+++The Eye of Terror+++

The region of space known as the Eye of Terror lies on the edge of the galaxy to the north and west of Earth. It can be plainly seen as a swirl of stars in the form of a vast and unblinking eye spanning over ten thousand light years of space. The Eye of Terror is the largest known zone of warp/reality space overlap. There are many other such Zones scattered throughout the galaxy, but they are much smaller and much less significant. At the centre of the Eye of Terror is a hole in the fabric of space like a puncture in the skin of a balloon. The raw energy of Chaos pours through this hole and mixes with the material universe. As a result of this intermixture, the Eye of Terror is not wholly subject to the laws of time or space. Its boundaries effectively mark an end to normal and habitable space.

There are stars and worlds within the Eye of Terror, but they are unlike the familiar stars, solar systems, and planets that populate the rest of the galaxy. Each world is a self-contained manifestation of a unique nightmarish sub-reality, a vision of hell formed without regard for the logic of either astrophysics or nature. The energy of the warp saturates these places and sustains a cosmology based on the inhuman perceptions of the powers of Chaos. Thus there are worlds which are flat like dinner plates, worlds surrounded by circling fireballs which provide light and warmth, and tiered worlds like gigantic wedding cakes rising step-by-step on supporting pillars. No-one can say exactly how many of these realities exist inside of the Eye of Terror. There must be many thousands if not tens of thousands. Indeed, their number and even their very form are probably inconstant and unpredictable.

Because the Eye of Terror is so steeped in chaotic energy it is not as inhospitable to daemons of chaos as normal space. This is not to say that daemons can live or move completely freely within the Eye of Terror, but their conjuration is vastly easier and their power is correspondingly greater than it would be elsewhere in the galaxy. The centre of the Eye of Terror is more hospitable to daemons than the fringes as it is more highly saturated with chaos energy. The worlds which lie closest to the centre of the Eye are called the Daemon Worlds.

Daemon Worlds

On the Daemon Worlds, Chaos reigns triumphant! A daemon can move unhindered from the warp to one of the Daemon Worlds. The Chaos Powers regard these worlds as provinces of Chaos in the galaxy of matter – material colonies of their immaterial empires. The four Great Powers continuously compete to possess the Daemon Worlds. Armies of daemons and their living allies fight huge bloody battles to determine which of the Chaos Powers will possess them. These battles often last for hundreds of years, so that the entire world becomes little more than a gigantic arena where the opposing forces are pitched against each other. The Chaos Powers do not, of course, appear in person to lead their armies – they are spectators to events and not participants. Their generals are Greater Daemons and favoured Daemon Princes who, because they were once alive, understand the nature of both the material universe and the immaterial Realm of Chaos. Once a Daemon Prince has conquered a world, his grateful Patron gives it to him as a gift to rule over as he wishes!

When a Daemon Prince takes control of his hard-won world he uses his mighty powers to reshape it to a form which pleases him. Because of this, every world is different and all are equally spectacular in their own way. The most powerful psykers in the Imperium have reported dreams or visions in which worlds of The Eye of Terror have been revealed to them. On one world a black sun stands in a white sky and smoky threads pour from it onto a tangled black city – this is said to be the homeworld of the Daemon Prince Perturabo, formerly the Space Marine Primarch of the Iron Warriors. Another world has boiling lakes of blood from which spheres of fire float into the sky and spread their light across the firmament – the ruler of this world is the Daemon Prince Bubonicus, formerly a mortal Champion of Nurgle on one of the myriad lost worlds in the galaxy. Visions of such places disturb the psychically sensitive throughout the entire galaxy.

To the living inhabitants of the rest of the galaxy, the prospect of entering the Eye of Terror is terrifying. Navigators will shun space for thousands of light years around it rather than risk a minor deviation in course which might take them into its boundaries. most Navigators have personal experience of close encounters with Chaos near the Eye of Terror. Many can recalls other Navigators who traveled too close to the Eye in a foolish attempt to cut days from their journey time only to vanish forever. On the Eldar Craftworlds there are sealed doorways which were once warp gates leading to living worlds, since swallowed up by the eye of Terror. Now those entrances are sealed with bonds of Wraithbone a thousand times stronger than steel, and cursed with runes so potent that just to look upon them would drive a mortal creature insane.

Within the Eye of Terror the Chaos Powers exert such an influence that normal mortal life can be snuffed out at a whim. Even psykers, whose psychic energy is greater than that of ordinary men, cannot resist the will of Chaos for long. Eventually, all mortal creatures who remain inside the Eye of Terror become either the slaves of Chaos or its Champions.

The Eye of Terror is home to countless millions of living creatures. Many of these are human, or were once human before Chaos perverted them into forms no longer recognisable as such. Every world in the Eye of Terror has its mortal population whose Champions and warbands form the mortal armies of Chaos in the galaxy. Even Daemon Worlds have mortals who live there and worship their chaos masters as gods.

The Eye of Terror offers a place of sanctuary to human worshippers of Chaos forced to flee from the Imperium. The Inquisition never rests in its bid to oust Chaos Cultists from Imperial worlds, and whole planets have been destroyed in order to eradicate thriving cults. However, despite the vigilance of the Inquisition, many worlds harbour secret Chaos Cultists. Even Imperial officials are sometimes drawn into these cults and led to betray their race and the Emperor. Cultists who have the means and courage to flee the Inquisition often make for the Eye of Terror and the welcoming arms of their chaos masters. These traitors are useful servants because they know a great deal about the Imperium and its defences.

Mortals who take refuge in the Eye of Terror can become very powerful Champions of Chaos – many will have dedicated themselves to Chaos and might already be well on the way to daemonhood. Many mortals took refuge in this way following Horus’s defeat by the Emperor. Those Traitor Marines who survived the defeat were led in to the Eye of Terror by their Primarchs. They were joined by rebels from the Imperial Guards, the Fleet, and other former followers of Horus, including many Beastmen. Such is the natuer of the Eye of Terror that some of the very individuals who fled there in those far off days are still alive ten thousand years later, granted vastly extended mortal lives by their Chaos Patrons. Whether this reflects a reward for their loyalty or a punishment for their failure it is impossible to say.

Daemon Battles

The mortal population of a world in the Eye of Terror serves Chaos in two equally important ways. Mortals provide the manpower for the armies of Chaos, especially for armies which roam beyond the Eye of Terror in the material universe. Mortals also worship the Chaos Powers and thereby add their own psychic energies to the total energy available to their master.

On the Daemon Worlds life is war; war is the name of Chaos, war fought to amuse or serve the Chaos Powers. Mortal Champions, warbands, mortal and daemonic armies, all battle together in an endless celebration of strife. the Chaos Powers revel in the adoration of their favourite warriors, and savour the blood that is shed willingly in their honour. Should the pace of conflict slacken, a Chaos Power will invite a rival Power to send an invading army to one of his worlds so that they can enjoy the sport of battle. The limits and terms of the tournament are determined beforehand: the number of troops, daemons, and Champions to be committed for example. The wager is likely to be possession of the planet itself! The Chaos Powers love such contests and will often gamble whole worlds on the outcome of a single combat between two mortal Champions.

Although the Eye of Terror seethes with almost perpetual warfare, not every mortal creature is necessarily harnessed to battle. Chaos wants the best warriors after all! Only those who are brave enough to fight their way to freedom from the slave pits, prayer-gangs and black factories are good enough to fight for Chaos. The remainder serve through work and worship. Slaves are rewarded in the bitter way of Chaos; they learn to love the lash and become frenzied with pleasure as they approach extremes of self-sacrifice, trying to outdo their neighbours in their efforts to please their masters.

Just as the inudustrial slaves labour to produce the weapons and armour for battle, so vast prayer gangs are put to work worshipping their masters. On the Daemon World of Bubonicus, for example, the equator is surrounded by a dancing human chain which sings and dances the praise of Nurgle as it circles the world. The dancer develop Nurgle’s Rot and gradually mutate into Plaguebearers. The Plaguebearers join their master and new mortals take their place so that the circle is never broken. This theatrical conceit pleases Nurgle tremendously, so that Bubonicus has commanded that it should never cease.

This is a typical example of the vast scale of worship which the Chaos Powers enjoy. Other examples include planets where millions of people chant the same mantra in a cry of perpetual worship so that the whole world vibrates to their voices. The entire energies of another are spent building and tolling bells as big as cities whose thunderous peals rebound around the globe while thousands of slaves labour to swing them. There is said to be a world belonging to Nurgle where the entire population is enslaved to keeping the accounts of disease and pestilence, recording every incidence of sickness in the entire galaxy.

The Forces of Chaos

The Eye of Terror is the focal point of Chaos in the galaxy. Its countless worlds provide the bases from which armies and raiders attack the rest of the galaxy. The Imperium lives in fear that the forces of Chaos will unite into a huge army of conquest and pour into human space, destroying and taking over human planets. This has never happened because the various Chaos worlds don’t form a united empire but comprise countless independent realms ruled by rival Chaos Powers and Daemon Princes. The different Daemon Princes and other daemonic rulers regard their neighbours as rivals, even though they all share a common master.

When the rival forces of Chaos do decide to act in concert they pose a potentially dangerous threat to the Imperium, the Squat Homeworld, Orks, Eldar and all other intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy. Fortunately, alliances between different daemon rulers ten to be fragile arrangements which often fall apart even before their target is reached. Once they have captured the odd planet their natural tendencies to squabble over the spoils almost invariable dissipates the their forces and brings their reign of terror to a close. This disunity is particularly noticeable where the forces of several powers are involved in a common enterprise.

Only when Chaos raiders are led by a single extremely powerful leader are they really dangerous. Fortunately for the Imperium, it is rare that a leader of sufficient calibre emerges. Almost invariably the impetus of each fresh attack is quickly spend, so that human forces can take advantage of their enemy’s disunity to make good their initial losses.

Chaos Renegades

The most common threat to the Imperium comes from relatively small groups of raiders, invaders and space pirates referred to as Chaos Renegades.

A typical force of Chaos Renegades is based around a core of one or more Champions of Chaos plus their attendant warbands. In most cases all the Chaos Renegades in a force come from a single world, and their troops comprise not only mortal Champions and their followers, but also a number of other followers of their Chaos Patron. Chaos Renegades are accustomed to war and death on their homeworld and regard the galaxy as little more than a giant battlefield. The logical extension of their existence is to find new battles to fight, fresh worlds to conquer, and new peoples to enslave on behalf of their chaotic master.

The Chaos Renegades are often aided by other forces of Chaos. Among these are the Chapters of Traitor Space Marines which turned to Chaos during the Horus Heresy, and which still exist in the Eye of Terror. These Traitor Marines roam the various worlds over which their Patron Powers have cominion, joining warbands, sometimes becoming Champions and even progressing to become Daemon princes. Once of the most active Chapters of Trator Marines is the Iron Warriors Chapter. This Chapter is dedicated to Chaos in its undivided Majesty and is based on the world of the Daemon Prince Perturabo. As they own allegiance to no Chaos Power in particular, they will often join with Chaos Renegades regardless of the Chaos Power they follow.

When the Chaos Renegades land on their target worlds they may be joined by allies from among the world’s own population, or by other marauding forces such as Orks or pirates. These allies are all too willing to join with Chaos Renegades and fight with them in return for a share in the spoils of war.

As the Chaos Renegades move out of the Eye of Terror and towards their targets they are joined by other Chaos sympathisers and all manner of freebooters. renegade leaders use the contacts with the Chaos Cultists and treacherous humans to direct their attacks as effectively as possible – appearing from nowhere to attack a vulnerable space convoy or a defenseless planet. Renegades also lend their weight to the Chaos Cultist risings on human worlds, with the ultimate aim of overthrowing Imperial government and installing the cultists in power. Cultists who join up with Chaos Renegades are sometimes taken back to they Eye of Terror where they enter the service of their master.

Orks and human pirates, freebooters, and other nihilistic groups also join Renegades for a share of the loot – they don’t really care which side they support and are quite happy to fight for Chaos against human or other forces. In this way many of the lawless and discontent elements of the galaxy are drawn to the service of Chaos – some make the mistake fo returning to the Eye of Terror where they are caught in the endless cycle of battle and damnation.

Warp Travel

Because the Eye of Terror exists both in real space and the warp it can be reached by spacecraft travelling in either the material universe or the immaterial warp. By moving into the Eye of Terror a spacecraft can move between the two alternative universes. Renegades have access to many kinds of spacecraft, including captured vessels as well as the remnants of the fleets assembled by Horus to attack Earth during the Heresy.

Because of the complex, non-linear progress of time within the warp, craft which are thousands of years old are still in service, many as gleaming and potent as the day on which they were launched. Other craft are built on worlds within the Eye of Terror, raised by the servants of Chaos as sacrifices to their daemonic masters. The outward appearance of such ships varies a great deal, but on all it is one of corruption and madness.

The flow of the warp can carry a spacecraft through time as well as space, so that what seems like a few days’ travel may take a craft through thousands of years of time. Imperial ships are built to minimise these effects, and their crews are careful to navigate round the worse eddies and whirlpools of the warp. Chaos spacecraft are inconsiderate of such matters and they are content to drift through time and space until the winds of chance bring them upon a suitable target.

Ships sometimes get caught up in the warp and subjected to the disturbing effects of time distortion. Even some of Horus’s original forces suddenly reappear after ten thousand years of travel, unaware that their cause is lost and determined to continue their attack upon the forces of the Imperium.

One of the most weird and extreme results of spacecraft being caught by temporal whirlpools in the warp is the creation of Champions fated to foresee their own Heroic Death. The lives and deaths of all living things have an existence in the warp. Caught up in such a cyclone of time a man might witness his own death, or that of another, the more heroic and spectacular his doom, the more likely it is to be revealed. Once a Champion’s glorious fate has been seen, and it becomes known that he will achieve a Heroic Death, his fame spreades throughout the galaxy. The manner of his doom will be explained by countless followers of Chaos, and the brave deeds which he is yet to perform earn him a formidable reputation. Because his doom is certain, the Champion need have no worries about being slain at any other time, and can therefore disregard such petty fears for his own safety as might otherwise concern him, and spend his remaining life living up to the glorious image of his own death.