Sotha was a far-flung world close to the edge of the galaxy's Eastern Fringe discovered during the Great Crusade in 882.M30 by the Imperial expeditionary fleets of the Ultramarines Legion. It was most notable for being home to the potent xenos artefact known as the Pharos.
Sotha would later serve as the Chapter homeworld of the Scythes of the Emperor, a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and successor of the Ultramarines.
The Scythes of the Emperor, along with their allies, the Lamenters Chapter, were virtually destroyed during the invasion of the Imperium of Man by the Tyranids' Hive Fleet Kraken in 992.M41. The planet's biosphere itself was consumed by the hive fleet and left an airless, lifeless rock, the newest Dead World of the Imperium created by the Great Devourer.
In the Era Indomitus, Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl began to terraform Sotha as part of a bargain he made with the dwindling Firstborn Astartes of the Scythes of the Emperor to investigate the Pharos in his belief that its technology could possibly be useful in finding a way to close the Great Rift.
In a few hundred standard years, the planet's climate and biosphere is expected to be fully recovered and once more capable of supporting Human life.
History[]
Great Crusade[]
Sotha was a far-flung world close to the edge of the galaxy's Eastern Fringe, almost at the limits of both the fiefdom of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar and the span of all Imperial territory. It was one of the few Terra-comparable ecosystems discovered so far out in the galactic East during the Great Crusade.
It possessed living oceans and densely forested, mountainous landmasses. There were lower-level animal-forms, including avians and insects. Curiously, there were no higher forms of life, nor any obvious trace of attempted xenos visitation or colonisation.
Primarch Roboute Guilliman and the expedition fleets of Ultramar had always considered the world a particular curiousity, for it had not been settled during the original outward Human interstellar expansion of the Age of Technology. There was no evidence that any Human presence had reached Sotha, not even a colony that had been established and then died out.
Not long after its initial discovery, Imperial surveyors discovered something amazing beneath Mount Pharos, the tallest of all the peaks in the planet's majestic mountain ranges. A survey mission conducted by both archaeologists and xenoculturists discovered a massive aperture constructed by an unknown xenos species.
Known as the Pharos, the interior spaces of the large archaic device were cut from the mountain's living rock by processes that no one had been able to explain. Plans for full colonisation by the people of Ultramar were put on hold after the discovery.
A small agri-colony was approved instead, to be based on Sotha in support of the Imperial survey to Mount Pharos. A dedicated unit of Ultramarines, the 199th Company, was assigned to Sotha as permanent protection, and the world was given the classification "restricted" by the Imperial bureaucracy.
Horus Heresy[]
Barabas Dantioch, a former Warsmith of the traitorous Iron Warriors, who remained staunchly loyal to the Emperor once the Horus Heresy began, was recruited by Roboute Guilliman for his skills in the arts of siegecraft. Dantioch and his Loyalist compatriots of the IVth Legion managed to arrive in the Realm of Ultramar before the Battle of Calth was initiated by the treacherous Word Bearers Legion.
During the Traitors' assault on that world, the Dark Apostle Erebus managed to complete a blasphemous ritual on Calth's surface which summoned a phenomenon called the "Ruinstorm" to the galaxy's Eastern Fringe -- a monstrous Warp Storm larger and more destructive than anything space-faring Humanity had witnessed since the days of the Age of Strife.
It was intended to split the void asunder, dividing the galaxy in two and rendering vast tracts of the Imperium impassable. The Five Hundred Worlds was rendered unnavigable except for the most high-risk enterprises. Imperial trade and communication in the region collapsed.
Ultramar, as a single and admirable area of Imperial governance, was ruined. The Ruinstorm would also isolate and trap those Loyalist forces caught behind it like the Ultramarines, preventing them from coordinating their efforts and supporting one another as the Traitor Legions moved towards Terra.
Dantioch had supposed that he would be employed in fortifying the physical defences of Macragge and other key worlds of Ultramar, for this was his forte. Then Roboute Guilliman had revealed to him the long-sequestered mysteries of Sotha, and Dantioch had realised that the survival of a pocket empire like Ultramar lay less in fortifying its physical defences and far, far more in strengthening its function and operation.
Dantioch spent over nine solar months unlocking Sotha's mysteries and activating the planet's deep-time secrets. Dantioch agreed absolutely with the Ultramarines primarch's assessment -- Sotha offered a way in which the Loyalists might overcome the Ruinstorm, rather than simply batten down against its wrath.
Dantioch and the Ultramarines descended into the vast chambers of the Pharos on pre-fabricated walkways of STC design to provide platforms, ladders, stairs and bridges that would allow Humans to traverse and explore the almost endless interior of the Pharos.
During their explorations they discovered a central chamber, later known as "Primary Location Alpha," which Dantioch was convinced was the centre of the entire mechanism. Dantioch took to referring to it in his notes as the "tuning stage" or the "sounding board".
He had been fairly confident that he understood the function of the Pharos even from the data he had studied before his arrival on Sotha. The Pharos was part of an ancient interstellar navigation system, both a beacon and route-finder, and it also permitted instantaneous communication across unimaginable distances.
Unlike Imperial Warp technology that used the Immaterium to by-pass realspace, the quantum function of the Pharos once allowed for site-to-site teleportation, perhaps through a network of gateways. Its fundamental function lay not with psychic energy like Imperial FTL technology, but with empathic power.
Dantioch also believed that other way stations like the Pharos still existed, or once did, on other worlds throughout the galaxy. It was not one, single beacon like the Astronomican. Dantioch believed the Pharos and other stations like it were once used to create a network of navigational pathways between stars, as opposed to a single, range-finding point the way the Astronomican did. The Pharos was more like a lantern than a beacon.
The Pharos could be tuned and pointed, illuminating a site or location for the benefit of range-finding. Though Roboute Guilliman was loathe to use xenos technology, Ultramar had to be held together, and to rebuild the Five Hundred Worlds, the Loyalists had to restore communication and travel links by piercing and banishing the current age of darkness.
Utilising the Pharos' strange abilities, Dantioch was able to illuminate Macragge, lighting it up as a bright spot that was visible throughout realspace and the Warp, despite the effects of the Ruinstorm, providing a directional beacon for navigation in the absence of the Astronomican.
Fall of Sotha[]
The Scythes of the Emperor Chapter was founded in the early 32nd Millennium as part of the 3rd Founding from the Ultramarines force that had been left behind to guard Sotha. The Scythes established a fortress-monastery upon their newly designated Chapter homeworld of Sotha.
From this base of operations, near the region of space known as the Damocles Gulf in the Segmentum Ultima, the Chapter took upon themselves the duty of policing and safeguarding many of the nearby Imperial mining and manufactorum settlements.
Over 300 standard years after the assault of Hive Fleet Behemoth, the first of many hive fleets of the dreaded Tyranids upon the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy, the Emperor's Tarot began to tell of foul portents ten standard years before the arrival of Hive Fleet Kraken in 992.M41. Among the planets overwhelmed by the locust-tide of the Kraken was the Scythes of the Emperor's homeworld of Sotha.
Even for a well-defended Chapter planet, there was little hope against such vast numbers of xenos and their remorseless hunger. With devastating losses to the Chapter fleet, the Scythes were driven back to their fortress-monastery, which quickly came under siege by the Tyranids.
Thousands of Tyranid bio-forms landed on the planet, and the Scythes of the Emperor prepared to make their stand at their fortress-monastery in order to give as much time as possible for the civilian population of Sotha to evacuate.
Before the planet and the Scythes' fortress-monastery were completely overrun, the Scythes managed a breakout from the doomed world, falling back to regroup in the nearby Miral System. Sotha, along with so many other planets in the path of the inexorable advance of Hive Fleet Kraken, was reduced to the barren state of an asteroid or Dead World by the Tyranid swarms.
Two hundred Space Marines from the Chapter had broken through the Tyranid assault but every mortal Chapter serf and servant was lost. With much of the region overwhelmed by the Tyranids, there was nowhere for these brave Astartes to go beyond the claws of the Kraken.
Sotha was completely consumed by the Tyranids and eventually was reduced to nothing more than mere rubble floating in the void of space.
Expedition to Sotha[]
Over ten thousand Terran years later, the birth of the Great Rift that bisected the galaxy at the start of the Era Indomitus reactivated the Pharos.
This was discovered by the Scythes of the Emperor, who still guarded the world after its destruction by a Genestealer Cult infestation and Hive Fleet Kraken during the Second Tyrannic War.
Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl led an expedition to Sotha with the aid of the Ultramarines and the remaining Firstborn Space Marines of the Scythes of the Emperor to study and perhaps use the Pharos' technology to close the Great Rift and defeat Chaos.
The expedition came under assault by Genestealer Cultists who had infiltrated the Chapter serfs of the Scythes of the Emperor. Ultimately all of that Chapter's remaining Firstborn Marines were slain alongside their Chapter Master Thracius in combat with the Genestealer Patriarch whose cult had first called Hive Fleet Kraken to destroy Sotha.
After reaching the Pharos, Cawl discovered that a shard of the C'tan Zarhulash the Potentate had provided the power source for the ancient Pharos. He forged a deal with the alien star god, in which Zarhulash agreed to destroy the device by removing its heart, creating a miniature singularity.
In exchange, Cawl agreed to remove the shackles of necrodermis that kept the C'tan Shard captive and create a portal with the Pharos to allow it to finally escape from Sotha.
Cawl seemingly agreed, but this was only a ruse as he actually teleported Zarhulash to a far-off region of the galaxy where the C'tan Shard was surrounded by hostile Necron Tomb Worlds. Zarhulash swore revenge on Cawl for this betrayal.
Cawl was able to escape from Sotha as the Pharos collapsed and gathered much data from an examination of the Pharos' heart, including the location of other Pharos devices and large deposits of the strategic material known as blackstone across the galaxy.
Cawl hoped to use this information to eventually find a way to build a technological solution that would seal the Great Rift once and for all.
As part of a deal he made with the Scythes of the Emperor's Firstborn Astartes, in return for their aid with the Pharos, Cawl promised that the Adeptus Mechanicus would begin to terraform Sotha to restore it as a living homeworld for the Primaris Marines of the Scythes of the Emperor.
With the Mechanicus' efforts, the planet's climate and biosphere is expected to be fully recovered and once more capable of supporting Human life within a few hundred standard years.
Sources[]
- White Dwarf 306 (UK), "Index Astartes: Purge the Alien", pg. 52
- Prince of Crows (Novella) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- The Unremembered Empire (Novel) by Dan Abnett
- Legends of the Space Marines (Anthology), "Orphans of the Kraken", by Richard Williams
- Hammer and Bolter 21, "The Shadow of the Beast", by Laurie Goulding
- Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work (Novel) by Guy Haley, Chs. 8, 9, 23, 26