Great Rift

Galaxy Portal

The Great Rift is a new chain of catastrophic Warp Rifts that has divided much of the Galaxy.

Overview

This new tear in reality was created during the Thirteenth Black Crusade following the destruction of Cadia. Its emergence was a literal galaxy-shattering event, that has divided the Imperium in half and has ushered in new wars across nearly every world in the Emperor's Empire. In a catastrophic event known as The Blackness, many worlds of the Imperium were cutoff and overwhelmed by the Forces of Chaos as Warp Travel and Astropathic communication were rendered nigh-impossible.^[4a]

So powerful and far reaching was this Warp Storm, that the very laws of physics have begun to fray and the inconsistencies of time fluctuations, once largely localised to larger storms such as the Eye of Terror, have spread across the entire known galaxy. Since the Great Rift's creation, some worlds have felt centuries go by in an instant, while others have been all but frozen in time and still others have suffered constant temporal shifts.^[1]

The Great Rift is variously known by the cultures of the galaxy as the Crimson Path, the Mouth of Ruin, the Warpscar, the Dathedian, Gork's Grin and a thousand other names besides. To the Imperium though it is the Cicatrix Maledictum, and it appears to those on the western side of Segmentum Solar, as a tainted scar across the sky. To those unfortunates on the eastern side of the Segmentum though, now known as the Dark Imperium, it is far worse…^[1]

In response to this new catastrophe, the Primarch Roboute Guilliman, now Lord Commander of the Imperium's armies, has launched the Indomitus Crusade. Its aim is to liberate those Imperium worlds that now find themselves embattled by the forces of Chaos, following the Great Rift's creation.^[2] The Indomitus Crusade was able to exploit at least one passage through the Great Rift, located near the Eye of Terror in the Nachmund System.^[4b]

Inside the Rift itself, the Gods of Chaos have embarked in an extension of the Great Game, battling one another for supremacy in what has become known as the War in the Rift.^[4c]

Images

A map of the Imperium following the creation of the Cicatrix Maledictum, more commonly known as the Great Rift.^[3]

Sources

• 1: New Warhammer 40,000: The Great Rift
• 2: Warhammer 40,000: New Heroes for a Dark Imperium
• 3: New Warhammer 40,000: The Galaxy Map
• 4: Warhammer 40,000 8th Edition Rulebook
  • 4a: pg.50
  • 4b: pg.53
  • 4c: pgs. 164-167