The Stations of Passage
The Stations of Passage are locations within real space at which ships can safely drop from the warp while navigating the Maw. Rogue Traders religiously avoided certain Stations, and some still retain an ill reputation. Many of the Stations are clear voids, howling streams of energised gas, or the outskirts of dead systems. Others are more intriguing, however.
Contents
The Temple
The Temple is a dead system at the very outskirts of the Great Warp Storms, a short warp jump from Port Wander.It is a strangely symmetrical, almost artificial system of perfectly spherical rocks several hundred meters in diameter orbiting a sun that is a cinder of dense matter. Nothing else exists, no dust, gas-streams, or worlds. The Temple is so named either because of a long association in voidfarer myth with the Temople card of the Sybillan Emperor's Tarot.The card signifies the commencement of a blessed endeavour, but also the passing out of the realm of the sanctuary of the known.
The Witch-Cursed World
The Witch-Cursed World is a large rocky planet set alone without a star to orbit in the deep void like a bauble discarded by the whim of a god, its atmosphere frozen to glaciers upon its surface. Whether it is an exile from its former system or was formed within the lightless void is unknown. No crew will stand for a long stay in these voids, it is an ill-omened place.1
The battleground
Legend has it that the Battleground was an ancient wreckage field even before the Rogue Traders Trame and Ettimus Lathimon fought here to mutual destruction over the Ragged Worlds. A vast span of debris swirls slowly under dim starlight, most of it Imperial, spread across the empty void.1 Every crew has a dozen tales as to what happened here long before Rogue Traders traversed the Maw.
The Hermitage
In the midst of the Mistaken Age, a tiny Ministorum sect paid vast sums for Trame Lathimon to carry them and their void-station Hermitage out in the Halo Stars. Lathimon cast the hermits forth form his holds at the Conclave, a station then known for the frequency with which vessels met to trade for rumours of what lay beyond.1 The outer reaches of the Hermitage have crumbled and opened to the void, but a few hermits still come to dwell here. Rogue Traders have long left ciphered messages at the Hermitage for their allies, hidden at prearanged points wihtin the void-station. The richly decorated central transept is sometimes used as a neutral zone for clandestine trade, the parties standing before a bluestone altar, platnium aquila, and perfectly preserved banners depicting the victories of Saint Drusus.1
The 13th Station of Passage
Reputedly discovered by the Haarlock or Winterscale Rogue Trader lines, the 13th Station of Passage is the most frequented pathway into the Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse utilised by the Chaos forces within the Screaming Vortex.2
Sources
- 1:Rogue Trader Rulebook,page 342
- 2:Black Crusade Rulebook, page 319