The Archenemy
Not all humans fall under the righteous dominion of the Imperium. Many live upon the untamed worlds where warp-cultists and their foul mutant brethren hold sway, though every year more fall to Imperial might. Unlike the warp cults within the Imperium, it is not uncommon for heretical demagogues and warlords to arise in these untamed places, gathering vast warbands of the lost and the damned – the Imperium calls this threat the ‘Archenemy’.
Nebulous as a threat, the 'Archenemy' is the most insidious and widespread. It is also known as the Forces of Chaos, the Slaves to Darkness and the Servants of the Warp among a myriad of alternative names. These are the mortal servants of otherworldly powers beyond the veil that dwell within the Warp. Most Inquisitorial agents are lucky if they only get a glimpse of what lurks on the other side of the true face of the Warp.
The Inquisition prefers it this way; the true face of the Archenemy is kept hidden from the population, the mortal face of madness is all that it permits most of the Imperium to see. The Ordo Malleus keep a tight lid on this knowledge, going so far as to purge or wipe the minds of entire planets to protect this horrifying secret. Even senior Inquisitorial agents are only trusted, bar those of the Ordo Malleus, with knowing that'something exists in the Warp.
Unfortunately, in the grim reaches of the Prosperitas Sector, one cannot avoid an encounter with the mortal servants of the Warp for long.
The Old Religion
The Prosperitas Sector is stained by a legacy written by tainted cults.
Before the coming of the Imperium, for millennia, the worlds of the Sector were the domain of the Regency, a heretical hegemony that laboured in the belief that the Horus Heresy had been won by the Arch-Traitor, Horus. When the Regency collapsed before the Prosperitas Crusade the various Priests scattered with their forbidden texts, but many ancient corrupted shrines and texts remained within the Prosperitas Sector to be uncovered, and many of the lay-preachers escaped the pyres of the Inquisition to spread their heresies and establish tainted legacies.
Many Annwfyn and Ruwwad natives bitterly refer to this as the Old Religion, its legacy for their people a history of slavery to foul Priest-Kings. The name has been adopted by the Inquisition for ease of differentiating the dark faith from other Archenemy cults. While other cults are dangerous, the Old Religion is formalized, and more dangerously, united by shared practices. To its followers, the collected texts and rituals of the Old Faith are known as the Aurelian Way or simply The Way.
The Old Religion is formalised around Sixteen Mystery Cults known as 'Sects' each with their own formalised rituals to gain acceptance as an 'Initiate' and follow that Sect's 'Path' to 'Truth'. Where it is more common in the wider galaxy for the Archenemy to be referred to as four gods, these Sects form the priesthood of a pantheon of Sixteen Entities known as the Divine Hextet with the ones in ascendance (and thus always fluid) representing one point of the Eighted Point Star, a foul geometry that is the most common icon of the united Archenemy across the Galaxy. Beneath these Initiates there come cultists dedicated to service to the Sect in the hopes of induction into the Mysteries, and the truth and freedom that induction falsely promises.
For hundreds of years since the Regency was shattered the Old Religion was a recurring infection born from a religion preserved by families that concealed their ancestral ties to the Regency, tainted shrines that festered in the dark places and forbidden texts that inspired others to pursue the Mysteries of the Aurelian Way. But now the Regency has reemerged from the rimward wild space, many turn to the Old Religion in hope of mercy and cult uprisings erupt to welcome the old masters of the sector home.
Warp Cults
Warp Cults are an insidious and constant threat to the Imperium. Many are insane heretics who give worship to false “gods” they claim to have seen in dreams and visions sent from realms beyond reality. These false religions bring with them unspeakable horrors, said to foster bonds with Witches and Mutants to undermine the moral security of Imperial citizens. Though rebels – and xenocults, when they occur – are no less a threat, it is the warp cults that the Imperium most swiftly brings judgement upon. No single cult is the same: some are obvious in their foulness, bringing bloodshed and plague, whereas others are more subtle corruptors and manipulators, but all serve the same horrific ends.
Helot Cults are probably the most common manifestations of these as they rely on the same falsehood to motivate Imperial citizens to follow them ‘freedom’. As any Imperial knows freedom is a frivolous fiction in a universe of horror, unity can only be achieved by strict control as brutal as that may be to accept – but that does not stop heretics promising foolish individuals’ freedom for turning their backs on the God-Emperor. No one Helot cult is the same, for they are the chaotic miss-matched hordes that the name Chaos embodies. Usually they fester for years if not lanced by the divine light of the Ecclesiarchy or the Inquisition growing cancerous before declaring themselves openly. Most do not survive the retribution that follows, crushed by Arbites counter-attacks or the Inquisition’s chamber militant, for they are small and pathetic in the grand scheme of things, but others grow so large as to overthrow entire regions, and others still survive the retribution to slink into the shadows and rebuild.
The Cults of the Old Religion follow the Old Religion, also known as the Aurelian Way, as noted above. The Eight Sects of this heretical faith have their own character with each cult encountered by the Imperium largely following the same practices of that sect no matter if they are encountered on Korimesta or Gaudium. Of the Sects, the Inquisition is most familiar with two;
The Serpent Sect or Serpent Cult worships a gestalt Deity of six ‘senses’ Théama (Sight), Akróasi (Sound), Osfrisi (Smell), Géfsi (Taste), Angigma (Touch) and the sixth sense Yperfysikós which represents witchsight the psychic sense – collectively known as the Coiling Ones. The symbology of the cult focuses around the Serpent, the concept of following a twisting ever-shifting path and deceptive dance, they worship the concept of seduction and manipulation, encouraging greed and desire to guide others to their way of thinking. They are the well-spoken corruptors, within the crowd of the faithful, the demagogues worshipped by their followers as celebrities.
But the Old Religion is not the only foul faith that has emerged across the sector:
The Red Hand is a foul butcher-cult that worships an entity they call the Red Saint. Born from the refuse of the Prosperitas Crusade, the Red Hand found purchase in the souls of those soldiers left behind by the Crusade, disbanded units never given their prize, deserters, and war wounded who turned to the cult's so-called "Red Lodges" to create their own support networks in the absence of Imperial ones. Here their anger was twisted through what began as fight clubs to vent anger and turned into bloodletting and destruction, before descending into cannibalism and horror. The Red Hand is a terrorist group by its nature, but since the emergence of the Red Saint had targeted the Ashen Cults heedless of collateral. To make matters worse through exposure to tainted blood the Red Hand have been seen to 'baptise' innocents with foul marks that drive them into insane frothing blood-hungry monsters that are unleashed before the brutally disciplined warriors of the Cult. Since Mid 595, the Red Hand effectively acts as a violent irregular insurgency in support of the Regency’s advance in Subsector Secundus and beyond, while the Serpent Cult serves as a more insidious threat.
The Cult of the Withered Angel was thought destroyed on Korimesta in 592.M41 but since the devastation of that world by the Prosperitas Crusade in retribution for rebellion it has begun to emerge from the festering rot. The cult is a ‘Medicae Cult’ spread by those medical personnel who have seen the suffering and disease that occurs on Korimesta and many hive worlds, with the mental pressure of enduring such outbreaks these individual claim to hear whispers of an entity they call the ‘Malleus LoreǀWithered Angel’ that guides them in the secrets of healing. But what appear at first as miraculously skilled healers are, in fact, vectors of corruption and taint as foul warp-sicknesses follow in their wake. The spread of this through refugee camps on Korimesta might not be so alarming, if it had not already begun to appear on other worlds.
Witches and Rogue Psykers
Though not necessarily followers of the Warp, Psykers that go unfound by the Adepta Astra Telepathica or who actively evade the Black Ships are vectors for infection by the otherworldly taint and corruption that spills from it, these are dubbed ‘Rogue Psykers. Witch is usually used as a pejorative insult to Psykers, but it is equally used by those who hunt Rogue Psykers to refer to their renegade quarry, some call them ‘Wyrds’ though this name is more common amongst local populations to refer to both Psykers and unusual individuals who they believe to be supernatural. For this reason the Witch Finders and Hunters of the Imperium kill many, if not more innocents then they kill or capture true Psykers. Though in theory a rogue Psyker is an asset to be broken and tamed by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, most who hunt these freaks do not take the risk of feeling the full extent of their supernatural power and strike first and strike lethally.
A Rogue Psyker can, even without obedience to the dark powers of the warp, become enslaved by their influence, for they are always able to hear the whispers beyond the veil of the monsters there. Their minds, unprotected by the training of the Adeptus Astra Telepathic, are conduits into reality through which the Warp can flow. Psykers can be twisted inside-out into Warp Portals through which the stuff of the Warp can pass, or become the rotting meat for creatures of the Warp to sheath themselves becoming Possessed.
More often then not though much like with the Helot Cults, the promises of freedom whispered by otherworldly Warp-things are more easily heard by Psykers and such Witches who listen and agree to the terms serve as the nexus of corruption that founds a Warp Cult often serving as the ‘Masters’ of the Cult.
The Eye-Tribes
The Ætin Heima is a relatively stable region within the swirling warp energies of the Tenebris arm of the Eye of Terror, some scant crops grow here and life is widespread enough to support a human population. This was once a region inhabited by the Ruwwad people, but those who remain are little more than slaves to the barbarians and pirates who emerged from the depths of the storm. Because the sickened worlds barely support life however the ‘Eye-Tribes’ of mutants and humans polluted by warp-taint regularly emerge from these worlds at the edge of the swirling storm to raid the worlds of the Prosperitas Sector. Savage beings to communicate in the guttural tongue that the Prosperitas Inquisition dubs ‘Black Speech’ the Eye-Tribes seem savage, but that is to undersell their threat.
For many years the tribes were little more than a regular nuisance, pirates and raiders for the Imperial Navy to swat aside, but 590.M41 marked the emergence of a new threat in the shape of the Weeping Eye and the Creeping Death- these foul hordes are led by human twins, the warlords or ‘Herforingi’, Arnkatla Tain and her brother Greppur. The Tain Twins led a series of major assaults on Imperial space resulting in the invasion of the Crusade HQ at Polarnus Station in 592. Thanks to the brave efforts of Imperial forces, they were beaten back. However, neither of the Tain Twins were defeated or captured, and their barbaric horde of assembled warp-tribes is by no means an ended threat as they have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the chaos caused by the return of the Regency to the battlefields of the Prosperitas Sector.
The Regency
The Regency once ruled the Prosperitas Sector, the exact length of this rule is unknown but it could have begun as early as M.31 when contact with the Sector was lost by the Imperium. The exact structure of the Regency is a matter for study by the Ordo Hereticus, but was ruled by a group of ‘Priest-Kings’ roughly analogous to Planetary Governors of the Imperium, led in turn by a High Primate of the Way – but the Regency is over, since the coming of Jacinta Durovera in early M.41 and the Prosperitas Crusades’ crushing victories against it, the splintered remains of the Regency were snuffed out over a hundred years go.
Or so the Imperium believed. The crushing Imperial defeat at Henlock in 583.M41 was blamed upon a renegade chaos warband, but it was the spearhead of something vaster that had been licking its wounds in the wild space rim ward of the Prosperitas Sector for hundreds of years.
The Sovereign Military Order of the Eight Points also known in shorthand as the Sovereign Order considers itself to be the living beating heart of the ‘Regency’ and refers to itself as such often, but represents a fanatically devout religious order within the Regency Military and the Priesthood of the Eight Sects.
A Dark Echo of the Imperial Military and Ecclesiarchy, the resurgent Regency is a single unified threat, disciplined armies under one heretical banner determined to retake the Prosperitas Sector. The Regency uses archaic technologies not seen in the Imperium in centuries. Its technology is outdated by the Imperial standards, but it makes up for its technological weakness with its utter embrace of the warp. It goes to war supported by unnatural things, from Witches to a foul Priesthood whose prayers are answered by nightmares. The Regency is unified by one motto that expresses its drive to achieve its goals by any means, by any price:
“By Strength, By Guile, By Words, By Deeds, By Bullet, By Blade, By Sorcery, By Will – though it may cost my Soul, the Way of Truth shall be restored.”
Since their reappearance in the Prosperitas Sector, Regency forces have been sighted on Nivalis, Kirkcud III, Olethros Secunda and a swathe of worlds across the Rimward Marches.