Foundling Worlds

[The Hive Mind]

Foundling Worlds
"It is a place cloaked in storms, where the ghost lights of false stars lure you to a depthless nothing. It is a place that wants us not, and will see us dead for our daring its bounds."
—Navigator Helias Yeshar speaking of journeying into the Foundling Words

The Foundling Worlds lie beyond the Cauldron, a lesser Warp Storm whose baleful churning might be seen as a warning against further exploration. By strange accident of fate, the Foundling Worlds cluster, although relatively close to the Koronus Passage, was not visited by Imperial ships until several standard centuries after the opening of the Koronus Expanse to exploration. Amongst voidfarers the Foundling Worlds are described as a cursed place of sudden Warp Storms, temporal distortions, and strange stellar phenomena, and it is said that nothing will come to any good that is undertaken within its bounds. That is not to say that none have tried to probe the mysteries of the Foundling Worlds or tame it through colonisation and exploitation -- but even after a route into this storm-wracked region was established, most of its stars and planets remain unexplored. Those few endeavours that have been made to establish settlements or to harvest the wealth of the Foundling Worlds have met with disaster or misfortune.

It is extremely difficult to navigate a course into the Foundling Worlds, even if one is following a charted route. The Warp trashes and twists as if trying to throw a ship onto another course, and furious tempests suddenly appear and claw at a ship’s Gellar Field. At other times the cluster gives rise to strange pockets of stillness that hold ships becalmed. Even established routes are unreliable, sometimes appearing to vanish altogether or suddenly lead to different locations. Many ships have been lost trying to make passage into the Foundling Worlds, and with every craft lost, the evil reputation of the Foundling Worlds grows. The strange localised nature of the storms, and anomalies that enfold the Foundling Worlds, have led some amongst the Navigator houses to privately speculate that the region is hidden and protected by something that does not wish its worlds violated by human presence.

The Foundling Worlds are littered with the dead carcasses of hopeful attempts to wring profit out of its stars: derelict space stations not crewed for centuries, shattered outposts inhabited by the burnt and dried corpses of the dead, feral colonies of humans who have turned from the light of the Emperor. All are a testament to the belief among many who explore the Koronus Expanse that all endeavours in the Foundling Worlds are cursed. With each passing decade, a bold new generation scoffs at the tales of older and more wary explorers and set their plans amongst the Foundling Worlds. Some prosper for a time, but fate is inexorable, and the malignancy of the Foundling Worlds is patient; in time, all are undone and their fortunes with them.

Grace
"Hunger unwound what little hope was left and moved us to what humanity would not once have contemplated."
—Comdeus Canto, survivor of the expedition from the Inferno’s Child

The storm-ridden world of Grace is circled and shrouded by swirling clouds and hurricanes. Continual gales carry the spores of its simple fungal life far and wide amidst lightning and frozen hail. Beneath the storms, the peaks and valleys of Grace’s jagged surface form a stark, beautiful landscape that was once dotted with the proud structures of a colony founded under the authority of Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda. From behind Void Shields and armoured crystal viewports the colonists, drawn from the wealthiest exiles of Imperial nobility and the most successful of criminals (a distinction between the two being not always easy to draw) gazed out on the beauty of the world that was their sanctuary from blood wars, vengeful rivals, and the iron fist of Imperial justice. The world of Grace is still just as beautiful, but the colony palaces lie in ruin and its pale-eyed people scuttle in the shadows, harbouring a terrible secret.

Grace was an Imperial colony world founded not for the expansion of the domain of the God-Emperor, but to serve the greed and arrogance of Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda. The colonial palaces built on Grace were palatial fortresses for Imperial exiles of wealth and means -- those worthies secretively brought to the edge of the Imperium by the Cold Guild, stored in frozen vaults for their journey and returned to life in the depths of Port Wander. Rogue Trader Aspyce Chorda swelled her coffers accepting fugitives into the world she had claimed and giving them leave to build their armoured palaces on Grace. At further ruinous cost, she provided the exiles with illegal slaves from Footfall, provided them with the finest foods using the lesser voidships of her fleet, and allowed their spies and agents to pass to and from Imperial space in the holds of her ships. It was, for a time, a paradise of the wicked, but it did not last.

It is said by the pious that in time no sin goes unknown or unpunished in the God-Emperor’s sight, and the punishment for Grace was terrible indeed. Vessels of Aspyce Chorda carrying supplies to Grace were destroyed by a Warp Storm that rose up, swallowing them whole and sealing passage to Grace. The world itself was a pleasurable and beautiful refuge and had no capacity to produce its own food. For a time the exiles and criminals contented themselves with the false hope that supplies would come, and then when they did not, they turned on one another, sending their vassals to loot and burn other palaces and strip them of supplies and food. In time only a few of the many colony palaces were left, and these had become ugly fortresses against the predatory raids of the few others that persisted. When even raiding could not feed those who remained, they turned to eating their dead -- first those who had been slain, and then those who still lived. So it is that the few debased colony palaces harbour those who eat human flesh, and they are always hungry. Some have beacons that broadcast distress calls out into the void, seeking sustenance from unwary travellers.

Rain
"There is no hope now; I have heard the voice calling. It is calling to me from the storm in the sky, and spoke of trespass and blood, and hearing it I know it is the truth."
—extracted from the final astropathic message broadcast from prospecting colonies on Rain

Rain was a colony world of wet grasslands and high plateaus in the Foundling Worlds, its flora and fauna inedible but otherwise harmless. Small prospecting and bio-augury colonies were established by a number of Rogue Traders in the late 8th century of the 41st Millennium. They found little of interest in the ecology of the planet and even less of value beneath its covering of loamy earth. The last scraps of astropathic reports from the prospecting colony talked of structures they had found in the dense forested areas of the planet but gave no other information except a note that the rain made a strange noise when it fell near them. Nothing more was ever heard from the colonies apart from a single garbled astropathic broadcast that raved about pale figures in the rain and sleek shapes in the clouds.

Iniquity
"By this blood I swear my soul and heart to the blackness and to the Iron Scourge."
—from the oath of the Iron Scourge fraternity

Iniquity is a world of huge mountains rising from an acid sea, orbited by a fractured moon. In warrens burrowed into the dark rock of the mountain lurk thousands of Renegades and scum of the worst kind. It is a world that exits to feed its feral packs of Chaos raiders with metal and supplies, who return with captured prisoners to toil in the foundries and poisoned mines. There is no lore on Iniquity save the lore of might and murder, and its brutal society is split into fraternities bonded by blood and pledges made in unholy tongues. These fraternities control the mining and smelters in the deep reaches beneath the mountains and watch over the toiling armies of captives whose lives are best if they are short.

Long ago mines were established on Iniquity, burrowing into the mineral-rich rock despite thousands of lives lost to rock falls and poisoned gas pockets. That time was ended when the indentured workforce rose up and slaughtered the mine overseers and daubed the dark walls of the mine workings with their blood. Some attempt may have been made by the backers of the mining operation to regain control of Iniquity, but if there was, it remains unrecorded, and its failure is obvious from the evil tales that seep like a blood stain though rumour and whispers even to Port Wander. To this day none has ever succeeded in cleansing Iniquity -- though many have tried and failed to return.

Charnel Stars
"Only we few shall see what lurks beyond those terrible passes and beyond those dark and glittering gulfs. Be it death or ancient majesty, we shall tread the void and see what lies that little further."
—Aleana Howsian, Rogue Trader, address to the crew of the Samarkand

The corpse-embers of the Charnel Stars beckon explorers of the Foundling Worlds, promising dead worlds and unknown treasures. No Rogue Trader is known to have found a route through the twisting, malicious Warp of that region, not yet. The secrets and riches that wait in the baleful light of those evil stars have beckoned to explorers for centuries, but all have failed to penetrate into the Charnel Stars. Many of the boldest have perished in their attempt to approach the seemingly unassailable void.