Accursed Demesne

[The Hive Mind]

Accursed Demesne
"Pride has conducted us unto death, and torment awaits all who follow in our steps."
—attributed to Faith Laithmon

In ages past, man believed that all evil and corruption in the Koronus Expanse emanated from the Accursed Demesne: ills in the Warp, energies that blasted life from worlds, clusters of stars that seemingly died together in unnatural cataclysms, misfortunes, ghost-vessels, and the ravening Ork. Wise Rogue Traders shun these voids even now, and little is known of the worlds deep within the Accursed Demesne. Common voidfarers live in terror of the Demesne and the ill fortune that flows from it. They whisper tales of xenos tombs upon Lathimon’s Death, cursed Dolorium, and the domain of the fearsome Ork beyond.

The Accursed Demesne is a vast and uncharted region into which few have voyaged and returned. Few routes into the Demesne exist, and those which are likely to be accurate are jealously guarded by the Navigator clans who first found them. Other fragments of Warp navigational information are highly inaccurate and likely to prove lethal to both Navigator and voidship, should they be followed blindly. Those who decide to voyage into the Accursed Demesne do so in the knowledge that they are stepping into the true unknown where their fate is subject to the wildest chance and where they may find ruin as easily as fortune. To a bold and ambitious soul, however, the Accursed Demesne is a place of possibility poisoned by a dark reputation.

Lathimon's Death
"Above the tomb were scrawled in blood, that had dried and flaked in the wind, words I will take to my own grave, and I fear even there I will find no release from their dread import."
—from the personal journals of Balastus Irem

Lathimon’s Death orbits one of the Cineris Malificum; a string of star embers surrounded by shells of thinned star-matter cast out from their ancient demise. This chill world, upon which Faith Lathimon and a hundred others died in ways that were never recorded, bears great cyclopean structures, columns, and avenues spread across its darkened surface, so worn and covered by the dusts of time that they appear to be hills and valleys. Only a few are said to have visited this dread world, their names including Balastus Irem, slain by the Inquisition, and Rafe Longinus and Eduard Majessus, who vanished without a trace into the dark regions of the Koronus Expanse.

Processional of the Damned
"Have you never wondered where the lost go? Not the dead, but those lost to hope, and lost to all that holds us to these tattered fragments of life? No, I see that you do not think on this. Neither do I, for I have seen that place, and know that to it I must go in time, as will we all."
—from the last confession of Navigator Conrad Nostromo before his execution by the Ordos Calixis

There are dark places amidst the Halo Stars, cursed or beyond understanding, where the very voids reject the hand of man. The unnamed star system that hosts the Processional of the Damned is one such place; it is a blighted void, a few barren worlds circling a bright and turbulent star. Closer in to the solar energies is the Processional: a thin orbiting chain of wreckage, Warp-crushed Space Hulks, and dead vessels of a hundred different xenos origins. If the myriad docks of the Segmentum Obscurus each launched a new vessel at the very same time, that vast fleet might approach the scope of the Processional. The currents of the Warp have cast these uncounted thousands of sorry wrecks and ship-ruins here, perhaps for longer than Mankind has travelled the stars -- perhaps for longer than Mankind has existed. Ghosts and other Warp-echoes orbit with the Processional, bound to the wreckage and the dust of their remains.

There are many tales of the Processional. The past crew of Rogue Trader Wrath Umboldt spins one such yarn about how his vessel, the Righteous Crusader, came silently to the outer reaches of the Processional system whilst upon an expedition far beyond cursed Dolorium. The very void of the system was haunted: presences stalked the crew on darkened decks, foreboding patterns swirled in the Auspex grids, and the Crusader’s Machine Spirits become disturbed. Moaning Astropaths of the Crusader’s choir were sedated whilst devices failed and unexplained energies crackled about the Warp-Drive. Umboldt pressed onwards into the Processional, and at his order men packed themselves into salvage craft and launched into the Processional. Some returned with great treasures and strange xenos artefacts, some with crew driven mad and babbling, but most did not return at all, swallowed by the Processional of the Damned, or lured into frozen emptiness by Auspex-ghosts and failing tech-devices.

Undred-Undred Teef
"There are beasts among the stars, beasts that would crush our lives, make ash of our worlds and break all that we hold sacred. The beasts wait in the dark and shunned reaches like the things glimpsed in the forests of old, things that looked out with red, shining eyes and hearts filled with the joy of ruin."
—from Remarks on the Nature on the Unknown by Estivan Mauritin, advisor to Rogue Trader Hiram Sult
UndredUndredTeef

The Undred-Undred Teef is a tract of star systems at the heart of the Accursed Demesne that is a nest and breeding ground for Orks. Only a few of the boldest -- or most foolhardy -- of explorers have ventured into this place, but those who have speak of worlds held in an embrace of filth and wreckage, ringed with clouds of debris and wreckage from which Ork voidships arise like flies, their brutal prows bristling with weapons and decked in grinning-skull war paint. Beneath their mantles of scrap and crude defences are worlds poisoned by the spoils of Ork industry and on which the Orks constantly slaughter one another over looted debris, competing to construct weapons, slab-sided forts, and massive machine-effigies. From these worlds the Orks have, in the past, sallied in search of booty and raw materials for their growing armies.

The warring Orks of the Undred-Undred Teef are split into gangs, warbands, and clans that are lead by ever more powerful individual Ork Warbosses. Orks constantly strive to overcome and dominate their fellows, with the most successful and powerful bosses growing in size to mirror their status.

Undred Undred Teef is unusual amongst Ork-held systems -- it is home to many more numbers of rich, arrogant Orks known as Flash Gitz than normal. Some suggest this may be the Orks' evolutionary response to the opportunities of the Koronus Expanse, though no one knows for sure. Flash Gitz are infamous for their love of treasure and are always interested in opportunities to raid and pillage. Flash Gitz are not above treachery, murder, or other shifty strategies to accumulate wealth and more powerful wargear. Some Flash Gitz will even hire out to other xenos races. Many of these Orks take up the life of a Freebooter to get their hands on even more ill-gotten gains. Thus, Undred Undred Teef is home to hordes of Freebooterz, and these piratical Orks dominate the Greenskin hordes of this region.

Hulking Kaptins emerge from time to time, cunning beasts who lead their followers forth from Undred-Undred Teef across the Koronus Expanse in search of new loot for the clans. Mercifully these few powerful individuals have only been able to command a fraction of the Orks of Undred-Undred Teef, but at the heart of this domain something is growing in power.

At the centre of Undred-Undred Teef is a world where Orks have bred in the greatest numbers and where the battle between them is fiercer than on any other. Powerful Warbosses and Freebooter Kaptins gather here to test their mettle in the greatest fight in the Expanse. With every passing cycle of conflict, the number of bosses grows fewer, and those who remain are more powerful and grow to ever greater size. In the brutal tongue of the Ork this place is called Tusk and it is the true heart of Undred-Undred Teef.

Above Tusk’s surface a huge Space Hulk orbits, and millions of Orks and their smaller breeds work under the direction of so-called Meks, fitting engines and weapons looted from the ships of other races or built in workshops scattered across Undred-Undred Teef. No individual Ork knows what compels them to gather here, but in every cell of their flesh they know WAAAGH! is gathering, and all that it waits for is an undisputed boss to emerge from the crucible of inter-Ork warfare. The Orks are poised on the edge of a great WAAAGH! of destruction that, if not stopped, will shake the Koronus Expanse and the reaches beyond.