Belsegor's Histories

In 2005 (005M.02), I'd just finished university for the first time, and I had a lot of time on my hands whilst I searched for a new job, and then still had almost as much time once I had a part time job which at first only gave me measley hours.  I played a lot of Civilisation and Morrowind, and got through a lot of reading, but I also spent hours and hours trying to write up a sector for Warhammer 40,000.  This was partly with the idea of eventually using it for roleplaying purposes but mostly just for my own entertainment.  This sector, named after its capital world, is the Belsegor Sector. 

I have no intention of it ever being anything other than fun, but I would like to share what I've written over the last six years.  I have about thirty planets, most still just hastily-scrawled ideas but some increasingly detailed worlds.  I have some interstellar movers-and-shakers and sector-wide historical events sketched out.  The whole thing is going through a thorough rewrite as of about a year ago, when I took a look at the original stuff and decided a lot of it was just a bit too silly or didn't quite work right.  

Here then, to start us off, is a brief overview of Belsegoria's other history, which began not six years past in the attic of a student let but over ten millennia ago, when the Emperor's Light still pushed at the darkness and there still seemed hope that it might triumph decisively. 

Belsegor is Central

Much of what we see of the Imperium happens on the frontiers.  Covering the galaxy as thinly as it does, this is hardly surprising; the Imperium's tenuous hold on much of its territory leads to a disproportionate quantity of its worlds being "frontier" worlds, even in areas of the relatively well settled galactic west.  The Belsegor Sector, although possessing a few resource-poor marginal worlds in which the Imperium takes only a passing interest, is not a frontier sector.  The sector sits within the Segmentum Solar to the west of Sacred Terra and close to the border with the Segmentum Obscurus.  Those parts of the sector which can be settled have been settled for longer than human memory can reach back, and those parts which have not been settled are in any case inimicable to human life, empty stars of interest only to astrographers.  Before the coming of the Imperium, the sector was close to the heart of the lost human civilisation which spanned the galaxy during the Dark Age of Technology. 

Belsegor is Imperial

The sector was brought into compliance by the Imperial Army  ten thousand years ago.  Most worlds, already cowed by the great tumult of the Age of Strife, timidly submitted to the paternal care of the mighty armies which arrived in orbit, whilst some resisted, but only the most ancient documents reveal which worlds reacted in which way and all became compliant in the end.  Their previous history is in almost all cases so distant and so different that very few members of society even think of an alternative to Imperial rule.  

Belsegor Remembers the Great Enemy

Whilst it is true that the Imperium has an ancient history in the region, some worlds do remember the events of the thirty-fifth millennium.  Of all Black Crusades, the fourth came the deepest into Imperial space, and even as Abaddon's assault was turned back on El'Phannor, a splinter fleet under the leadership of the messianic Arian the Mystagogue broke away from both the retreating Chaos fleet and their Imperial pursuer.  Convinced that ancient prophecies and infernal revelations told him to conquer the Belsegor Sector and uncover the secrets of the Immaterial Realm, Arian established a personal fiefdom on a score of worlds and the Imperium, distracted in the wake of the Black Crusade, could not even begin a crusade of reconquest for decades.  Even six millennia after Arian perished by his own hand as he realised his reign was finished, even after the Inquisition rooted out his sympathisers and purged whole planetary populations, his taint remains.  

Belsegor Might Yet Burn

Those who remember the past either fear its return or are seduced, seeking to bring about those things prophesied by Arian and his predecessors, lionizing him as one who saw the truth and who will come again.  Even without such a heresiarch to bring together those discontent with Imperial rule, small cults, heretical association and secessionist groups spring up each year.  The dismal world of Carnegie is consumed by internecine war, the greenskins have only just been halted at the Heights of Pater and the Holy Ordos continue to collate suspicious activities on almost every world in the sector, although a guiding hand has yet to be found behind any of them.