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SOUL'S MIDNIGHT SUBSECTOR: It's got novas and black holes, but no golf courses

Started by Inquisitor Thaken, October 22, 2016, 05:08:33 AM

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Inquisitor Thaken

http://s866.photobucket.com/user/gloriousbattle/media/Souls%20Midnight%20Subsector.png.html

The link to my photobucket account shows a hexmap for Soul's Midnight Subsector, which is the final piece of my 4 subsector Nightfall Sector.  One of those minor Eastern fringe dives where aliens can annoy the Imperium because the astronomican can't quite reach them.

As you can see, the artwork isn't great, and the map is unfinished, but I think its important (as much as anything gaming related is) for what it shows.

As a quick background, Soul's Midnight Subsector has only two systems controlled bu the Imperium (gold eagle symbols), an Adeptus Mechanicus research station (their astronomers and astrologers are studying the highly unusual stellar situation, perhaps unique in the galaxy) and a small space marine outpost (Wolfhounds Chapter).  Other than this, there are a few necron tombworlds (gray skull fortresses), several ork worlds (green goblin heads) and a fair number of unexplored worlds (yellow circles), but what makes the place interesting are the collapsars (black holes), super novas (big honking white stars) and the super collapsar (I'll leave you to figure out which one that is). 

Anyway, I really overdid it with the stellar anomalies, though there is an in-campaign reason for it. [WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS CLASSIFIED INQUISITION ULTRA-SECRET ONLY.  Thought For the Day: The alien shall be purified with nuclear fire]  A minor group of eldar, during the time of the Fall, chose yet another minor path, that of the Radiant.  The Radiant Eldar, as they came to be called, discovered that Chaos could not exist within a certain distance of the radiation of a Super Nova, so they used their still-incredibly powerful technology to trigger several stars in this sector into going super nova.  This worked, but, like all eldar paths, it had serious drawbacks.  First, the same trigger also caused a large number of stars to collapse into black holes, incidentally awakening several necron worlds, with whom the eldar now have to contend, and even worse, though the eldar's worldships were protected by energy shields of incredible power, the super novas were slightly mightier, and the constant exposure to radiation has lowered their birthrate.  Thus, like their craftworld and dark eldar cousins, they are a dying breed.

But one of the reasons for this was that I always felt there should be more interstellar and alien planet 'stuff' in my 40k universe gaming.  So, I thought I'd see what I could do with a few novas and black holes.

This leads me to a tangential subject.  My old 40k group used to joke that "IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE ARE ONLY GOLF COURSES."  The joke being that almost every 40k battlefield looked like every Napoleonics battlefield, looked like every ancients battlefield, with nicely mowed grass, a babbling brook here and there, and perhaps a few quaint copses of trees.  Where were the moonscapes?  The battles on Mercurian worlds flowing with lava?  The hull breaches on starships in deep space?

So, at one point, we came up with the idea that everyone would bring in some alien terrain.  Just something to put a little science fiction into the game.

The result was really cool.  I glued together and painted up some wooden blocks and a few other odds and ends to look like computer consoles and other stuff you'd see on a starship ( http://s866.photobucket.com/user/gloriousbattle/library/Alien_Parasites_Infest_the_Ship?sort=3&page=1 forgive the lousy photography) .  Two guys brought in some terrain they had made based on suggestions for alien weirdness in 1st ed. 40k, and one of the biggest hits was a guy who went to a fabric stor, and bought a sheet of mottled pink and red fabric.  He laid it down on the table, added a few lava rocks and, presto: instant Mars.

Anyway, I was trying to do the same thing here, in a way, though on the strategic, rather than the tabletop level.