THE HADEX INCURSION
On the day Cadia fell, the Imperium of Man was cleft in twain. No greater blow had been dealt to the stability of the God-Emperor’s Imperium since the Heresy of one-hundred centuries past. The Cicatrix Maledictum, the Chaos Scar, tore its way across the face of the galaxy, from the Eye of Terror in the galactic northwest to the Hadex Anomaly in the Jericho Reach on the Eastern
Fringe. The fabric of reality had split at the seams and Chaos poured forth. For millennia, the mysterious pylons of the Cadian Gate had held the Eye of Terror at bay. With their destruction, the fel energies of the Warp boiled forth into real-space, swallowing whole systems and sectors in their wake. Yet, none truly know how the Cadian pylons contained the malignant power of the Eye. These cyclopean monuments of ancient construction had stood since before the earliest days of sentient life on Holy Terra. Are mere mortals capable of creating their like in these perilous times? Xenoarchaeologists of the Adeptus Mechanicus, learned savants of the Ordo Xenos, and the Librarians of the Deathwatch had all spent a hundred lifetimes studying and examining the mysterious structures, but no answers were revealed to them. Yet, the Eye of Terror is only one end of the Cicatrix Maledictum, and any beings capable of creating the pylons must surely have known of the the second eye, the terminus of the Great Warp Rift. Such beings must have known of the Hadex Anomaly and contained its own terrible power with the same devices as they did the Eye. Inquisitor Sabastane Raukov has discovered evidence of this truth deep beneath the surface of Vanity. This dead world is now only a haunted wasteland of once-glorious hive cities and radioactive fallout, surrounded on all sides by the ravages of the Great Rift, yet the barren rock seems somehow untouched by the Warp-spawned horrors that rip and tear at the galaxy around it. Could more pylons like the one found on Vanity exist throughout the Jericho Reach? Could they be used in some way to close the circuit between the Hadex Anomaly and the Eye of Terror, and dare it be hoped that they seal the Cicatrix Maledictum once and for all? Or could such ancient and enigmatic devices only cause further harm to the Imperium, nay the galaxy itself, their inscrutable technology unstable after so many long aeons of disuse? Raukov’s missive to his acolytes and allies, summoning a host of Imperial forces to the benighted Jericho Reach has only just reached the minds of Astropaths throughout the galaxy. Yet a message of such dire consequence as this is not like to go unnoticed by those who wish to watch the galaxy burn, and word of the discovery on Vanity has spread like wildfire through the realms of men, Daemons, and Aliens. Forces marshal among the lost and the damned servants of Chaos as well as in the bastions of the Imperium and among the far-sighted and opportunist Xenos. And yet there is no unity along these three lines. There is no reason to believe that, once activated, the pylons will work as their counterparts on Cadia had done for centuries prior to their destruction. For some among the Imperium, the risk is worth the end of the Great Rift, but to others the discovery of such devices only heralds the end of the whole galaxy. The servants of chaos are likewise divided, for there are those who would see the pylons used to tear the Great Rift ever wider and those who see them only as blasphemous obstacle to the Dark Gods’ power. Orks, Tau, Eldar, and Tyranids each face the same unknowable outcome of the activation or destruction of the pylons in the Jericho Reach. As each commander seeks to accomplish their chosen ends, defenders of the Imperium, slaves to darkness, and inscrutable xenos all find themselves with the most unlikely of allies. On which side do you fall, Warlord?
