Dzungaria

 

Dzungaria. A name shrouded in legend amidst the archaeo-explorator fraternities across half a Segmentum. A fanciful folktale dismissed and derided by the more serious-minded Magii of half a Segmentum more. 

The 'standard' story sounds plausible enough - a world given over as the former treasure-house of Adamantia, a repository for many of the secrets and wealth of that long-vanquished stellar domain. Lying out at the far end of an otherwise-unassailable warp-current flowing down from the North - the Buran - and still holding within its vaults the vast reservoirs of knowledge and power that once saw Adamantia begin to burgeon to rival Ultramar. Before the Hammer of the Imperium crushed down upon it and ended its putative ascendency afore it had ever really begun. 

Yet that's just it - say the skeptics. The Imperial obviation of Adamantia was motivated in no small part via the envious eyes and jealous hands of its rivals further afield. They did their best to ensure that while Adamantia's pleas of innocence fell on deaf ears, furtive gazes and grasping hands should go along with the Imperial war machine. Ransacking and pilfering as much of Adamantia's hard-won technical and material wealth as they could carry off under the cloak of ill-fitting official legitimacy and sanction. 

Surely an *entire planet* of the very creme of Adamantia's gleanings could not have been somehow overlooked, inaccessible warp-currents or no. 

And then there are the still less plausible elements. Golden Gryphons standing watchful guard over the treasures at the edge of the world. An entrance into the Underworld, where the Spirit-Warriors of Revenant Ghosts haunt halls long-thought abandoned yet which still thrum with ancient, hidden power. 

There is no question amidst even the moderately superstitious minds who incur into the Adamantine Spoil from without from time to time that the entire stellar expanse is still watched by *something*. And sufficient episodes exist within the sealed records of the Inquisition to confirm that the void-fire tales of hulking, green-eyed giants with armour the colour of the dead have their basis in *fact*. Although just what facts those might be, the Ordo Astartes (amidst many others) should *dearly* wish to know. 

Yet it seems utterly implausible for these to have anything to do with the fabled Adamanticores of old - who had surely died to the last man fighting 'gainst their doom in the field, or who were mercilessly, methodically tracked down and expurgated in the gruelling, cooling years afterward. Tortured with all the imaginative cruelty of both Inquisition and Mechanicus in search of tantalizing troves of Adamantia's hidden wonders secreted away during the Fall. 

This is a myth that must endure. For if it did not, it would be the tenuous Pax of the region that crumbled with it. The hold over various parts of the former Adamantine Spoil by 'outlander' Houses and other such duly appointed external authorities is tenuous - especially in light of the tumultuous upheavals that have recently engulfed both the wider Imperium and the worlds of the Spoil itself.

Were the folk-accounts of the adamantine-armoured storm-sentinels occasionally reported by informants to turn out to be more than hearsay, it could induce the Adamantine population to rise up against their foreign oppressors, sure of victory as they fought alongside living legends of their own ancestral past. Worse, it could attract the unwelcome scrutiny of the Inquisition - and consequent closing off of the still incredibly lucrative trade in both technology and trinkets looted from the former sites of Adamantine civilizational glory.

Indeed, even were the Inquisition not to take sole charge of the Ruins of Adamantia unto itself, there should still be such a chilling effect upon the teams of 'outlander' prospectors who make the industry run that both it and the mineral-extractive sectors that are its sibling should dry up virtually overnight.

Few are the foreigners foolhardy to the point of daring to disturb a demigod's tomb! Fewer still are they who would do so even despite knowing that the demigod does yet still draw breath amongst them! 

And yet, it is becoming more difficult by the day for all sides to ignore. The harrowing accounts told with an Ugratic glee by native Adamantians of what seem to be their forebears - speaking in dialects not heard for near five thousand years, and armed and armoured like the Adamantine Auxilia of yore. The scattered siroccos of 'old scores' settled against those who first authored and thence profiteered relentlessly from Adamantia's sad demise - feats that *had* to be accomplished via advanced technological availment and seemingly superhuman operational proficiency. 

The Warp itself has subtly shifted - bending the fabric of its internecine routes and currents as if in response to a powerful insurgence towards the Adamantine North. 

All of these events could be unconnected - The Imperium in M42 is a time of both happenings of darkness and miracles in equal measure, after all.

Yet 'midst the minds of those who make it their business to be alert to such things - whether their spirits be clouded by terror or clarified by zeal at the prospect - there can be little doubt: 

Dzungaria *stirs* !