From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop wargame, the Eye of Terror has two meanings. In the fictional universe of the 41st millennium, it is a massive rift where Warp space and realspace combine. Eye of Terror also refers to the massive worldwide campaign run by Games Workshop in 2003.

Contents 1 Fictional perspective 1.1 Warhammer Fantasy 2 The Worldwide Campaign 2.1 The Third Sphere Expansion 3 Appearances in Fiction 4 References 5 External links

Ten thousand years before the rise of the Imperium of Man, the ancient race known as the Eldar fell into decline, caused partially by an increase in the exercising of primal urges and carnal desires. The emotion generated by these excesses was channelled into the psychically charged medium that is the Immaterium (better known as The Warp), slowly forming into a new power. Gaining strength from the debased actions of the Eldar, the power eventually gave birth to the entity known as the Chaos god Slaanesh, whose birth cries drew the souls of billions of Eldar into the Warp, devastating the once proud race and bringing into being the warpspace/realspace interface that came to be known as the Eye of Terror.

The region of space contained within the Eye of Terror is literally a living hell, home to the darkest evils of the galaxy. The Eye stains the night skies of many worlds with a smear the colour of infected blood; able to be seen from every world within ten thousand light years. Deadly warp storms surround the Eye, making interstellar travel practically impossible.

Within the Eye, the laws of reality no longer apply; time flows at erratic rates, and matter and energy are indistinct. Horrible daemons fly through space along Warp currents, terrorizing any creature unfortunate enough to end up inside.

Most of the Traitor Legions fled into the Eye of Terror at the conclusion of the Horus Heresy, and use the Eye as a base of operations, striking out at opportune, seemingly random moments. The close proximity to Chaos causes horrific, painful mutations in the manner befitting whichever Chaos god the Traitor Marines consider their patron. However, this proximity also makes the Traitor Legionnaires astonishingly long-lived compared even to Imperial Space Marines, with lifespans lasting into the tens of thousands of years. Each legion has a homeworld somewhere within the Eye; hellish mockeries of their original worlds.

The Imperial world of Cadia lies nearest to the best-known stable gateway between realspace and the Eye. This world, and the surrounding systems, are all dedicated to the military, for these worlds are the first line of defence against the attacks of Chaos. Many believe that the stable route leading to Cadia is caused by an immense network of pylons on the surface of the planet. A widely-held belief is that these pylons are a Necron construction: The Necrons have constructed similar networks on the Sentinel Worlds and on Medusa V, and fought vicious battles to protect them and their ultimate purpose.

In earlier editions of both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy, it was believed that the planet on which the Warhammer Fantasy world existed lay within the Imperium's borders, but surrounded by impenetrable Warp storms. In later editions of both games this was dropped and revised out of all editions of the background material. Aspects of it are still considered staple Warhammer lore by some in the fan community.

In the background book The Liber Chaotica (Von Staufer and Williams, 2005) the author's fictive narrator travels "between worlds". Among his visions is a "place of sorcerers" and a champion of Tzeentch who is red-skinned, a cyclops, and who has given birth to a thousand sons. This refers to Magnus the Red, the daemon Primarch of the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines. Other cloaked references are made to the Traitor Marines, the Black Crusades, the Daemon Primarch Mortarion, Lucius the Eternal, the Birth of Slaanesh, and the Fall of the Eldar.

The fictional Eye of Terror was used by Games Workshop as the setting for their 2003 worldwide Warhammer 40,000 campaign. The campaign itself represented Abaddon the Despoiler's Thirteenth Black Crusade against the Imperium, primarily the attempt by the united forces of Chaos to break through the Cadian Gate.

The playable armies were divided into two factions, Order and Disorder:

Order - Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Kroot Mercenaries, Daemonhunters, Witch Hunters.

Disorder - Chaos Space Marines, Necrons, Orks, Dark Eldar, Tyranids.

A Campaign Codex was released by Games Workshop, containing background information on the Eye of Terror and the events leading up to the Thirteenth Black Crusade. Four new supplemental army lists were presented; the Space Wolves Thirteenth Company, the Cadian Shock Troops, The Lost and the Damned, and the Ulthwé Strike Force. The Codex also marked the first appearance of Ursarkar E. Creed as a playable special character.

The campaign ran for eight weeks, in which more than forty thousand players registered, and submitted over a quarter of a million games results to the campaign website. The conclusion of the campaign resulted in a minor victory for the forces of Disorder. The line was held in many places, but on the strategic level, the Disorder players were considered to have consistently out-fought and out-manoeuvred their opponents. The Chaos forces made slow but somewhat steady progress on many fronts, yet made no decisive victory, especially when a "backstage" plan to gain a foothold in the Eldar Webway system turned into a complete and total failure.

The campaign was hard fought, and senior Games Workshop executives have commented that the events of the campaign will set a cornerstone to the rich background of the Warhammer 40,000 universe for years to come.

As the Tau reside on the opposite side of the galaxy to the Eye of Terror, and have minimal faster-than-light capability, a separate mini-campaign was established to run at the same time as the Eye of Terror campaign. All results involving Tau troops as one of the playing races were counted towards the expansion of the Tau Empire, which in the background was caused by the movement of much of the Imperium's forces to protect Cadia and the surrounding sectors, leaving many worlds on the frontier of Tau space with inadequate defences. The Tau mini-campaign was also presented as an alternate to Ork and Tyranid players who did not wish to 'assist' Chaos.

During the campaign, the Tau Empire expanded to 133% of its original size. This result has been reflected in the background material and rules published in Codex: Tau Empire (Hoare, 2006), which makes reference to these results as the Third Sphere Expansion.

In the graphic novel, Bloodquest (Rennie and MacNeil, 2005), the main characters of the story, Leonatos and his squad of Blood Angels, venture into the Eye of Terror, onto the Daemon World, Eidolon.

The novel Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, 2004) is set upon Medrengard, deep within the Eye of Terror and home to the Iron Warriors traitor legion.

There is also Eye of Terror (Games Workshop, 2000) novel written by Barrington J. Bayley.

• Abnett, Dan (2001). Malleus. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84154-204-0. 
• Chambers, Andy; Hoare, Andy, and Kelly, Phil (2003). Warhammer 40,000 Codex: Eye of Terror. Nottingham: Games Workshop. ISBN 1-84154-398-5. 
• McNeill, Graham (2004). Dead Sky, Black Sun. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84416-148-X. 
• Rennie, Gordon; and MacNeil, Colin (2005). Bloodquest: The Eye of Terror Trilogy. Nottingham: Black Library. ISBN 1-84416-146-3. 

• The official Eye of Terror website

Games Workshop Worlwide Campaigns
Eye of Terror | Storm of Chaos | War of the Ring | Fall of Medusa V | The Nemesis War | more...