The Traitor Legions teach their Human slaves to hate the Imperium and to despise the Emperor with an unholy passion. Time runs differently on Daemon Worlds and veteran Space Marines that stood beside Horus still live on a hundred centuries later in the Eye of Terror and other benighted places.They bitterly remember their defeat before the Imperial Palace during the climactic Battle of Terra and have sworn to have their vengeance against the False Emperor on the Golden Throne. Incalculable woe has been unleashed on the Imperium by the Traitor Legions over the millennia since the Horus Heresy. These so-called "Black Crusades" have ravaged the regions around the Eye of Terror and destabilised huge areas elsewhere in the Imperium.Even once the Imperium rallies its vast resources to reconquer territory lost to a Black Crusade, the indelible taint of Chaos is left behind. On recaptured worlds the incidence of psykers and mutations in the liberated populations leaps sharply and cultist cells are always particularly active.The Traitor Legions attempt to erode Imperial power whenever they can and some specialise in utilising Renegade and underground elements as parts of a larger conspiracy. Imperial Inquisitors are particularly alert for signs that cult or pirate activity may presage a larger invasion by the Traitor Legions, but with a million worlds to protect their task is a nigh impossible one.