 Our universe is a cold and terrible one, replete with horror, the very existence of which phrase the boundaries of our minds. Maleficent Xenos creatures predatory races from the great dark beyond our galaxy, and baleful outer intelligences from unreality itself compete with each other to feast upon the meat of our human flesh and the strained sanity of our human minds. One needs unshakable fortitude to simply be aware of the existences of these sundry insidious horrors, much less to study them in any detail. Yet such a course must be undertaken if humanity is to have any hope of defeating those that would undo all we have wrought and see us cast down at their feet. Many before I have laboured at this task, some to their thankless end, their minds shattered by the scope of what they must face. It is with no small amount of trepidation I undertake such a thing, as many of my records previous have seen me removed from the dreadful nature of my subjects by the gulf of time. Not so with the subjects of this. In an effort to better aid the cause of our precipitous imperium, I turn my attention to an altogether more current matter, building upon the subjects of those predecessors of my order with whatever new information and study has become extant. Such action is not common in the imperium, laboured as we have been for millennia with the heavy-handed and puritanical redactionism of the Ordos of the most holy Inquisition. But I do what I must, the sanctity and glory of him upon Terra. To that end, the subjects of this record present an almost utterly unknown yet incredibly potent threat to imperial security. Their reappearances have herald almost nothing but doom for our race, for one was essential in the breaking of the Eye, the destruction of the Gate, the sundering of lost, mourned Cadia. Know then that this is a record of the Cyclopean stellar mysteries, those mighty and unknowable citadels of the Void, the Blackstone Fortresses. Despite what the Blackstone Fortresses are, their nature, their history, their provenance, is a matter not settled amongst the various bodies of the Imperium responsible for the knowledge of such things. To chronicles such as I, they have apparently always existed, or at the very least their origin is buried so far in the depths of human prehistory as to be almost impossibly ancient. To the tech priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, they represent technology both unmatched and deeply heretical in its blasphemous advancement, a source of both deep religious concern as an affront to the machine god, but also of absolute fascination for the sheer incredible power they represent. To the Ordos of the Inquisition, in particular the Ordos Enos, they are a source of deep concern for the mystery of their origin, as surely whatever species is capable of constructing such blasphemies is one of unparalleled power and threat to our Imperium. And to the, shall we say, less scrupulous of the rogue trader dynasties, they represent the possibility of lost archaeotech fabulous wealth and limitless fame. What we know is thus. The Blackstone Fortress is a space-born citadel, larger than almost any void station or ecology or military installation the Imperium has ever crafted. It clips even the phallax, the space-faring fortress monastery of the Imperial Fists Astartes chapter, and in scope rival even some of the hideous Eildare craft worlds. Their origins are a complete mystery to the Imperium, though theories therein will be accounted for later in this record and in subsequent records, for they predate this empire of ours and appear in the earliest surviving records of the exploration of the sectors they were discovered in. Their power is simply horrifying. They seem to possess no motive force of their own, and in fact lay dormant until the advent of the Twelfth Black Crusade, when their terrible potential was finally revealed to the galaxy. It was in the Gothic sector, in segmentum obscurus, during that region's colonization in the 33rd millennium, that the fortresses were first discovered, scattered in the void, dark, cold and silent. The Imperium, no stranger to encountering artifacts of long dead worlds and long lost to Xenos races, could however provide absolutely no reliable estimate on their age, as all means of dating available to explorator teams returned wildly contradictory results, ranging from the tens of thousands of years to well into hundreds of millions of years, stretching into the epochs where even the existence of sentient life was unconfirmed. The fortresses most advanced systems were entirely dormant, bereft of life, and remained so, despite countless Adeptus Mechanicus attempts to revive them and bring them to full power. That being said, the more passive systems, such as artificial gravity, atmospheric processing, general life support, remained functional, and well within tolerance ranges for the human baseline, allowing the imperial elements in the Gothic sector to utilize the six fortresses discovered as stellar bases of operation, and void fortification hardpoints in wider system defense grids. As time went on, the Blackstone Fortresses became the locus of battle fleet Gothic's operations, as the Mechanicus were more and more successful in mounting imperial weaponry to their blasphemous power grids, and opening up chambers to serve as flight decks and naval dry docks. The six became, with the exception of the imperial-built station Port Moor, the identifiers for the sub-sectors of the Gothic sector itself. Centuries and millennia were to pass. The fortresses slumbered, they became part of imperial life, the focal point of naval operations within the sector. People forgot the questions that had been asked about their origins and purpose, save for the odd-questing Majos. Thousands of years had seen no change, there did not seem to be a reason to care, and then came the gaze of the Dispoiler, the warmaster of the Arch-enemy, Abaddon, Scion of the Arch-Treator Horus Luprachal, master of the Black Legion, the hated Dispoiler himself, had come to learn of the existences and secrets of the fortresses through the effort of his sorcerous cohort, Zarathistan, whose foul visions guided his master to the crone worlds of the Eldari, deep within the volumes of eye space, where the real and the unreal are as one, and hell itself bestrides the material plane. It is not fully known what transpired, when the Dispoiler communed with the predatory warp creatures that hunted through the dead Wraithbone cities of those damned worlds, but fragmentary texts speak of a prophecy, the Penumbra, an ancient Eldari mythic cycle that spoke of six weapons, six talismans of unimaginable power. It can be inferred that, through this dark communion, the Dispoiler came to know of the true nature of the Blackstone Fortresses, and the secrets to their activation and usurpation. The 12th Black Crusade, then the latest in the Dispoiler's massive military actions against the Imperium, can in large part be seen as having an almost singular purpose in mind, namely the capture of these artifacts. One is in no doubt, my colleagues would scorn this reductionist view of such a pivotal moment in the history of segmentum obscurus, and indeed the Imperium. I by no means wish to diminutise the millions that died, or re-smarch the incredible heroism of those who fought tooth and nail to drive off the depredations of the arch enemy, yet to cast the pivotal role the Fortresses played in both the Dispoiler's objective and strategies, with anything other than the utmost importance, is rank naivety. It was not for naught that the Dispoiler bent his will to obtaining two Xenos artifacts of unknown provenance, labelled in the records of Inquisitor Thaddeus Horst as the Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night. Information on these devices comes entirely from the writings of Horst, who himself was known to have compiled his records from ancient Eldari myths, and Copius adeptus mecanicus Xeno technologis investigations. The picture, even before the disappearance of Inquisitor Horst, is almost laughably incomplete. Their origins are unknown, and only scant documentation of their capabilities are recorded, mostly from the Black Crusade, or Gothic War, as it is also known, itself. The Hand of Darkness appears to possess some sort of horrific atrifying field, causing it to channel warp energy and disintegrate anything the wielder touches. The Eye, meanwhile, projects a beam of ebb and energy recorded as having catastrophic effects on technology and power systems. Just how the Dispoiler utilizes these capabilities, or if the weapons have other, more esoteric properties, is entirely unknown, as Inquisitor Horst's records are, as noted, incomplete. Regardless, the seizure of these artefacts represented some of the first moves the arch-enemy made during the opening stages of the Gothic War, and directly preceded the seizure of the Fortresses. The Dispoiler's fleets hit each of the major Imperial Navy installations in the sector almost simultaneously, with each of the Blackstone Fortresses appearing to suffer complete power failures in the initial stages of each engagement. Three fell to the Dispoiler, and three more remained inert, and in the hands of the scattered Imperial forces of Battlefleet Gothic, it was now that their full potential was unveiled before the horrified eyes of Imperial command. The Blackstone Fortress, when awakened to full operating capacity, is a mobile weapons platform of almost unspeakable destructive potential. Their main weapon batteries, to apply potentially crude Imperial weapons terminology, function as a means through which the energy of the warp itself is channeled into real space. But with pure beams of unreality itself is, it is obvious to say, beyond catastrophic, to anything that lies upon its path. During the two decades of the war, the awakened Blackstone Fortresses proved devastatingly effective in any naval engagements they were part of. Their shields and surface plating appeared completely impregnable to Imperial fleets, and their batteries of warp energy would overwhelm the capital ships' voyage shields in mere minutes. During the Battle of the Tyrannus system, the Spoiler combined the fire of his three fortresses upon the system's star itself. The resulting energy beam, fired even as it was from tens of AUs distant, wrecked apocalyptic damage upon the star, causing it to go supernova and engulf most of the inner planets of the system, and bombard those remaining with utterly lethal waves of stellar radiation. The death toll numbered in the billions. Ironically, it was only the power of the fortresses that would ultimately lead to the Spoiler's eventual defeat at the Battle of Schindelgeist. As an alliance of Eldari and Imperial fleets, betting upon the arch enemy wishing to seize the remaining fortresses in Imperial possession, laid a superbly effective ambush. An attempt by Abaddon to recreate the destruction of Tyrannus' star upon Schindelgeist's own was only thwarted with the sacrifice of an Imperial battleship, guided by her captain into the path of the converging beams and disrupting the flow of warp energies therein. With his fleet being overpowered and his fortresses unable to use their world-killing weaponry, the Warmaster fled, retreating in the direction of Ispace. Strike cruisers of the Angels of Redemption Astartes Chapter were able to catch and board one of the lagging Blackstone Fortresses, and records of what they found aboard, and began to though they are, continue to inform Imperial discourse upon the weapons. The Astartes that made the boarding action reported that the fortresses were manned by no crew, or at least none that were discernible, or mortal. They encountered no resistance, even from shields or point-to-defense weaponry, as their boarding craft approached. The fortress intercepted was fully powered, with the techmarines noting incredible energy build-up, and transmissions, through the now entirely active power grid. Luminescence ran the lengths of the corridors, the dimensions of which refused to correspond to accurately with either aspect's readings or simple visual analysis. The angles appeared wrong. Accounts from the Astartes that deigned to be debriefed by the Adaptus Mechanicus noted that the blasphemous structure appeared to be quixotically alive, perhaps even sentient. This is the limit of what we in the Imperium currently possess in terms of an accurate picture of the interior of a fully activated fortress, for at this point the almost recaptured structure began to disintegrate and self-destruct. As the Angels of Redemption evacuated, reports from the Gothic sector indicated that the three remaining fortresses in Imperial possession were doing the same, becoming forever lost to Imperial hands. Long-range aspect's readings, however, confirmed that the two in the clutches of the arch-enemy continued to power their way deep into the Eye of Terror. Despite what became of them, was unknown at the better part of a millennia, until the events of the previous century, when the close of the 41st millennium itself were to play out in all their dread horror. The dispoiler, keen not to have his possibly greatest military asset usurped, retained at least one of the fortresses for himself, but in his cruel cunning, parted with one gift, it has been reported, for the traitorous Huron, known as Blackheart, dreadmaster of the Red Corsairs, heretic Astartes. Such a monumental favour was given for the tyrant of Babab's unswerving loyalty in the dispoiler's most diabolical scheme yet, the crescendo of his 10,000 year vengeance. The 13th Black Crusade. Now the full details of this horrific war are sealed within a separate record. The deployment of the Blackstone Fortress, Will of Eternity, in the orbit of the citadel world of Cadia, was one of the most crucial parts of that campaign, as was its destruction by the fortress monastery of the Imperial Fists, the mighty spaceport in Phailex, accomplished only at great cost and with the aid of internal sabotage of the fortress itself, conducted by a boarding party from the Space Wolves chapter. Even in death, however, the artifact would serve the dispoiler's aims, as in his monumental spite. The Warmaster of the Arch Enemy turned his broken prize into a final weapon, powering it towards Cadia's surface as an artificial meteorite, sundering the world's very crust, and finally breaking the planet that had defied him for millennia. While the loss of this fortress is undeniably a huge military blow to the dispoiler, the result it achieved is arguably worth the tariff. It would be a pleasing thing at this present moment, for one to be able to proclaim that the Blackstone Fortresses, with only one of the six discovered remaining in existence, have lessened as a threat to the Imperium, but alas, such a statement can no longer be made. Quite separate from the Blackheart's possession of the sixth original fortress, a hated creature only eclipsed in power amongst the hosts of the Arch Enemy by the Warmaster himself, word has reached Terra, from the fringes of Imperial space of a monstrous and terrifying discovery. It would appear that, in the darkest reaches of the space between stars, a new Blackstone Fortress has been found. Deep within the squalls and tempests of the wilderness void, it would appear, given reports, to be slowly awakening, playing host to a bizarre and eclectic host of inhabitants, almost more similar to a space hulk than any of the Blackstone Fortresses previously encountered. Rogue Trader expeditionary forces are, as ever, the first to set their sights on the potential prizes that may be redolent within its unknown depths, and are reportedly making full wake to the Citadel, racing the ponderous pace of Imperial bureaucracy. It's currently entirely unknown the full status, capabilities, or even origin of this fortress, removed as it is by both location, and perhaps provenance, from the others previously encountered. What the future can possibly hold for this new discovery, one cannot even guess. But history, well, history grants one only a grim sense of foreboding. Acolytes record the attached data stamp ident code for an unearthed record concerning the possible origins of the fortresses. The source is of dubious quality at best, and as such has been appended, rather than included in this full record. Until such a time, as we may discourse again, Ave Imperator, Gloria and Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Oculus imperia. And if you're looking to keep in touch with the channel, get regular updates, you can follow me on twitter, at buttstuffkaiju, or check us out on discord, a link will be in the description and on the channel page.