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Watch Station Sempre
Inasmuch as one of Cloudburst’s distinct Watch Stations can be called ‘standard,’ Sempre is probably closest to standard.  Small, matte-black, armed to the gills, and staffed by a solemn Kill-Brother with secret orders, Sempre sits vigil in the darkness outside Hapster’s Oort cloud, tasked with watching over the oldest human colony in the Sector.
Sempre floats through the cold void beyond Hapster, surrounded by a halo of tiny satellites.  Each satellite is a copy of the ones that protect Septiim Tertius’s outer platforms.  No larger than a Sparrow aircar, each one has four micro-missile pods and one larger anti-fighter missile tube.  Were all thirty pods to fire on a target at the same time, the missile storm would overwhelm all but the best point defense systems.  The station itself sports a few multilasers and a trio of plasma cannons for defense, but its only long-range gun is a Cognomen-built heavy defense laser, with barely half the power of that of a destroyer.  However, given the small size of Sempre and the arduous task of finding it in the frigid vacuum of space outside a star system, that may be all it needs.

Inside, Sempre is sterile, quiet, and meditative, just the way the Deathwatch like it.  The station’s cogitators hum in the chill air, under the eye of a trio of Techpriests in the Ordo Xenos’s employ.  The station’s long-range sensors sweep the Hapster system for any sign of Warp energies to indicate ships coming and going, or the spatial displacement of the dirty xenotech drives that propel Glasian vessels between galaxies.  Sempre’s corridors ring with metal footsteps as Kill-Brothers on the Vigil walk between the sensor stations and their isolation cells, and the station’s spartan eatery.
Sempre watches Hapster for any sign of invasion or corruption.  It is the only Watch Station that fields Kill-Marines.  The platform is a frequent stop for Deathwatch vessels that are collecting or preparing Kill-Marines for service with Rogue Traders or Imperial Commanders.  The largest chamber in Sempre is a training hall, with extensive records of Imperial diplomatic protocol and communications.  There, a Kill-Marine can hone their non-battlefield skills.  Occasionally, the Inquisition will dispatch a diplomatically-trained Throne Agent or apprentice to the station, to assist a Kill-Marine with their task.  Sempre predates the establishment of Dascomb by one thousand years; it is the only one to do so.  Before the Glasians came, Sempre was the sole Watch Station in the Sector.  Now, it is one of seven.
With new times comes new purpose.  Watch Station Sempre serves as a hub for the Battle-Brothers of the Tri-Sector that are moving form one Sector to another, thanks to its location near the intersection of the three neighbors.  Its armory is sizable, and thanks to being in the depths of space, it is easy to approach.  There are serious proposals among the Deathwatch leadership of the Tri-Sector regarding expansion of the Sempre hull, to accommodate additional modules and storage.

Watch Station Spectrum
This facility observes the Warp Rifts causing the chronological displacements at the heart of the Hell’s Vortex Warp Storm.  Watch Station Spectrum’s hangar holds many of those ships that the Watch Fortress Dascomb docking points do not, including some of the fastest ships in the local Deathwatch fleet.  The station can comfortably house a force of several thousand serfs in addition to the crews of the vessels that are docked there, and usually has a Watch Captain stationed aboard.  Spectrum is almost as large as Discus, and houses a few valuable relics of the Deathwatch Armory, in case Kill-teams staging from there need special equipment for their task.  Spectrum’s Machine Spirits are ill-tempered, and require frequent propitiation by the Techpriests in residence.
The Watch Captain of the Spectrum Deathwatch is usually the newest Watch Captain of the Tri-Sector command, by long tradition.  It is a station that seems little combat, but does have significant responsibilities, and high turnover of Marines as they come and go on its ships.  Thus, the Watch Commanders of Watch Fortress Dascomb see it as an excellent place to test the skills of a new Watch Captain.

Watch Station Feldark
The Dark Gods aren’t picky with which species they corrupt.  The Explorers of humankind have found entire alien races enslaved in flesh and soul by the wiles of Chaos, which supplanted or even created the pantheons of their heathen faiths.  Adeptus Ministorum specialists of the Missionarus Galaxia, and Rogue Traders trained in such things, have developed great skill at detecting the corruption of xenos and primitive humans by the powers of Chaos.  The Deathwatch sorties against such beings on occasion, in alignment with their xeno-hunting remit, and Watch Station Feldark is the hub of Tri-Sector efforts in that regard.  The ancient station predates the Cloudburst Sector by over four thousand years.  The Naxos Sector’s main obstacle, the forces of Nurgle, have wormed their way into self-sustaining cults of disease across human and alien holdings throughout the region, and Feldark sorties its Kill-teams against them whenever they are found.
So their mission states, but in practice, this is not always the case.  To the rising frustration of the Deathwatch, Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus occasionally interfere in these missions, either by requesting that the Deathwatch not get involved, or even by ordering them not to attack worlds that the Inquisition has under surveillance.  The chance to see first-hand how Chaos works its way into the hearts of xenos is not a common one in the Galaxy; Naxos is one of the rare Sectors where the opportunity presents itself with any frequency.  Thus, some of the more Radical Inquisitors see in Naxos a chance to observe the ways of the Great Enemy with little overall risk to human life.
The Deathwatch does not share this outlook.  While learning the ways of xenos is indeed part of their purview, it is dwarfed by the necessity of exterminating Chaos wherever it is found.  If the Inquisition’s experiments and twisted voyeurism lead to the creation of Daemon Worlds because the Deathwatch was withheld from destroying contaminated worlds, there will be no end to the Vigil’s fury.  Additonally, the Deathwatch does not answer to the Ordo Malleus; they are the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Xenos.  The jurisdiction of the Inquisition over the Deathwatch of Naxos is tenuous at best; only the Deathwatch’s perennial lack of resources in the Sector have prevented them from confronting their ostensible colleagues over this interference.

The Watch Station Feldark structure consists of two thick plates of armor with a tunnel running between them along their length, with the habitable portions of the station sandwiched between the plates and around the tunnel.  The whole station stretches for almost twelve kilometers, and the tunnel is studded with dozens of docking rods and hoses that allow for up to thirty vessels of less than cruiser size to dock concurrently.  The huge, echoing facility has minimal crew and fewer than a dozen Battle Brothers during typical operations, but it can fill greatly during those times that the Sector’s defenses surge in response to the arrival of the worshippers of Nurgle.  Normally, a Deathwatch Captain would be staioned here to command the Watch Company, but at the time of the ending of the 42nd millennium, that role is vacant.




Watch Point Balier
The dark and broken remains of a world loom high in the sight of Watch Point Balier.  This facility is a repurposed archaeotech station, placed high in orbit above the Cloudburst Circuit world of Voalta.  The star Hastern, which Voalta orbits, once hosted a strange xenos race, one that went extinct some four thousand years before the Fall of the Eldar.  By that time, humanity had begun to colonize the region, and had erected a small number of self-sustaining societies in what is now the Cloudburst Circuit.  The ancient Terran government was not aware that Voalta was inhabited at that time.  If they had ever learned that fact, they learned too late.
What information the current Deathwatch has gleaned about the Voaltan people is chilling.  Naturally psychic, the Voaltans reincarnated their souls in the Warp after dying, and were reborn into new bodies, much like the Aeldari did pre-Fall.  Unlike the Aeldari, the Voaltans were the product of natural evolution, and thus were created without the immaculate psychic control that all Eldar had innately.  The Voaltan people were not even remotely humanoid, and in fact resembled Terran jellyfish more than any primate or analog.
When the Voaltans achieved spaceflight, they dared not subject themselves to the Warp, and avoided learning any of the secrets of FTL travel.  They expanded to fill every niche of their home system, before a philosophical shift among their leading caste brought about their rapid extinction.
Fragmentary records, pieced together by the Ordo Dialogous at some great risk to their sanity, bespeak a cultural revelation that drove the Voaltans mad.  Horrifying wraiths stalk their worlds and orbitals now, the pitiful and grasping remains of a once-proud species.  These wraiths are all that linger from the Voaltan folk, who turned on themselves in catastrophic war.  The Ordo Dialogous has surmised that the leadership of the species were turned upon their followers in utter certainty that the Warp was a trap, created by their enemies, to ‘dilute’ their souls, and unmake their civilization by spreading it out.  Internecine war erupted among the Voaltans, and within four hundred years, their psychic weaponry had shriven their selves down to the horrid monstrosities that haunt their civilization’s grave.
The Deathwatch learned of this when a Missionary ship of the Rondlee Rogue Trader dynasty stumbled upon the world.  Believing at first that the Voaltans may have stolen human technology, Malim Rondlee demanded the Sisters in his retinue learn of the xenos’ demise.  When his followers uncovered the truth instead, the startled Rondlee scion promptly turned all of their materials over the Deathwatch, who have kept a weather eye out for any sign of the monstrous Voaltans’ return.
Watch Point Balier is large and well-stocked, but not by the Deathwatch.  Among the findings of the Rogue Trader and his Sisters of Dialogue, and indeed what first made Rondlee think that the Voaltans had stolen human technology, was a space station of undeniably human creation, orbiting the former homeworld of the Voaltans.  Shining dully in the pale light of Hastern, the station was boarded carefully by Rondlee’s men, who were struck dumb with awe at their findings.  The station was packed to the brim with advanced sensory technology; from mnemonic recall-machines to telescopes, to auspexes and Warp-scanning machines potent enough to detect passing asteroids or Space Hulks.  Rondlee was sorely tempted to claim the invaluable prize for his own, but instead reluctantly turned it over to the Deathwatch, in exchange for a treaty for his house to be granted ownership of the entire star system if ever the Deathwatch manages to purge it somehow.
Now, Watch Point Balier hangs high above the cursed world, keeping eternal vigil.  Its archaeotechnological systems do not require maintenance from the crew aside from occasional refueling, and at least one Battle-Brother dwells aboard at all times.  However, it has too little internal space to house more than a single Kill-team, and there is rarely one in residence.  It is smaller than the ships that come to resupply it.

Watch Point Cezare
Sitting in the darkness of an uninhabited, planetless star system in the Thimble Subsector is a dark and terrible tool of the Ordo Xenos.  This Watch Point is nothing less than a vivisection gallery.  Under its eighty-meter steel hull are a variety of prison cells and stasis field chambers.  These are graded by inescapability, rated from ‘Infrared’ (simple cages) to ‘ultraviolet’ (impermeable by all known science).  Over all of these hang gravitic suspension devices, carefully trapping each cell with a variety of purgative fluids, just in case the occupants should overcome security.
Hundreds of task-bonded servitors, their guns and flamers arrayed against the halls, stand perfectly still outside them, as much for tertiary security as intimidation value.  Cezare is not as secure as a proper Watch Station or Watch Fortress, but it doesn’t need to be.  The vast majority of the prisoners taken by the Deathwatch, Ordo Xenos, or sympathetic Rogue Traders in the Tri-Sector are human, and thus the remit of the Ordo Hereticus.  Those that are not are usually taken to the sub-terranean prisons of the Drumnos Sector, or to the Convent on Celeste.  Aliens captured alive are usually taken to the Watch Fortress Dascomb prisons, and there they meet their end, in the antiseptic chambers of the great bastion of the Deathwatch.  However, some prisoners are important enough but not rare enough to secure within the Fortress proper.  On some occasions, the servants of the Emperor will capture His enemies in large enough numbers that storing them in the same place is unsafe, unwise, or unnecessary.  For those instances, Watch Point Cezare was crafted by the Adeptus Mechanicus, in exchange for permission to use it if the cells have vacancies.  The hundreds of prisoners that have passed through this dark and horrible orb of metal and surgery have never emerged, and have included nearly every race and esoteric entity of the xenos forms in the greater Tri-Sector.
The satellite is relatively large for a simple Watch Point, but it has to be.  The environmental habitation systems for the specimens upon the station are diverse, and take up a high percentage of the interior space.  Its external defenses are significant, and include a broad plasma weapon arrangement that can, in an emergency, discharge into the primary reactor, instantly flash-boiling the contents of the Watch Point.


•	The Crusader’s Labors [Deathwatch]) Many Space Marines find their proper place in their home Chapter on Imperial Crusades.  These massive military endeavors include anywhere from a few million to hundreds of billions of ground troops, tens of millions of sailors, and untold millions of others, who band together under a charismatic leader to expand – or reclaim, or purge – a region of space for the Imperium.  The Deathwatch rarely accompanies these Crusades, and even more rarely takes orders from their Warmasters and Lords Militant, but it has happened.  During the Purity Circle Crusade in the Naxos Sector, in the final years of M40, dozens of Nauphry, Celeste, Septiim, Maskos, Thimble, and Cassie’s World regiments were tithed up, and were joined by Space Marines from every Tri-Sector body, including the Deathwatch.  The Crusade flew into the much-contested Corumbino Nebula in the heart of the Naxos Sector, and whole worlds burned.  This prayer book was written by Codicier Lang of the White Consuls, who recorded all of his musings within.  A gifted psyker and profound monastic thinker, Lang was a natural at writing prose that suits the focused mind of a Space Marine.  His Book of Labors, dictating fifteen years of meditating upon the Chaos-corrupted minds and souls of the aliens in the thrall of Nurgle he fought in the Crusade, are a source of incredible wisdom for those who read its flowing, natural prose.
•	The Crystaline Specter [Deathwatch]) The Fifth Glasian Migration was the most destructive of all those that occurred after the Blue Daggers were founded.  The Glasians amassed their forces into three massive assault groups into four or five as the previous ones had.  The planet Letrione suffered an unprecedented number of fatalities in the Migration; over nine million people died by the end of the planetary invasion phase alone.  At the heart of the Glasian Colony Cylinder that the Blue Daggers boarded, the Daggers found something they had not encountered before.  The Glasians had apparently looted a human, but non-Imperial space station on their way into the Cloudburst Sector, because the Cylinder contained this piece of distinctly human archaeotech.  It is a data-crystal, apparently uncorrupted by Chaos.  When it grows near a source of Warp-energies, such as an active psyker or a Warp Drive, the crystal emits strange, spectral glows and patterns.  The Deathwatch took possession of the crystal at the Daggers’ own insistence, but have had no luck in determining its actual function.
•	The Banner of the Winds [Imperial Fists]) This backpack banner began its existence as a typical rallying flag for the Imperial Fists Chapter, but after it arrived at the Watch Fortress Dascomb, it seemed to take on a life of its own.  Imperial Fists and their Successors who took it with them on missions into the Tri-Sector found it occasionally secured aboard their ship, despite having not collected it.  The arming serfs of the Watch Fortress regard it with superstitious dread, but the Battle Brothers who use it find its presence oddly reassuring.





Watch Captain Hugo of the Crimson Fists
“Here we stand, far from home, but no freer from our burden.  Ever does the oppressive weight of the Emperor’s enemies press at the gates of civilization, until we cut their legs out from under them.”
The newest Watch Captain of the Deathwatch in the Tri-Sector, the Crimson Fist 2nd Company Marine Hugo has served in his current posting for under a year.  Prior to that, Huge had served in the Deathwatch for the past twenty years, as part of his Chapter’s frequent secondment of veteran Marines to the Ordo Xenos Chamber Militant.  Hugo had served with distinction in the Crimson Fists’ frequent battles against the Ork, even before the devastation of Rynn’s World in 989.M41.
When the Fortress-Monastery of the Chapter was destroyed during that war, Huge only barely managed to resist the urge to abandon his posting and fly home, but the Oath of Apocryphon restrained him.  He does not know how his reduced Brothers would feel about the decision, and does not wish to find out, making any future interactions with Battle Brothers of his own Chapter something he does not anticipate with joy.
In battle, Hugo specialized in the close-in, hand-to-hand combat at which he excelled as an Assault Marine.  Using his Power Fist and a Plasma Pistol, Hugo was the bane of armored Ork Meganobs, and remains one of the Sector’s resident experts on their anatomy and tactics.  As the newest Watch Captain of the region, Hugo holds command over the Watch Station Spectrum and its modest fleet.


Deathwatch Involvement
The Data-mechanics of Syracuse have another duty that they carefully conceal from the general public.  The Imperial citizenry, and the servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus alike, are ignorant of the role that the Data-mechanics play in the service of the Adeptus Astartes.  Although it would be well outside of the jurisdiction and remit of the Space Marines of the Emperor to involve themselves in the internal affairs of the Techpriesthood, the Techpriests themselves have made the role known to the Deathwatch.  Like many of the relationships between the branches of the sprawling Imperial bureaucracy, it is transactional, at heart.
Data-mechanics, deep in the colossal and untamed data-stores of Syracuse, have made frequent discoveries of information lost to the rest of humankind.  Usually, it is of no value beyond its theological weight to the data-fixated Syracuse Techpriesthood, but on occasion, scraps of important knowledge are reclaimed.  This has included starmaps, blueprints, and even a few tiny pieces of STC design and production data.  As the Imperium has expanded into the Tri-Sector’s neighboring space over the millennia, the Data-mechanics have become aware that not all is static within the Wild Data Stores.  When reports filed by the Adeptus Astartes on the campaigns and Crusades they have undertaken in the time since the Horus Heresy has entered the cogitators and servers of Syracuse, that has developed a startling pattern of triggering inexplicable reactions within the Wild Data Stores.
Many of these discoveries seem to be simple cause-and-reaction responses to triggering data from the data entries themselves.  At the time of the entry of a report by the Celestial Knights about a great battle between themselves and an allied Knight House in the Naxos Sector against a horde of Chaotic raiders, Data-mechanics found themselves suddenly having access to a previously-encrypted cogitator detailing blueprints for a discontinued ship the raiders had used.  No Data-mechanic had requested the information; the notification of clearance simply arrived on the great data-terminal the Data-mechanics used.

Years later, a force of the Deathwatch engaged in battle against an unknown race of serpentine xenos that had attacked the Drumnos Sector from the Oldlight Exo-zone.  When their mission reports were filed with the Inquisition, an Inquisitor cross-searched the Wild Data Stores for mention of the beasts.  When he did so, several random Data-Mechanics found their permissions level for the world’s Noosphere dramatically increased, and discovered information about the aliens that they could scarcely have known before.
Other puzzles arose over the millennia as the Wild Data Stores expanded.  While the technology level of the Imperium decayed, the data sieves and server banks of the Wild Data Stores grew, in danger as well as size.  Eventually, the data-obsessed Syracusian Techpriesthood lost all control of its scale and depth, and now, only the bravest venture within.
Some suspicious Inquisitors have noted that the Wild Data Stores seem to disgorge information more freely now than they have before the millennia-spanning rot of the Imperial technical literacy set in.  As the Data Stores grew, they even seemed to contain information that could not have possibly preceded their expansion, such as details about the Cloudburst Sector, which did not exist at the time.
These Inquisitors are increasingly certain that the Wild Data Stores contain an autocthonic, wholly holistic Abominable Intelligence.  Perhaps one was stored on a server or cogitator bank that was sacrificed to the Wild Data Stores as they outgrew their housing in the great underground tunnels of Syracuse, or perhaps it arose, immaculately birthed by the exabytes of information that have entered them.  More likely, the algorithms that thousands of years’ of Techpriests have installed on the data sieves to index them have taken on a life of their own.
Whatever the origin of the helpful but bafflingly unpredictable nature of the random data triggers of the Wild Data Sieves, they are undeniably more common now than they have been before.  As the Deathwatch expands into the Greater Tri-Sector, Inquisitors of a more Radical nature have begun releasing Deathwatch reports, only cursorily redacted, into the Wild Data Stores, simply to observe the results.  Data-mechanics, superstitious and fearful creatures at heart, have taken the sudden release of new information into their dala-looms resulting from these reports being uploaded as bestowments of divine favor.  Indeed, they are eager to share their findings with their superiors in the Tech-clergy.  It is child’s play for those self-same Inquisitors to pass along any pertinent information to the Deathwatch.

This has, at times, led to massive activity on the part of the Deathwatch’s field-deployed Kill-teams.  Whole Watch Companies have taken flight to do battle against previously-unknown forces of xenos that were revealed by the intercepted Inquisitorial reports.  On the very rarest of occasions, the Wild Data Stores and their mysterious guiding hand have even revealed archaeotech cached in their buildings to questing Data-mechanics.  When this happens, Inquisitors typically hear of it from Data-mechanics they have subverted to their cause, or simply from observing the religious ecstasies of celebrating Tech-clergy on Syracuse.

Physically obtaining samples of this archaeotechnology is another matter.  There are many Deathwatch facilities that employ archaeotech, of course, given their nature and incredible sensitivity, but outside of facilities manufactured for the specific purpose of interacting with it like Watch Fortress Erioch, the Deathwatch can rarely simply reach out and collect it.  Syracuse is no different.  Convincing members of the Data-mechanics to simply forfeit or even loan archaeotech their Wild Data Stores have produced would be a tall order indeed.  Thus, the transactional approach.  Inquisitors who believe that artifacts uncovered from the Wild Data Stores’ maps and hidden compartments foretell dangers for the Imperium trade for them with the Adeptus Mechanicus, usually for large sums of less significant archaeotech, or for test subjects for Syracuse’s weapon research.
This leads other, more puritanical Inquisitors to the brink of madness.  The brazenness of these more Radical Inquisitors, the Puritans insist, is a sign of incredible danger.  The mere idea that there could be an un-curtailed Abominable Intelligence loose in the most important data-stacks in the Segmentum Ultima must be faced with the utmost seriousness.  Yet, these Puritans are unable to act.  They can’t involve themselves in the attempts of the Radicals without being tainted with the same crime.  They can’t confront the Radicals without cause, but they can’t confirm their suspicions.  They can’t go to the Techpriests and ask them to put a stop to it, because that would mean admitting that they knew it was happening, and did nothing.  They can’t simply ignore it, because the Radicals are occasionally right, and the Deathwatch has put a stop to genuine threats to the Imperium, by acting without awareness upon the dark knowledge of the Wild Data Stores.  They can’t destroy the Wild Data Stores, because that would cause instant and terrible war between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Inquisition that the Inquisition would lose.  They can’t report the existence of an Abominable Intelligence to Mars, because they have no proof.  Finally, they can’t simply report the transactions to Syrcuse’s High Fabricators, because many of them are former Data-mechanics themselves, and would surely refuse to act against their oracular sources of knowledge.
Thus, the Puritanical Inquisitors find themselves in the grip of the same clutching frustration that drives so many of their number to extremes and Radicalism in Conclaves across the Galaxy, and simply hang on to their sanity with their fingers while praying for a miracle.

When the Radicals who have performed this surveillance and data-injection do find themselves in the possession of actionable intelligence or archaeotech from the Wild Data Stores, they make for Watch Fortress Dascomb.  High Inquisitrix Lerica’s close scrutiny of the Cold Trade and the xenotech of the Cloudburst Sector means that she has little patience for the mysteries of the Radicals, and even those from other Sectors, outside Cloudburst, must take care when interacting with Lerica.  Her terrible power, with the presiding Lordship of the Conclave Cloudburst and psychic might she can bring to bear, makes lying to her about the sources of their knowledge and hidden treasures untenable.  Yet, by presenting clearly human archaeotech and verifiable information of the justly-respected Data-mechanics of Syracuse to the Deathwatch, they can often gain aid from the Vigilant without invoking the Inquisitrix’s scorn.  Inquisitors have pursued their errands, even to the extent of doing what the mysterious intelligence of the Wild Data Stores implies they should, with the Deathwatch’s full co-operation.

Watch Commander Domack has his own suspicions about the seemingly-inexhaustible sources of the intelligence and archaeotechnolgical trinkets of the Inquisitors who hail from Drumnos.  Domack was chosen as Watch Commander because of his sterling reputation for insightful and decisive leadership, not investigative skills, but he is no fool.  He has not failed to observe that the Inquisitors bearing gifts have all come from the same place, and that many of the leads that they send his subordinates to chase have been sequential – reports he has filed with the Inquisition have produced subsequent investigations ‘coincidentally’ addressing parallel topics.  Nor has Watch Commander Domack failed to note that many of the archaeotechnological items these Inquisitors bear are of ancient Adeptus Mechanicus make, yet are outside the Techpriests’ apparent control.
For now, given the successes that the Kill-teams dispatched alongside these Drumnos Inquisitors have attained, he is content to simply keep a watchful eye on the situation, especially with the immense demands on Sector resources that the Glasian Migrations present.  If these diversions continue, however, he may choose to take more direct actions.

The Oldlight Exo-zone
The Astronomican’s psychic light defines the limits of the Emperor’s reach.  The mechanisms of navigation that allowed humanity to span the stars of the galaxy during their technological height are long gone, save the Navigators themselves.  The shadows cast in the Warp by Warp Storms can render even that great last beacon undetectable, and thus inaccessible to Imperial ships.  However, there are a few rare Navigators that have the means of traversing the Exo-zone’s shadows.  These Navigators are usually those that work for specialized agents of the Emperor, not the general body of vessels that serve the Chartist Captains and Imperial Navy.
The Oldlight Exo-zone is defined by the ripples in the Warp cast by the Storm of the Emperor’s Wrath, and the innumberable smaller storms from the rimward edge of the Segmentum Obscurus.  Within the Exo-zone, threats to the Imperium are effectively impossible to address; merely reaching them is extraordinarily difficult for all but the most skilled Navigators.  The Inquisition is not without other options, but the majority of the threats within that darkened realm are beyond direct assault.

There are many such threats, from Necron Tomb Worlds to Tyranid Hive Splinters.  Some agents of the Inquisition have returned from the region speaking of entire debased xenos empires, Dark God-worshipping dens of fallen humankind, and Eldar Craftworlds that no human has ever seen.
However, there are a few small pockets of Imperial might.  The great Watch Fortress Excalibris sits at the very edge of the galaxy, in a slender pocket of space where the Astronomican’s light shines.  A few hardy Imperial colonies cling to life, scattered throughout the region, and some Inquisitorial and Adeptus Mechnicus research outposts exist beyond the Imperium’s practical borders.
In the darkness, a green menace stirs.  The portions of the Oldlight Exo-zone closest to the Tri-Sector contain little in the way of Tyranid Hive elements, but significant numbers of Orks have been detected in systems just beyond the Imperium’s borders.  Many of these are Freebooters, who sail the sea of stars for loot and battle, with a stronger drive towards piracy than empire-building, but there are more territorial Orks in the Exo-zone as well.
The perennial problem of the greenskin lingers just as vividly in the lightly-inhabited regions of space as it does in the densely-inhabited.  Greenskins are a menace to humankind; indeed, they were one of the first.  As far back as records are kept, Orks have plagued humanity, but at the apex of human and Aeldari technological might, they were easily-curtailed.  Now that the Aeldari people are all but gone (save in dark and horrifying Commoragh) and humankind’s technological peak is an abandoned myth, the greenskin looms high over humanity’s future.  Occasional purges of Orkyforms in the Tri-Sector typically keep them in check, and very rare purges of Orkysystems succeed in erasing them from worlds entirely, but outside the borders of the Imperium, this is effectively impossible.
Still, there are potent opportunities for Explorers, Rogue Traders, and the Inquisition among the Orks of the Exo-zone.  Some of these Orks made their Orkholds on the ruins of lost Imperial colonies, or even ancient Terran Federation ones.  Other Orks make their ships from the remains of lost human vessels, or those of xenos that exist well outside the reach of Man.  Should these worlds, resources, and shipwrecks fall into Imperial hands, they could surely be traded to the Adeptus Mechanicus for vast sums of wealth.

First, these Orks must be defeated.  The Deathwatch of the pre-Cloudburst era of what is now the Tri-Sector made periodic forays into the Exo-zone from Drumnos’s trailing edge to kill what Orks lurked there.  As the Imperium decays, Cloudburst’s expanded size has allowed the Deathwatch to strike deeper, but the reliability of the Astronomican’s visibility has prevented much more activity in that regard.

The highest and most immediate xenos threat in the Oldlight Exo-zone of which the Imperium is aware is the Ork Boss Bluddwrencha, who has been gradually assembling a sizeable fleet along the Drumnos and Cloudburst border with the Exo-zone.  So far, the Adeptus Mechanicus Basilikon Astra has been able to hold the Ork back without serious trouble, but the Boss is clearly only testing the defenses of the Imperial border.  Bluddwrencha makes its headquarters upon the hollowed-out moon Xaff, just frustratingly out of reach of most Navigators’ skills of guidance.  There, the Boss has begun drawing together disparate forces from multiple Clans of Orks that dwell in the Exo-zone.
What the Imperium has not yet discerned is that the Boss is but a servant of a much deadlier threat.  The Warboss Grimbones, a Freebooter turned conqueror, defeated Bluddwrencha into the service of Waaagh! Grimbones, which the new Warboss has assembled with speed that would horrify the Inquisition if they were to learn of its existence.  It was Grimbones’ Waaagh! that the Big Chief Squiggothrider was going to join when the Space Hulk diverted to Oglith.  It was the psychic call of Grimbones’ Weirdboyz that the Orks now trapped on Foraldshold were answering when that conflict began.  Even now, Space Hulks and warships of the Greenskin menace creep through the Warp, seeking out the beacon of Grimbones’ psychic agitation to join the Waaagh!