Warhammer 40K: The Eye of Terror Before The Fall of Cadia
This weekend we are seeing a return to the Eye of Terror thanks to Fabius Bile. But what was the Eye of Terror before the fall of Cadia? Read on to learn more!
Before the 13th Black Crusade and before Abaddon tossed a Black Stone Fortress at Cadia, they Eye of Terror wasn’t just a nickname for a warp disturbance. It was the safehaven and galactic manifestation of chaos. This area was home to the traitor legions and chaos daemons – a warp scar in real space. And it was defended by the Imperium for millenia.
The Eye of Terror – Before The Fall
The Eye of Terror (Ocularis Terribus) was a massive Warp rift, where the Warp co-exists with real space, the largest and most well-known in the galaxy. It is located at the edge of the galaxy, to the north and west of Terra, in the Segmentum Obscurus.
The region of the Eye constituted its own reality, existing within both the material universe and the Warp. Although planets and star systems existed within the Eye, the laws of reality no longer applied. In the Eye, Time is and was a meaningless concept, and matter, thought, and energy were indistinct.
The worlds within the Eye were known as Daemon Worlds, and each constituted its own bizarre sub-reality. At the very center of the Eye was the “byssos”, a hole in the fabric of reality through which raw Chaos energy would pour out.
The Warp and real space were indistinct and intermixed within the Eye, and the whole region was a maelstrom of psychic energy, impossible to navigate through. Imperial ships avoided the area around the Eye for thousands of light-years. Ships traveling too close to the Eye would be thrown far off-course – they could also be caught in temporal whirlpools which would carry them backwards or forwards in time, or could trap them in limbo forever.
The Warp storms that disturbed the Eye were so intense that there was little point in even trying to steer a ship in a particular direction. The Chaos renegades would simply launch their ships into the swirling energies of the Warp, trusting fortune to carry them to their enemies. This was what made Chaos attacks so random, sudden and unpredictable, often occurring on worlds far from the Eye.
For the Traitor Legions, the Eye of Terror has been their exile, sanctuary, and safe haven for ten thousand years, from which they strike out at opportune, seemingly random moments. The Eye was also a sanctuary for the most heretical renegades, fugitives of Imperial justice, and traitors throughout the galaxy, and all were welcomed as fellow enemies of the Emperor and the Imperium.
Mortals within the Eye are still constantly exposed to the effects of Chaos, physically warped so their bodies come to reflect their flawed natures; the Death Guard, for example, worship Nurgle, Chaos God of Decay, so their bodies become bloated and putrid.
The Eye of Terror was not a natural phenomenon. The Eye was created by the psychic shock wave that accompanied the birth of the fourth Chaos God, Slaanesh, during the Fall of the Eldar.
The shock of the birth was so great it could not wholly be contained within the Warp, but spilled out into reality through the minds of the Eldar. Consequently, the Eye covers most of the region of the former Eldar Empire. Other zones of overlap were created, but the Eye is the most significant.
Sometime at the dawn of the Imperium but before the Horus Heresy, the Eye of Terror was discovered by Imperial explorers in what was presumably a fairly remote region of the galaxy, and Imperial scholars named is Cygnus X-1. The Eye didn’t come into prominence until it was later discovered by the Word Bearers, who had arrived officially for conquest, but actually on a personal mission for renewed faith, and it was here that they discovered the “Primordial Truth”. It would later be visited by the Emperor’s Children and the Iron Warriors, intent on an expedition within the eye for the search of the Angel Exterminatus. Before embarking upon this journey, Perturabo had formally named the Eye of Terror.
The Imperial world of Cadia stood nearest to the best-known stable gateway into the Eye; consequently, it was the most fortified and militarized world in the Imperium, the first line of defense against Chaos incursions into real space. It would seem that ships exit through this gateway far more often than they enter it.
Abaddon the Despoiler led an attack through the Eye of Terror during a massive narrative campaign that decided the fate of Cadia and many other systems. And we all know how that turned out.
Learn More about The Eye of Terror
The Eye of Terror is still a thing – it’s just part of a greater body of warp rifts now.
