Ulan Hûda

Ulan Hûda was a Rogue Forge World discovered by The Riven Legion at some point during the Great Crusade. Beyond the edges of the maps of the lmperium was to be found a great stretch of wild and dangerous space. Here, xenos terrors and lost enclaves of debased human cultures still held sway and preyed upon each other, even raiding into the Thramas sector and testing the defences of the Nightwatch. XVth Legion fleets had listed the region as of negligible value to the lmperium, discouraging committing the resources of the Great Crusade into conquering the barren worlds of the gulf, mounting occasional punitive expeditions of their own into unknown space. Yet, as M31 began, the region remained as chaotic as ever, its secrets still hidden at the outbreak of the Five Ruins.

History
In the years before the Five Ruins, Ulan Hûda was little more than a rumour, a dark legend spoken of by the most adventurous of chartist captains in hushed tones. Known as the predator-forge, it was a monstrous creation of heinous and twisted technology that prowled the systems beyond the edge of the Imperium and devoured entire worlds to sate its hunger. The truth later made plain was to be no less terrifying than the legends, for if anything it would prove more unbelievable than any fabricated tale. Ulan Hûda had begun as a minor Forge World, stranded within the isolated systems later known as the Ghoul Stars. There, cut off from all aid and succour and surrounded by hordes of foul xenos, its archmagos perceived only one route to survival - they would make themselves more terrifying than those that opposed them.

Forced by direct need, the first tech-magi of Ulan Hûda refashioned their home by means of technology long deemed utterly forbidden by Mars, for in its use they risked harm to the very fabric of space. Buried deep within the core of Ulan Hûda, a series of arcane engines were created that would allow it to breach realspace and sojourn within the Warp itself Moving from system to system, Ulan Hûda became a scourge, overwhelming those weaker than it and fleeing those that were strong. Those they overthrew were subsumed by the predator-forge, their worlds reduced to a slurry of broken earth and the people that once dwelt upon them reforged as servitors and cogitator cores.

Technology, both human and xenos, was incorporated into the refashioned shell of Ulan Hûda until it little resembled anything known to Mankind and its rulers could no longer be called sane.

Such a horrific creation could not be welcomed openly within the Imperium, indeed such were its transgressions that, by Imperial law, it would be destroyed for the taint of the forbidden and xenos that it had taken into itself, and yet it escaped all sanction as the Imperium reached the fringe. Records found during the Scouring indicate that factions within The Riven purposefully concealed the predator-forge from Imperial scrutiny. In return, they received a share of its forbidden spoils, strange technologies and exotic slaves, as well as the services of its misbegotten Titans, the Legio Phasma or the Void Spectres. In the last years of the Ruins, this alliance would be openly revealed as The Riven unleashed Ulan Hûda upon the Imperium in an attempt to turn the tide of a conflict that seemed to have gone against them.

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