Background

To understand the desperate events in the Esenie system, one has to reflect on the terrible things that happened in the neighbouring system; Medusa.

The Medusa System may have gone unnoticed had it not been for the huge Warp storm named Van Grothe's Rapidity located very close to the Medusa System. Medusa IV and V were colonized to provide both resources and a staging post for ships attempting to sling through the relatively stable Warp storm, giving them vast improvement in travel times, although at a much higher risk of destruction. The system was prone to serious Warp storms from the Rapidity to envelop the system and cut them off from the Imperium, sometimes for month or even decades. Every time the storms ended however and astropathic communication was re-established, the first signal to be received from them was that everything was fine on the worlds. But not all was well. As always, the ruinous powers moved its positions forward. From what is now known as The Medusa Schism , things went downhill fast. Fractions fought and things went from bad to impossible. The Ordo Malleus decided that the only way to root out the bad seeds was to bring on the hardest medicine there is. Medusa IV was abandoned and destroyed by Exterminatus through the use of one salvo of atmospheric incinerator torpedoes (under the watch of Inquisitor Baptiste), which made the oxygen in the atmosphere ignite and destroyed all life on the planet.

It is said the planet glowed for a whole month. Those citizens saved from Medusa IV were transported to Medusa V and screened for heretics by the Inquisition, and thousands were put to death, but that was nothing compared to the vast explosion in the population of Medusa V that the arrival created.

Events, however, have a tendency to go badly when things go well for a period. 200 years after The Medusa Schism, the Rapidity began to "boil over" and grew at an alarming rate. Some believed it to be growing because it attempted to become a second Eye of Terror, the Ordo Malleus postulated some form of Chaos Sorcerer has worked their magic upon it, but in the end, they were all irrelevant. As the Rapidity expanded, it consumed every waystation and outpost it touched and it finally reached the Medusa system! Medusa V was doomed and destroyed and the forces that had been battling over it were scattered to other systems. The lion’s part fled to the Esenie system, where hostilities naturally continued.

Please go to Brief History for more on the events in the Esenie sector...

(The text above is from 40k Lexicanum)