The Enemy Without

The worlds of the Imperium are as islands clustered together upon a raging ocean, with vast expanses of Wilderness Space separating each sector. Inter-sector space is almost entirely unexplored beyond those worlds that fall along known Warp routes, and none can say what terrors lie in the darkness beyond the Imperium’s immediate control. The Askellon Sector is surrounded by Wilderness Space, which itself is wracked by the endless Warp storm that is the Pandaemonium. Yet still, even this beleaguered sector has frontiers which explorers might use as mustering points for exploration of the outer darkness, and even the long-established Warp routes leading to neighbouring regions grow ever more unstable as the storm closes in. Knowledge of such gateway worlds is highly valued indeed, and countless are the fools who have paid with their lives for the folly of seeking a route through the storms. For those few who do find a genuine route, the rewards are beyond the imagining of even the most decadent noble or ambitious explorer.

Beyond the storms, out in the deep void, are to be found not just riches, but numerous xenos strains, every one of them a potential doom to Askellon. Even within the sector’s borders, such as they are, there are to be found alien infiltrators. Some flee before the leading edge of the Pandaemonium, driven unknowingly into Imperial space, while others intend to insinuate themselves amongst Mankind’s stars and to prey upon the sector’s populations. Some may have existed in the cracks all along, for a sector is a huge volume of space within which only a small proportion of worlds are inhabited, or even catalogued.

For many millennia, it was comparatively rare for xenos species to taint the stars of Askellon with their unholy presence. The Imperial Navy was highly effective in patrolling those borders left untouched by the storms, intercepting any alien fleets that sought to intrude upon human space. Perhaps once a generation a more serious threat arose, one previously unknown to the defenders of the region, and so xenos-war erupted across the stars. Imperial forces are well-versed in combating such foes as the barbarous Orks or the perfidious Aeldari, and while these are ubiquitous threats across the galaxy, the void is host to an uncountable range of otherwise unknown strains, the capabilities of which may be entirely novel or unanticipated. Many such strains have sought to invade the sector’s worlds, plunging millions of the Emperor’s subjects into wars of survival against the most terrifying of enemies. Invariably, the invaders have been cast off, but rarely without heavy cost; even Juno, the sector capital, has been forced to defend itself from alien invasion. The annals of the Askellon Sector describe numerous Purgation Wars, vast conflicts that often consumed entire sub-sectors, sometimes the whole of Askellon, in which billions gave their lives to keep the abominations of the outer dark from tainting the sacred ground of the Emperor’s Domains with their presence. Species entirely unknown to the greater Imperium have thus found their extinction at Askellon, and it is said by some that the soil of the more fertile frontier Unknown is made so by the uncounted bodies buried in it.

The sector’s armies and fleets for many centuries were adept at holding the things of the void at bay, the numerous planetary hosts and navy squadrons possessed of countless battle honours. All was to change in the aftermath of the Vaxi Atrocity, when the armies of rival Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus made war upon one another in the Rubicon Sub-Sector, their masters split by wildly divergent factional beliefs. The Sector Praefect of the day, Lord Vhinjet Romonav VII, declared himself and his domain apart from the Imperium, and in so doing earned himself death
at the hands of the agents of the Throne. The assembled armies of Askellon met their doom upon the hot ashes of Vaxi, an entire generation slaughtered for the sins of its lords and masters. The Vaxi Atrocity had many far-ranging implications for the sector, not least of which that Inquisitors within agreed between themselves that hence forth they should operate in greater secrecy, lest they destabilise the entire region once more. This is exactly what occurred in the immediate aftermath, for the would-be secessionist Sector Praefect, as well as the warring Inquisitors, had drained the sector’s worlds of armies and fleets for the titanic clash. These now lay slaughtered upon Vaxi’s surface, or drifting as cold hulks about that now-cursed planet. It was not long before other eyes turned upon Askellon’s worlds, and saw them barely defended and ripe for the taking.

In the space of a few short months, the outlying worlds of the Stygies Cluster and Thule Sub-Sectors came under the shadow of not one, but what seemed like dozens of alien threats. Silent, faceless infiltrators came in the night and took what morsels they could drag away, while elsewhere dark shadows moved across the night skies and left entire settlements empty in their wake. Shuffling, stooped, and stinking creatures hidden beneath layer upon layer of ragged cloth came from the deserts to fall upon populations left defenceless by the Praefect’s folly. In the cold
depths of space, a dozen Space Hulksappeared across a dozen systems, each a hive of alien abomination against which system defence craft could achieve very little. Instances of outcast humans making common cause with previously uncodified alien species increased exponentially, and it was during this period that the Kroot were first encountered in the sector, fighting in the employ of pirates and slavers across a score of outlying zones.

Since those dark days, the sector has recovered somewhat and many of these threats have been repelled, or else receded having naturally reached their high water mark. The Imperial Navy fleets and Astra Militarum regiments in the region never again attained its pre-Atrocity strength, but their more competent masters learned something about the horrors they were facing and how to counter and defeat them. The planetary militias across the sector were at length brought back to something approaching their former strengths, such that some even called for a campaign of eradication against any remnants of the alien invasions, or the reconquest of those worlds lost to xenos activities.

To date, such a generalised campaign has been impossible to muster, for the Pandaemonium has waxed strong and the sector is beset by as many internal travails as external ones. Nevertheless, a small number of high-ranking officers, in particular those who hold both aristocratic and military rank, cleave to such schemes and dream of the glories that may one day be theirs, regardless of the blood that must be shed to achieve it

While the void is filled with the taint of countless alien civilisations, still more are known only by the ruins left behind long after their extinction. It is said that the Imperium is built upon the dust of uncountable alien empires, the foundations of its hive cities sometimes driven literally into soil littered with the tombs of long-lost civilisations. For most, this makes for a troubling fact of life, one they choose to ignore as they focus on far more immediate threats. For others, it represents yet another hazard to the very soul of Mankind. For every Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos dedicated to keeping harmful knowledge out of the hands of those that would misuse it, there is another who believes he can wield the wisdom of long dead xenos to combat extant alien foes. While some Inquisitors desire to destroy all trace of previous xenos civilisations in the region, others seek them out, and so the endless cycle of factional division within the Inquisition continues.

The Askellon Sector appears to be as strewn with ancient ruins as any other region, although no true study has ever been made into the exact nature of the many dead xenos empires. Indeed, so far as the Ordo Xenos is concerned, most of these predecessor cultures died out long, long before the coming of Mankind to the region during the distant Dark Age of Technology ; in fact, many probably rose and fell millions of years before Mankind’s birth. Many exist as little more than sedimentary layers in the ground beneath Askellian cities, but a few are known by more substantial ruins or by other artefacts that have somehow survived the long aeons. Accounts of the very earliest phases of the sector’s settlement are all but lost, yet some savants have come to suspect that perhaps one of these predecessor cultures still existed at the time the first colony-arks arrived and Askellon’s settlement began. If true, some theorise that a great war must have been fought to wrest the stars from the alien empire’s possession. Others wonder if some manner of accommodation was reached, some compact with the abominations of the dark void that, in theory, may still bind the Lords of Askellon to this day.

Some might think that extinct civilisations are of little or no danger to the sector, but time and again this has been proven utterly untrue. Those who would plunder ancient tombs put themselves in great peril, and not just of misadventure and injury. Within the long-sealed interiors of such places lurk all manner of invisible hazards, from deadly microbial strains sealed aeons ago, to the mind-bending and spiritually-compromising psychic residue that can burn an intruder’s sanity in the blink of an eye. Within the forgotten depths of such places might be found ancient alien tomb goods, and it is often these that intruders seek, for collectors at the very highest tiers of the sector’s ruling classes pay more for them than most can imagine. This is the basis of the Faceless Trade, the Askellian market in forbidden and proscribed items such as alien relics plundered from long-lost tombs or more recently-wrought weapons or artefacts created by alien hands.

The greatest threat to any would-be plunderer of ancient alien tombs is that the occupants might not be as dead or as extinct as they first appeared. Ordo Xenos archives detail numerous incidents of seemingly dead occupants re-awakening and slaughtering entire parties of explorers. Some have gone on to threaten entire regions of space as alien overlords, with whole armies of re-animated servants and soldiers seeking to re-establish themselves in a galaxy they regard as theirs for the taking. Of particular interest to those steeped in the lore of Askellon is how the Pandaemonium might have affected other cultures. Many assume that only Mankind has been blighted by the Warp storms, a few even suspecting that something in the region or something about the earliest human settlers might have somehow brought it into being. A few have theorised that the storm might have waxed and waned in far older eras, possibly devastating alien empires before Mankind could first encounter them or opening new passages for others to flourish and menace humanity in future times. Such theories can never be proven, but they occupy entire cadres of xeno-savants and explorers, as well as others who have no business holding knowledge of such things.