The Great Hellspace Rift

The Great Hellspace Rift, also known as The Eye of Gorthaur, is a permanent rift in the fabric of Realspace spanning over 100 light years. A dark star burns at its center surrounded by a 'sea' of dark matter.

It possesses a malevolent sapience, following explorers to their home system with tentacles of gas and dark matter with which it draws their star system into its Maw to be consumed. It feeds on the pain, suffering, fear, and despair of living beings. Nearly 100 species and their star systems have been destroyed in this manner.

Discovered by the Precursor AWMs 80 million years ago, they found that the interior, a perfect vacuum between the star and the sea, was accessible via Hellspace. The Maw did not destroy them but would destroy any living being aboard an AWM.

The AWM's refer to the rift as the "Anomalous Sector" and use it as a means to remove boarders, as the being within the Rift feeds upon organics brought by the AWMs.

8000 years ago the Rift was discovered by Terran forces of the Imperium, they survived the encounter and destroyed the tendril it sent to capture TerraSol. The Maw was changed by this encounter, its intelligence enhanced and warped, as were the Terrans, and the two groups entered a mutual agreement of nonaggression.

The Terrans named the star "The Eye of Gorthaur", and the dark matter "The Sea of Tartarus". Later, the remnants of the Imperial Martial Orders, the Idiots, were brought there by Daxin the Unfeeling to prevent them from rampaging across Terran space. They began worshipping the Eye and crafted several myths around it.

The Seven Rings of Gehanna
One light week 'south' of the Maw, the Terrans found the remnants of a star system, a single planet and six asteroid rings orbiting a Massive Red Giant Star.

They named the system "The Seven Rings of Gehanna", the star "The Eye of Barad-dûr" and the planet "The Isle of Dread".

On the Isle there are 9 great fortress cities, though there used to be 12, each ruled by a Dread Knight of the Black Crusade, constantly at war with each other. Here the TechnoMages and Priests of the Black Crusade continue their work with forgotten, blasphemous, and often condemned, technology and rituals in the service of their masters.

It is here, within the Citadel of Eternal Woe, that Bellona the Gravebound Beauty aided Daxin the Unfeeling to regain the skin of his human face, watched him take his seat upon The Black Throne of Murdered Camelot capped by the undying, severed head of a Mantid Overqueen, witnessed the return of Osiris of the Warsteel Flame.