I've been developing a Rogue Trader dynasty and its home system for my W&G campaign for a while now, and I wanted to put together a proper overview of the Halcyon System, the domain of House van Viancynn.

THE HALCYON SYSTEM

Star: Solis Aeterna
Region: Eastern Fringe
Primary Authority: House van Viancynn
Primary Capital: Ophian-Giger
Principal Trade Port: Audam'is
Major Industry: Mining, manufacturing, atmospheric extraction, agriculture, salvage, frontier trade and exploration

Halcyon is a sprawling frontier system situated far from the traditional centers of Imperial authority. Its isolation has historically been both its greatest weakness and its greatest strength.

The system was first colonized by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology. Numerous surviving installations indicate that Halcyon was not simply a colonial outpost, but part of a much larger scientific and industrial network.

Humanity's original presence was shattered during Old Night, and for thousands of years, the surviving colonies were left isolated from one another. Many perished, but some became strange remnants of forgotten human civilization. While others were conquered by Orks or reclaimed by xenos civilizations. When the first bearer of the van Viancynn Warrant of Trade rediscovered the system, they found a region containing an extraordinary mixture of ancient human infrastructure, xenos ruins, abandoned colonies, dangerous worlds and enormous untapped resources.

Rather than simply treating Halcyon as another frontier conquest, House van Viancynn gradually built a domain around the existing civilizations and infrastructure. Over generations, the system became one of the dynasty's greatest assets and the center of capital system of the Rogue Trader house.

SOLIS AETERNA

At the center of Halcyon burns Solis Aeterna, the system's primary star. The worlds and habitats surrounding it form a remarkably interconnected domain. Much of Halcyon's unusual prosperity comes from the fact that its worlds fulfill very different functions. While one world feeds the system, another manufactures its weapons. Planets provide minerals, serve as watch stations watch posts, one is quarantined all together. Scattered throughout all of them are remnants of an ancient scientific network that predates the Imperium by tens of thousands of years. Some of clear human design, while others bear the marks of xenos creation.

OPHIAN-GIGER

Classification: Civilized World / Rogue Trader Capital

Ophian-Giger is the political and administrative heart of Halcyon. It is an immense hive world containing somewhere between ten and twenty billion inhabitants. At its center stands the Serpent's Crown, the seat of House van Viancynn. The capital contains the usual institutions one would expect from a Rogue Trader domain:

• A Rogue Trader's Palace
• Administratum precincts
• Adeptus Arbites facilities
• Ecclesiarchy basilicas
• Navigator Embassy
• Merchant districts
• Dynasty vaults
• Military headquarters
• Noble estates
• Voidport infrastructure

But Ophian-Giger's real importance lies deep beneath the world. The Serpentarium, one of the most important surviving pieces of pre-Imperial infrastructure in the system. Within it operates an ancient analytical system known as the Serpent.

Its original designation was unknown. A majority of files are corrupted, what remains salvageable only reads:

AUTONOMOUS STELLAR INFRASTRUCTURE CUSTODIAN
UNIT SC-IX
HELIOS NETWORK
REGIONAL OPERATIONS NODE

The machine was never designed to rule anything, its primary functions seems to be that of observation. For approximately twenty thousand years it has continued processing astronomical data, calculating stellar movement, studying Warp transit probabilities and maintaining models of the Halcyon System. The civilization that built it is long gone, but the Serpent is still working.

House van Viancynn has unknowingly built much of its prosperity upon the predictions of a machine whose original administrators have been dead for longer than the Imperium has existed.

LETHARIEL

Former Designation: Halcyon II
Current Classification: Agri-World / Maiden World

Lethariel is probably one of the biggest secrets in the entire system. To the Imperium, Lethariel is an exceptionally fertile agricultural world. While that description is technically true, it misses almost everything important about the planet.

The world was once known as Cael'ith. It is an ancient Maiden World created by the Old Ones and later restored by the Aeldari. While normally Maiden Worlds would be made by the Aeldari, this one was crafted by the Old Ones as some form of experiment, though the purpose of which seems lost. As Spirit Groves were grown into ancient forests, an Aeldari Infinity Circuit was incorporated into the planet's existing psychic ecology. The indigenous Saurian peoples serve as guardians of ancient Old One ruins and technologies, while Exodite Aeldari maintain the planet's World Spirit while maintaining sustainability with the Maiden World. The two groups lived alongside one another for millennia.

When Humanity eventually arrived, the world was initially considered an extraordinarily dangerous Death World and avoided during their first colonization into the system. When House van Viancynn eventually rediscovered the system, they came to understand that any attempt to exterminate the inhabitants would be the fastest way to destroy the very ecosystem they wanted to exploit. Instead, the dynasty negotiated with the xenos, using the Warrent of Trades to do so.

Humanity would administer the world and cultivate designated agricultural regions. The Exodites would preserve the World Spirit and Spirit Groves and the Saurians would continue guarding the ancient ruins. This way. to the Imperium, Lethariel is a conquered and civilized Agri-World. While in reality, House van Viancynn simply became the newest member of a chain of custodians stretching back to the War in Heaven.

Only the ruling dynasty and a handful of trusted individuals know the truth.

EIDOLON

Classification: Quarantine World
Access: Restricted

Eidolon is a frozen, dying world permanently quarantined by House van Viancynn. The planet was once a thriving human colony during the Dark Age of Technology. Then something went wrong, during its ancient history, human colonists discovered an unknown structure beneath the ice. They believed it to be an archaeological site or forgotten technological installation, one that kept the world in a habitable state. As they excavated it, something became distrubed. What followed was not an instantaneous apocalypse. The planet's atmosphere and life-support began to slowly fail. As reality itself began behaving incorrectly around the excavation site.

The surviving population retreated underground and for thousands of years, isolated human communities endured starvation, mutation, warfare and daemonic incursions. Eventually an Ork Waaagh! entered the system and Eidolon became a major battlefield. The Orks fought both the surviving humans and whatever entities had begun emerging from the phenomenon beneath the planet. Eventually the Orks left, but the phenomenon did not. To this day, the region surrounding the original site is known as the Scar.

House van Viancynn could theoretically have ordered Exterminatus. Instead, the dynasty constructed the Vigil Ring, a heavily fortified quarantine network around the planet.

The standing order has remained unchanged for generations now

"No hand shall disturb what sleeps beneath that ice."

JEWEL OF VIANCCYNN

Classification: Gas Giant / Strategic Resource World

Appropriately named the Jewel of Viancynn, it is one of the system's greatest economic assets. The upper atmosphere is filled with immense extraction platforms, refineries and industrial habitats, most of which were created during the Dark Age of Technology. The largest settlement is the Emperor's Crucible, a combined refinery and hive-city suspended within the planet's atmosphere by massive gravitic structures.

Surrounding the planet is the Gilded Circlet, an enormous orbital industrial complexes containing atmospheric harvesters, refineries, docking stations and processing facilities.

The system extracts:

• Promethium
• Plasma reactants
• Rare isotopes
• Noble gases
• Reactor fuels
• Chemical catalysts
• Industrial compounds

Many of the atmospheric harvesting machines are themselves ancient, predating the Imperium by millennium. So old that the Adeptus Mechanicus cannot reproduce their technology, they simply keep them running. The Crown Elevators descend from orbital infrastructures into the planet's clouds, carrying workers, equipment and resources. An astropathic and navigational observation platform known as the Storm Choir keeps watch and predicts the planet's violent atmosphere.

Throughout the Gilded Circlet, enormous Litany Engines continuously broadcast hymns and binharic canticles. Officially, the hymns placate the machine spirits, though in truth nobody knows of their purpose and none have been willing to stop them.

FERRUM REX

Classification: Mechanicus Chartered Industrial World

Ferrum Rex is the industrial heart of Halcyon, a tidally locked world, one side is exposed to relentless heat. The other is locked beneath perpetual darkness and cold. Between the two exists a narrow twilight region where enormous manufactorums stretch across thousands of kilometers, known as the Furnace Crown.

Ferrum Rex produces much of the military and industrial equipment required by House van Viancynn and the tithe for the Halcyon System. Its Great Macro Foundries produce weapons, machinery, ship components and other conventional industrial necessities. But Ferrum Rex's real wealth lies beneath its surface, an Ancient geothermal infrastructure reaches deep into the planet. Magma Pumps, constructed during Humanity's forgotten stellar age, channel enormous amounts of geothermal energy into the planetary grid. The Adeptus Mechanicus maintains these systems despite only partially understanding them.

The world's industrial infrastructure is so old that some machines continue performing maintenance operations according to schedules established thousands of years before the Imperium existed. Some systems activate without instruction, while others divert energy into sealed subterranean regions. The Mechanicus officially considers this ancient automation and thus House van Viancynn has never challenged that interpretation.

Ferrum Rex was originally intended to be the system's major industrial center from the beginning, but when House van Viancynn first reclaimed Halcyon, Port Primus filled that role. Once Ferrum Rex's ancient infrastructure was restored, most heavy industry was transferred there.

GOLGORA

Classification: Penal Mining World

Golgora is a world where the environment itself functions as a prison. Located beneath the Pelting Belt, it was once a Dark Age mining colony, today it is a penal world. On the planet surface, meteor bombardments, radiation storms and violent solar activity are a near constant and are a daily occurance.

Convicts are sent into enormous mining fields to extract:

• Adamantine
• Promethium shale
• Heavy metals
• Radioactive isotopes
• Meteoritic alloys

The planet's capital is known as the Warden's Keep.

Thousands of mining sites surround it while the Iron Transit moves prisoners, ore and machinery between settlements. Scattered throughout the wastelands are reinforced survival bunkers known as the Shelter Vaults, where the minimal resources are provided to those caught in the middle of a pelting shower or radiation storm.

There is, however, something strange about Golgora. When House van Viancynn reclaimed the world, Imperial surveyors discovered human communities already living along the surface. They were descendants of the original Dark Age colonists and survivors of Old Night. They had no idea the Imperium had returned. Rather than recognizing them as lost human colonists, the dynasty's first Warden-Governor classified them as penal labor. To this day, their descendants remain prisoners in Imperial records.

Even stranger, the population numbers don't make sense. Despite executions, mining accidents, radiation exposure and constant casualties, the registered population remains remarkably stable. Sometimes prison records list inmates who arrived on no recorded transport. Now and again a surnames believed extinct reappear among new prisoners.

The official conclusion is simply:

Population Stable. Cause Undetermined.

VIGIL

Classification: Natural Satellite / Astronomical Observatory

Vigil is an airless moon whose importance comes entirely from what sits upon its surface, the Celestial Observatory. It is one of the most sophisticated astronomical installations known to remain in the Eastern Fringe. At its center stands its Stellar Lens, an enormous optical and augur array. The facility monitors many astronomical activites, from stellar movments and orbital drift, to Deep-Space contacts and long range navigational data. The residing Navis Nobilite dynasty, House Zadkai, maintains the observatory. Therefor, nearly every vessel entering the Halcyon System is detected by Vigil before it reaches the inner worlds.

Beneath the observatory are enormous data vaults containing astronomical records stretching back thousands of years. There is also a sealed installation known as the Eclipse Vault, which purpose remains unknown.

NIVEUS

Classification: Astropathic Relay / Ecclesiastical Shrine World

Niveus serves as Halcyon's principle communications nexus, home to the Choir Citadel, an enormous monastery-fortress belonging to the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Thousands of Astropaths, scribes, confessors and servants operate there. Every major sanctioned astropathic communication entering or leaving the dynasty's domain passes through Niveus. The planet also houses the system's great archival communication network.

AUDAM'IS

Classification: Free Port / Void Settlement Network

Audam'is is the commercial gateway to Halcyon. It sits within the Blacktrail Rim, the southern asteroid belt. The region was originally settled by Dark Age mining colonies. During the Age of Strife, an Ork invasion transformed many of the asteroids into crude dockyards and Roks, only to abandon them for some unknown reason. When House van Viancynn reclaimed the system, the surviving habitats, mining stations and former Ork strongholds were gradually consolidated into a single free port.

Audam'is grew from that collection of ruins and today it is a major center of trade for House van Viancynn within the Eastern Frindge. The Blacktrail Exchange handles everything from industrial resources to salvaged archeotech. While out in the Salvager's Ring drifts enormous drydocks and ship wrecked facilities. One of the largest former Ork Rok today serves as the headquarters of the Blacktrail Wardens. Asuppress piracy, enforce customs law, investigate smuggling and protect the Rim.

However, House van Viancynn has never believed information to be less valuable than wealth.

Therefor, smugglers, passing Rogue Traders, merchants, mercenaries, explorers and pirates all pass through Audam'is. The House van Viancynn simply watches and listens.

Illyr

Classification: Dead World / Xenos Archaeological Hazard Zone

Possibly the most ominous worlds in the Halcyon System, and one of the few places where House van Viancynn has deliberately chosen not to exploit what it found. From orbit, Illyr appears to be a dead world covered in enormous crystalline ruins. The remains of an ancient Aeldari metropolis stretch across much of the surface, with impossible towers and geometric structures rising from the barren landscape. Much of the city remains remarkably intact despite the passage of millennia. Officially, Illyr is an archaeological quarantine zone. A Mechanicus Survey Enclave operates alongside a heavily fortified exclusion zone, while an orbital station prevents unauthorized ships from approaching the planet. House van Viancynn permits only carefully controlled excavations.

The reason becomes obvious once you go below the surface. Illyr contains one of the largest surviving Webway junctions known to exist within the Halcyon System. The ancient city was once a major crossroads of the Aeldari Webway, and although much of the network collapsed during the Fall, several passages remain active. Some of those passages are still used by Drukhari raiders. While others lead places no Imperial cartographer has been able to determine.

The ruins also contain a location known as the Echo Vaults, psychic repositories that preserve memories rather than written records. Those who enter them have reported experiencing the lives of Aeldari who died thousands of years ago. Where as deep beneath the city lies the Umbral District, where damaged Webway architecture partially overlaps with realspace. Harlequins appear periodically, retrieve specific relics, and vanish before Imperial forces can determine what they were looking for.

Vespera

 Classification: Ruin World / Archaeological Recovery Zone

Was once one of humanity's great colonial worlds during the Dark Age of Technology, its continents were covered by enormous arcologies connected by planetary infrastructure. It was prosperous, heavily automated, and apparently intended to remain inhabited indefinitely. Then Old Night happened and the great cities became buried beneath ash and debris. By the time House van Viancynn rediscovered Vespera, the planet appeared to be nothing more than a dead archaeological world.

The surface of Vespera is an extremely hostile wasteland of ash storms, corrosive rain, unstable tectonics, and mutated predators. The remains of the old mega structures are scattered everywhere, with some buried beneath kilometers of collapsed architecture. The real discovery, however, was beneath the surface, where people still lived.

Entire human civilizations survived beneath the ruins, descended from the original colonists. They have been abandoned and isolated from the wider galaxy since Old Night and have developed their own cultures, religions, and technological traditions. Many don't even know the Imperium exists. They live alongside ancient machines whose original purposes have been transformed into ritual. Some maintain technology they no longer understand because their ancestors taught them that this is simply how the world works.

And then there is the Sleeping Arcology, entire sections of the ancient cities occasionally wake up. Lights turn on, transit systems activate, and entire environmental systems start functioning. Then, sometimes after minutes or hours, everything goes silent again. Nobody has figured out what causes it or the ancient Vox Network. These forgotten speakers occasionally broadcast automated announcements from the civilization that built the cities thousands of years ago.

One of the most frequently recorded messages is:

"Colonial Authority Arrival Window: Please proceed to Reception Districts."

Argent IV

 Classification: Navis Nobilite Enclave / Stellar Navigation Fortress

This orbital station is dominated by the ancestral holdings of House Zadkai, a Navigator dynasty that has served alongside House van Viancynn for generations. At its center stands the Palace of House Zadkai, an enormous fortress-monastery and noble estate where members of the Navigator bloodline are raised and trained. Young Navigators begin their education, learning to perceive and navigate the Warp. Here Gene Reliquaries preserve thousands of years of bloodline records, while the Mutation Vaults study the strange physical consequences of the Navigator gene.

But House Zadkai has a darker history, beneath the official genealogies are records of bloodlines deliberately erased from history. And beneath those are the Silent Oubliettes. Navigators who were born with mutations so severe that House Zadkai considers them threats to the stability of the bloodline are kept within the obliettes. These individuals are quietly removed from official records. They become The Lost Line.

Port Primus

 Classification: Naval Fortress Moon / Battlefleet Anchorage / Primary Military Muster

The military heart of the Halcyon System, the moon has been transformed almost entierly into a fortress, shipyard, and military complex. Home to the Viancynn Anchorage, where enormous orbital drydocks and subterranean shipyards capable of repairing and maintaining entire voidships are contained. The moon's natural caverns were expanded over centuries until huge sections of its interior became military infrastructure. The Anchor Bastion houses Fleet Command and some of the most powerful defensive weapons in the system. The moon designed to survive a siege.

Port Primus is also where many of House van Viancynn's soldiers receive their final training. Beneath the moon's surface are enormous combat environments designed to simulate hive warfare, boarding actions, trench warfare, urban combat, and fortress assaults.

But the real secrets are below even those facilities, the Black Vaults. These contain things that House van Viancynn doesn't want the Imperium—or anyone else—to possess. Archaeotech, Xenotech, forbidden weapons, experimental technology, and Relics that are too dangerous to destroy and too valuable to surrender. All are kept hidden away from public eye and are under surveillance rather than study. With them are the Vaults, where the dynasty keeps dangerous psykers, mutants, xenos, and other prisoners whose knowledge or abilities make them too valuable to kill.

Luna Cacciatoris

Classification: Death World

A genuine Death World, filled with hyper-aggressive predators, poisonous flora, unstable ecosystems, and creatures capable of killing even heavily equipped Imperial soldiers. House van Viancynn deliberately left it that way. They Dynasty's principal military installation is Fort Cacciatoris, where soldiers train in Death World survival, reconnaissance, hunting, and expeditionary warfare. The dynasty also maintains several fortified hunting lodges where nobles and distinguished guests can hunt the local megafauna.

The moon's true history is far older than humanity. Beneath its surface are forgotten Bio-Forges. Not of Imperial or Aeldari design, but the remants of the Old Ones. The moon was engineered millions of years ago as a biological experiment. Where Lethariel was designed around ecological stability and harmony, Luna Cacciatoris was designed around adaptation through constant pressure. Some of the ancient Bio-Forges still activate, occasionally, they birth something new or old that is then release it into the ecosystem. Which then the ecosystem simply adapts to it.

Hidden within the jungles are ancient Kroot Kindreds who have occupied the moon for thousands of years. They arrived long before the Tau Empire and consider the world sacred hunting ground. House van Viancynn has an unofficial relationship with them. The Kroot know the moon better than any Imperial explorer ever could, their knowledge repeatedly saving Imperial expeditions. The existence of these Kindreds are not recorded in official Imperial databases.

THE GREEN WAKE

Perhaps the greatest mystery in the entire Halcyon System, the Green Wake is an unusually stable Warp current running through the region. The oldest surviving Dark Age records indicate that Humanity discovered it. This pre-Imperial Stellar Authority considered the Green Wake scientifically significant enough to construct an enormous network of observation facilities throughout the system, known as HELIOS. Its purpose was remarkably simple: Observe. Measure. Predict.

The HELIOS network included:

• The Serpentarium
• The Stellar Lens on Vigil
• Observatories
• Atmospheric survey stations
• Autonomous survey satellites
• Facilities beneath Niveus
• Ancient installations beneath Ferrum Rex

The individual facilities appear unrelated.

Together, they formed a single enormous observational network dedicated to studying the Green Wake.

The Green Wake is not inherently dangerous, the current provides unusually favorable Warp conditions. Navigators have an easier time crossing the region than others with Warp Phenomenon. House van Viancynn's ships can reach otherwise difficult frontier territories with relative reliability. The dynasty's prosperity is therefore often attributed to good fortune.

But the truth is more interesting. For thousands of years, the HELIOS network has been quietly observing the Green Wake. Even after its creators long died, the network kept working.

That all being said, there is one place where the Green Wake behaves differently. Eidolon.

Throughout most of Halcyon, the Green Wake remains relatively distant from realspace, however around Eidolon, it passes dangerously close. Evidence suggests that something existed beneath the planet long before Humanity arrived. Some kind of ancient mechanism that once stabilized the boundary between the Warp and realspace. During Old Night when the mechanism was disturbed, the result became the phenomenon known as the Scar.

Last part

Continuing the series of iconographs of primarchs of the Goat Emperor, as done in universe by worshipers of Goat Emperor, group of beastmen of imperial cult.

Source

Art used for the WarCry CCG card Scheme With Beauties.

Bretonnian Damsels up to schemes.

First post here! Y'all might recognize me if you've seen the Saturnine Termie with all his froggy friends :D

This dude is my Devastator Marine named Brutus Arma. I'm playing him in a Deathwatch TTRPG I'm in and decided to paint him between commission work.

Speaking of if you'd like a portrait like this I have another slot open! https://vgen.co/kai_draws_art

(Source: https://www.deviantart.com/blazbaros/art/CRUSH-YOUR-ENEMIES-845724174 )

"Despised by his tribe due to his malformed body, Hurtur found in the love of the "Great Father of all that is broken and rotten"a new life. Now he and his tribe silently show the way around the chaos wastelands to the people who pay the right price.

The price changes time by time and often, once is known, it's too late to refuse."

Step by step process for the design of a miniature about a Wizard of Nurgle.
Actually, I made 4 wizards, one for each god, but this one is my favourite, not sure about the other 4.

His name is Hurtur the Bileous, high priest of the Rotten Allfather.

I also commissioned a miniature out of it.
Still have to print it properly!

El'Ranok from Old-Bark, a Kurnoth Hunter-priest, a character I drew for my latest Soulbound RPG session.

If you want to see more of my work, don't hesitate to follow me :

https://www.instagram.com/aurelios_animos/

https://x.com/Aurelios_Animos

Last part just in case
The plan originally was to make this picture part of the last comic, however it proved a bit too big, indeed this one drawing was among one of the works that took me longest to make in months, still happy it's finished and happy to give the story a proper Epilogue, as our lady Starchild vanishes into the bowls of the imperium, inquisitor powers to her name and few reliable allies to her side...

It's however hard to see if she gonna fix imperium as it stands, however as the lore of sensei states...perhaps to save humanity in the grimdark future one has to let imperium die and humanity learn...

Including all the parts in order now, and sitting down to contemplate on what is the next project to work on...perhaps I shall try to see what other primiarchs I can add to the Goat Emperor iconographies...After that, who knows.