Such storms cut worlds off from the light of the Emperor in the form of the Astronomican, and countless civilisations caught in their shadow have been terrorised, enslaved, or altogether destroyed by the Daemon legions, or otherwise suffer from mutation and corruption. Some permanently circle the Great Rift, while others travel in an almost sentient fashion all over the galaxy, obeying no known rules of solar current or winds. With the coming of the Great Rift, the galaxy has been riven with Warp Storms of unprecedented fury. To those unfortunates on the far side, in the region now named the Imperium Nihilus, the " Dark Imperium," it is something much worse - the very gates of Hell. To those on the Terran side of the rift, the so-called Imperium Sanctus, it is a tainted scar stretching across the sky. Travel and communication suffered increasing disturbances as the events of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade unfolded in 999.M41.Įventually, the Materium could take no more, and a titanic Warp rift tore across the galaxy, spreading from the Eye of Terror in the galactic west to the Hadex Anomaly on the Eastern Fringe. The rift is known by the other sentient cultures of the galaxy by various names, including the " Crimson Path" to the forces of Chaos, the " Mouth of Ruin," the " Warpscar," the " Dathedian" among the Aeldari, " Gork's Grin" to the Orks and a thousand other names besides weighted with dread and mythological symbolism.Įven before the fall of Cadia, the Immaterium had been growing ever more turbulent in the final years of the 41st Millennium as originally counted by the Imperial Calendar. Though that shadow has receded as the Era Indomitus unfolds, still the rift roils and spreads, devouring entire species with its unnatural fury, and enhancing the number and powers of psykers and psychic phenomenon across the galaxy in an event known as the " Psychic Awakening" by some and as the " Age of Witches" by others. This effect alone claimed countless worlds, fleets and armies. Upon its opening the rift unleashed a tsunami of ferocious empyric energy and supernatural darkness that dimmed the psychic light of the Astronomican and is known to the Imperium as the Noctis Aeterna.
The Great Rift, also known as the Cicatrix Maledictum in High Gothic, is a tear in reality and a raging, galaxy-wide series of Warp Storms that has essentially rent the territory of the Imperium of Man in half after ca. Departmento Cartigraphicae map showing the extent of the Great Rift that has sundered the known galaxy in the wake of the 13th Black Crusade, ca.