A Light Not Extinguished

Interlude: the Unknowable

"We are the jailers of the impossible and the mad, that which seek to devour the stars themselves. We are the final bulwark against the nameless things in the dark, so that the galaxy can thrive. We are SHEOL."
-Inscription upon the Acheron Gate at Site-01 of SHEOL.

Long, long ago, the galaxy was at peace once. That equilibrium was shattered when the greatest war of them all was waged across the cosmos. Ever since then, the echo of disharmony was forever seared into creation, the Warp turned muddy and cancerous. Cruel gods that knew nothing of mercy played their mad games, as Empyrean horrors were born by the trillions.

But not all monsters come from the Warp, and some of them are far more insidious than the Three could ever hope to be. When humanity rose to dominance in the form of the Federation, it encountered abominations, some made by Mankind's own hand, others whose existence stretched back to the dawn of time. Most were slain by the endless armies of the Iron Minds, but there were those that had transcended petty concepts like mortality, or were too valuable to be killed, for the secrets they held could further Mankind's ascendence.

And so out of necessity, SHEOL was born. An organization even more secretive than the Psykana Militant, it is the keeper of the damned, the gaoler that locks away the malevolent unknown.

But what do they keep locked away? What lies in the prison moons, that the Federation with all its vaunted technology fears?

The Black Star

The last defiant cry of a god long dead, the phenomenon known as the Tyrant Star has haunted the Calixis Sector long before the birth of humanity. Also known as Komus, it possesses celestial bodies such as moons and stars, bathing everything around it in madness-inducing radiation while emitting black flames. Entire colonies were lost to its dark influence, before SHEOL stepped in. By terraforming the planets of an uninhabited star system into massive symbols of warding, SHEOL baited and trapped the entity within, and under their watch, its malice shall never threaten the Federation again. Even now it still burns with infernal light, struggling to escape its prison.

The Communion

During the Age of Conquest, great and terrible deeds were done by man in the name of science. Such were the origins of AKIRA, a creature borne out of endless ambition. A cabal of tech-lords who had abandoned all morality in their quest for evolution conjured a terrible scheme. Using their near-limitless resources they spirited children born with psychic gifts away from their homes. Using forbidden techno-arcana and a toome of darkest lore stolen from the Black Library of the Aeldari, they cut and mutilated and warped their flesh, fusing them together into something... other. The mountain-sized abomination's birth was accompanied by a telepathic scream that killed all of its creators, and it went on a rampage that saw an entire Sector awash in hellfire, with the fleets sent to destroy it flung into the Warp forever. In the end, a team of Pariah mercenaries managed to journey to its location, fighting through the Empyreal maelstrom and the thousands of thralls surrounding it, before injecting it with a custom-made psychic sedative that sent it into a brief coma, long enough for an alliance of human nations to put it into containment.

Transferred into the custody of SHEOL, the Alpha-Plus psychic entity known as AKIRA now sleeps, constantly being pumped full of neuro-tranquilizer so that it may remain dormant. No attempt has been made to terminate it; although tentative psychometry by the Psykana Militant indicates that it craves its own death, predictions point out that the telepathic feedback from its euthanization would likely destroy all life within the multiple Sectors surrounding it. And yet in recent times its brain activity has become more active, seemingly in response to someone, or something...

The Sword

It was found at the farthest reaches of space, deep within the Veiled Region. Shortly after the formation of the Federation, a fleet of human colonizers ventured deep into the then-unexplored space. On a barren world they found an alien temple long abandoned, and at its center was a black blade, pulsing with hellish purple light and marked with a eight-pointed star at the hilt. Seized with the desire to wield it, one of the colonizers grasped the sword, and the daemon within took over the new host. The colonizers rapidly fell under its thrall, and it was not long before the entire fleet was under its control, even the AI enslaved to its monstrous will. Its wielder was transformed into a blind Daemonhost, a puppet to do its bidding.