Jericho Reach - The Jericho-Maw Warp Gate: The Jericho-Maw Warp Gate connects the lost Imperial sector that is now called the Jericho Reach in the Segmentum Ultima with the turbulent Chaos-afflicted Segmentum Obscurus that is home to the Calixis Sector and the frontier region of the Halo Stars known as the Koronus Expanse.Its origins remain utterly unexplained, and its true nature is just one of the many mysteries to be found within all of these regions of the galaxy. The Warp Gate was discovered in 755.M41 by the Imperium, and was already active at that time, although for how long that was the case remains debatable among Imperial savants.Within the Inquisition's Ordo Xenos, many believe that the gate had been dormant for perhaps tens of thousands of Terran years until some unknown event triggered it no earlier than 397.M41. This timing may link the activation of the Warp Gate to the so-called "Year of Dreaming Depths," a period of sustained and often deadly Warp disturbances that affected the Koronus Expanse around that time.What is apparent is that the Warp Gate was unknown to the people of the Jericho Sector before the Age of Night, because the sector's own once well-known Warp routes passed through its present location for centuries with no reports of any anomalous activity.Warp Gates are stable two-way passageways between two distant interstellar locations that have been linked by the gate's technology through the Immaterium. While extraordinarily rare, they are not unknown to the Imperium, nor are they uniform in nature, appearance, or range. Perhaps the most widespread network of such gates is the Webway of the Aeldari, a series of portals interconnecting an arterial network through the Warp that once spanned the ancient domains of the lost Aeldari Empire, although the network is now much reduced in scope and in constant peril of falling apart or to attacks by Warp entities since their ancient Fall.Other Warp Gates seem to be even older, far predating even the Aeldari's ancient rise to prominence, and belonging to beings and intelligent species like the legendary Old Ones who are little more than myths of a lost age in the galaxy's history. The Jericho-Maw Warp Gate belongs in this category, according to the Imperium's xenological savants.The physical structures that represent the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate's two termini at opposite ends of the galaxy are identical: they are massive, irregular crescents that float alone in the vacuum of interstellar space, immobile and utterly resistant to the action of any external force upon them. They seem to have been crafted from dark stone that is shot through with bizarre geometric patterns in tarnished golden and pearlescent metal.They shimmer slightly when viewed with human eyes, almost as if they were a mirage of no substance. This is an optical illusion that may be produced by the continuous and paradoxical gravitic and electromagnetic stresses encountered within the gate’s vicinity, and the fact that the entire structure is wrapped in a powerful dimensional shearing effect much like -- although many times more powerful -- an Imperial starship’s or Titan's Void Shields.Any solid matter that passes within the sweep of the crescent's arms, which span a distance of over 100 kilometres, disappears into darkness and is hurled irresistibly to the other side of the gate and spat out, arriving on the other side of the galaxy, through what might be described as a "corridor" or "tunnel" in the Warp.As far as can be determined, the time taken by the transit is negligible; mere seconds of subjective time pass during an icy black dislocation that spans a distance that would normally take an Imperial starship using a standard Warp-Drive several years to traverse, if such a direct journey were even possible.The passage is not without its dangers. Though no Warp-Drive or Gellar Field is required to make use of the Warp Gate, the passage through it is a turbulent one. It was quickly discovered that any vessels not sturdily constructed that attempted to make the journey could be badly damaged or even destroyed outright by the gravimetric stresses of the transit, limiting the Warp Gate’s practical use to warships and other powerfully-built spacecraft.The existence of the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate is not simply an enigma and an opportunity for Humanity, but also a potential source of danger for the Imperium of Man, which the Imperium's masters are very mindful of. The gate exists and it is now open and so the Imperium must either destroy it or claim it -- there is no other choice that is commensurate with the security of the Emperor's realms.But the problem has been made more complicated by the fact that the Imperium's savants have so far discovered no method for controlling the Warp Gate's functions short of destroying the physical structure of one of the two crescent-shaped terminals. This is an action that would require something on the order of the firepower of an entire Imperial battlefleet to accomplish.As such, it was the discovery of the Warp Gate and the difficulty of either destroying it or controlling it that made the launch of the Achilus Crusade inevitable, and may ultimately force the High Lords of Terra to order far more drastic actions should it fail.