The Hadex Anomaly Your former Dark Mechanicus followers believe that the Anomaly is somehow alive. Some of the Dark Mechanicus insist that the Hadex Anomaly's origins lie in a ritual yet to be conducted some time in the future and that the Anomaly is some how growing larger as it travels backward in time. They say that it is actually spewing excess time that was once trapped in the Immaterium and releasing it into our reality. Whatever the truth, it is true that the flow of time is inconsistent within the purview of the Anomaly. On a world suffused in the Anomaly’s glow, the length of day and night is in constant flux. Shadows cast betray hints of future events while the voices of the past are forever at the edge of hearing. Voidships undertaking brief Warp jumps emerge from the Immaterium months after they departed or days before they left. Astropathic communication is all but impossible as fragments of messages never sent infiltrate telepathic sendings. Navigators fare worst of all. The Hadex Anomaly’s infectious brilliance overwhelms the light of the Astronomican, rendering all but the most keen-eyed Navigators unable to plot accurate courses along the Acheros Salient. Worse the outer edges of the Hadex Anomaly are surrounded by a shell of lost ships and ghost vessels that have become locked within a tide of chronal disturbances—frozen forever within a flow of time. The Cyclopean Congregation Named for Kokabiel Grigoris and his inner circle of renegade Navigators, all of whom are blind save for their Third Eye, the Congregation cult promises illumination through communion with the Hadex Anomaly. Practicing complex rites of initiation, the cult’s upper echelons are open only to full blooded Navigators. Only those with the Warp Eye, preaches Kokabiel, can appreciate the Anomaly for what it truly is. According to his own blasphemous lore, Kokabiel’s Drop is more than a convoluted region of the Immaterium. It is the entrance to a stable Warp route spiralling into the heart of the Hadex Anomaly, a place where the meanings of space and time are inverted. The fallen Navigator leads his Cyclopean Congregation on blasphemous pilgrimages along this route. The Congregation has amassed the largest fleet of warp capable ships outside of the Crusade, dubbed the Congregational Fleet, this flotilla of ramshackle craft has been gathered from the lost ships trapped in the periphery of the Anomaly over the past millennium. Patiently gathered and retrofitted by Cyclopean Congregation, the fleet is currently moored among the remains of a shattered moon. Repaired with archeotechnology cannibalised from derelicts considered beyond all hope of redemption, these ships are being prepared for war. The Congregation has declared war on the Dark Mechanicus Forge World of Samech, and its Stigmartus allies. The Pyre Not much is known about this Chaos Space Marine warband except that they have at least a battlebarge and a strike cruiser to their name, they are dedicated no single god of Chaos, and that they act as facilitators to all the factions in the Hadex Anomaly. Samech The so called Dark Mechanicus of this fallen forge world recognize no truths other than the ruthless quest for power and survival in the war torn Reach. Ever since the Hadex Anomaly consumed their system and cast their forge world into an abyssal space where the Empyrean spilled into reality unchecked. For the Tech-Priests, it was hellish, often literally. To see irrefutable evidence of forces that could not be quantified or even controlled, only carefully bargained with in deals for states worse than simple death, was the final clack of a cogwheel turning Samech away from its original purpose. Now forever melded with the aether, it did what it had done best through the past centuries—it adapted, and it survived. It was not without vigorous debate, culminating with a series of nearly devastating civil wars. However, no parties dared harm the carefully maintained forges dominating the surface and deep into the crust, and this kept Samech from falling into decay like so many other worlds. The outcome saw a new ruling system, led by the faction best able to prove itself superior to the others in technological command, and Samech overcame its insular paranoia. Vessels learned to navigate the unstable space now surrounding the planet, and conducted expeditions wherever there were new technologies to be had or markets where their own marvels could be traded for raw materials and new slaves to work the forges. Ever more frequently they searched for ancient archeotech or arcane lore to help their own factions establish dominance over rivals. No source was too extreme, and Samech agents established ties with xenos races across Jericho, many of which the Imperium still has not encountered. Their own system was not neglected, as the entire area was embedded with defenses unparalleled across the sector, with Warp-based mines strewn across the surrounding Empyrean shoals. Most importantly, pacts with dark gods granted the Magi and their factions the power to control their new environment in exchange for supplying the Chaos warhosts with weaponry and engines of war. It was the beginning of Samech’s new role in Jericho, and the tech-priests are arrogantly proud that an Imperium that had forsaken them is now terrified of their existence. Stigmartus Your former Dark Mechanicus followers say that the majority of the Stigmartus forces are maniacal deviants who have won their victories more through sheer numbers than through any tactical success. These troopers have extensive ritual scars and proudly display the iconography of the dark gods. In battle, they attack with the zeal, as they seem almost as driven to martyrdom as they are towards victory. These units favour a strategy of endless waves of humanity. When unaccompanied by other forces, they will seldom even make effective use of terrain. Their fanatical devotion to the heathen gods is apparently their only armour. Though these units far outnumber the Crusade’s available forces, they are not limitless, and their tactics quickly deplete their vast supply of soldiers. The secret to their success is the time dilation effects that has been pervade the Hadex Anomaly. By taking advantage of this shift, Stigmartus forces may have years to breed and train additional forces while only days or weeks pass in the worlds outside of the Anomaly’s influence. This enables the Stigmartus to effectively replace even the most dramatic of losses in an extremely short time frame. The Stigmartus are lead by the man they worship as the God-General Elak Sarda, a charismatic leader and exceptional strategist, who is believed to be dedicated to Slaanesh. An object of worship for billions and a self-proclaimed god, Sarda nevertheless refuses the adoration of those outside the Stigmartus warrior cult, leading brutal pogroms against tribes of would-be followers which routinely spring up across the Charon Stars. Though champion and overlord of the former warlords of Khazant, whose scions comprise the majority of Stigmartus officer-bishops, Sarda claims no familial ties to any known bloodline of the expanse, nor does he claim any planet as the world of his birth. Indeed, his origins are unknown, as if the Cult-General did not exist until his first assault upon Vanity in 788.M41.