Geography of the Eye

Although it may seem surprising to those outsiders who see them as masters of the Eye, the Crone Eldar do not have a firm idea of everything that exists in the Eye of Terror. The Eye of Terror covers nearly 3.5% of the entire galaxy, with tens of thousands of planets previously located in its radius prior to the Fall. While it is true that the area now occupied by the Eye was well mapped by the Old Eldar Empire prior to the Fall, things have changed since then. If one were to assume these ancient maps were gospel and set out in search of contacting all the lost Crone Worlds, they would find the maps to be horrendously inaccurate. Numerous planets would be found to be missing, whereas others would be entirely new, baubles taken by the Chaos Gods as gifts from their most ardent worshippers. There are entire Crone Worlds which should still exist and be home to thriving eldar populations, but no one in the Eye has heard from them in thousands of years and it is generally assumed they were all wiped out. Many Crone Worlds have been completely depopulated, whereas on others so few survived that the remaining survivors simply decided to migrate to Shaa-Dome. There are also more abstract phenomena to consider in the Eye, corridors linking the Eye of Terror to the Maelstrom and the Screaming Vortex and the Hadex Anomaly and other major warp storms through the depths of the Warp itself. The Crone Eldar know what once existed in different parts of the Eye, but the space now occupied by the dimensional anomaly has changed so much since the Fall that such information is effectively useless.

Other species, if placed in a similar situation, would have explored every nook and cranny of their new domain in order to understand their new territory (and in humanity’s case probably claimed them, divided them up, and sold off the land rights). But these are eldar, and Crone Eldar at that. They preferred to spend most of their time post-Fall fornicating and coming up with new hedonistic atrocities to inflict one another, only halfheartedly supporting any attempts to map the Eye of Terror and regarding any such information is a passing curiosity. Therefore, large parts of the Eye are simply regio incognita, with space being best mapped around the major Crone Worlds and knowledge becoming patchier the further one gets away from the major population centers. The only entities that probably know the full extent of where everything is in the Eye are the Chaos Gods, their respective daemons, and Be’lakor.

Within Crone society, there are always a few individuals interested in reestablishing the Old Empire’s borders, braving the fickle currents of the Warp looking to stake their claim and make their fortune on worlds not their own. These individuals have always existed in Crone Society, but have become more common following the Raid as the Crone Eldar were once again reminded that there was a galaxy existing outside their borders. Many do follow the ancient maps of the Old Eldar Empire, hoping to find and establish trade with long lost Crone Worlds and plunder the forgotten riches of the Old Empire. To make such a journey is take an odyssey with sights never before imagined in your wildest dreams, as well as your worst nightmares. Well, at least if you are a Chaos worshipper.


Some worlds are more easily located than others. Shaa-Dome, Elsinore, [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Altansar|Altansar]], Arach-Cyn, Belial IV, and other major Crone Worlds are suspiciously easy to get to. The cause and effect of this phenomenon is the opposite of what one would expect, these worlds are not important hubs because they are easy to travel to or located in relatively tame regions of space, they are easy to travel to because they are important, with travel becoming easier the more important and renounced of a hub it becomes. Like the collapse of a quantum wave function, the more who know of the location of a planet (or, quite possibly, believe a planet is located there) the more “fixed” the planet seems to become. This is not the case of all worlds in the Eye. Other worlds jump around randomly in space, whereas others are impossible to navigate to unless you have somebody who has already been there as a guide. These are the worlds in which lesser warbands of Fallen, colonies of the Lost and Damned, and splinter groups of Crone Eldar make their home, many times being the only sapient, material inhabitants on their surface.

Shaa-Dome, that mighty shell world orbiting the supermassive black hole that was once the eldar’s home star, has a particularly insidious effect. The currents of the Eye seem to center on Shaa-Dome as if it were the center of a great vortex, it is easy to get to Shaa-Dome from anywhere in the Eye and ships that do so get there faster than if they were trying to travel anywhere else. This means that Shaa-Dome plays an important role when navigating the Eye, as it is often quicker and easier to make a rally point at Shaa-Dome than fly directly across the Eye, something that keeps Shaa-Dome at the forefront of gossip and the latest trends as travelers are forced to pass through the system. It also plays a role in the Black Crusades, as while the Cadian gate is one of the only ways for a massive Crone Fleet to leave the Eye without the battleships arriving in realspace centuries apart, when retreating it is possible to leave Imperial space from anywhere in the Eye, confident that the warp currents will spirit them back to Shaa-Dome.

Although the idea of washing downstream in a known location in the event one gets lost in the non-Euclidean space of the Eye of Terror might seem comforting, it is a false hope. The Mandeville point of Shaa-Dome is constantly awash with floatsam from other parts of the Eye, and the systems fey inhabitants are constantly scavenging through the debris for usable parts. A shipwreck survivor washing up on the material shores of Shaa-Dome is likely to be taken, enslaved, and subjected to a thousand other unspeakable horrors, with whatever is left over dumped in a vat for the fleshsculptors to play with.

The inhabitants of Shaa-Dome and the Eye have certainly noticed this effect. The phrase “All courses have their end at Shaa-Dome” is a common saying in the Eye, and the fact that the world seems to occupy a central location in the immaterial maelstrom has only made its preening inhabitants all the more arrogant. Croneworlders tend to flock to Shaa-Dome in general, but this is much for cultural reasons as it is any eldritch current of the Warp. As the most populous Crone World, Shaa-Dome is seen as the centerpiece and shining jewel of the Old Eldar Empire. If you can make it big in Shaa-Dome, you can make it big anywhere.


Although the strange warp currents of the Eye are generally attributed to the supermassive black hole at the system of Shaa-Dome’s heart, others have dark suspicions that other forces are at work. These individuals posit the currents are not related to any material phenomenon but are related to the connection between Shaa-Dome and the Brass Palace of She Who Thirsts at the planet’ core, a theory seemly supported by the fact that the currents seem to be centered on the shellworld rather than the nearby black hole.