Noxim

Noxim is the homeworld of the Angelis Noctem and Supernal Seraphs, being the world upon which both Nocterra and Solaris arrived upon after being scattered into the warp. Initially a world of perpetual night, the world would finally have a sun birthed above it by the psychic might of Solaris himself. For a time, the people knew glorious light, while others saw the truth of unknowable horrors in the darkness, eventually being elevated to the Imperium of Mankind at the Emperor's coming. However, such would not last for long, the world suffered greatly during the Black Star Rift, before being destroyed utterly by the Iron Lords during the Great Secession. It now stands as a dead world, its surface patrolled by warriors of the Angelis Noctem, the legion having transformed the dead world into a singular prison complex for psykers, mutant, warp-spawned abominations and worse besides.

Before the Imperium
A world on the very edge of known space, the world of Noxim lies in the south eastern fringes of the galaxy, beyond the traditional light of the Astronomicon. The planet was clearly once a bounteous one, its surface littered with ancient cities and works of art, as well as numerous examples of relics of the Dark Age of Technology, but all of these mean nothing to the citizens of the world, who live their lives in eternal near darkness, the day and night cycle none existent. The star that had once provided the world with its power has long since burnt away, nothing but a crumpled and twisted metal structure designed to harness its energy left to mark its passing, the world only surviving due to a few remaining instances of functional archeotech, heating the world enough to stave off freezing, but doing little for the comfort of the world's inhabitants. As such, the people of the world were dour and sullen, this being a hard trait to shake even as the world changed. All of this added up to make Noxim one of the most miserable worlds to live on, its well-earned moniker speaking true, naming the planet as the “World of Eternal Night”.

All this however would change with the coming of the Celestial Pair.

The Celestial Pair, those eventually known as the Primarch’s Solaris and Nocterra were for a time unknown to the world, travelling its almost pitch black surface unheard of. That was until the elder of the pair, the one who would be Solaris, learnt of the great Archeotech device held in the worlds orbit, known only as the Mantle of Deliverance. The Mantle was a massive psy-array, large enough to channel the power of the immaterium through to weave magics of greater portent than would have been possible without such aid. Using the Mantle did the elder twin cast a great ritual, pouring his power through the psy-circuitry, bolstering it to levels unheard of, creating light which had not existed on Noxim for untold generations, close to five thousand years by some estimations. Many went blind in those first days, forced to shield themselves and develop hasty protection to better look upon the new god who had brought back the sun. Solaris was born that day, the undisputed ruler of Noxim without a single shot fired.

This however caused further, unforeseen problems, and though the world now knew light and life, not merely survival, for the first time in generations, it also now played host to terrors from the darkness, awakened by the new star in the sky. Only one stood against them, standing vigil as the creatures who hated the light stole in during the night, seeking to find the source of their new pain and kill it, returning the world to the darkness. This guardian was the younger twin, who had cautioned Solaris from upsetting the natural order so radically. In time, she too was given a name by those few who began to worship her; Nocterra, the Dark Lady. Eventually, the Emperor of all Mankind arrived on the world, drawn there by psychic communions from his two final lost creations, and with that, Noxim became one with the Imperium, the furthest reaches of mankind’s empire.

Homeworld of the Gods
Now as part of the Imperium, Noxim stands as a shining example of what the Imperium is capable of, cadre’s of psykers powering the Mantle of Deliverance where once only Solaris had such power, even as the Mechanicum work tirelessly to replicate the heat and light the orb gives out, so the world may be truly free from the crutch of psychic nurishment.

The Mantle of Deliverance
Of all the archeotech on the world of Noxim, of which there is no shortage, none come close to the supreme importance of the Mantle of Deliverance, even the gargantuan heating complexes that sustained the world during the long darkness of Old Night could not match its import, for it was with this device that Solaris finally gave birth to new light once more, doing away with the shadows that had taken root upon the planet.

The Mantle of Deliverance is huge in scale, easily the size of the largest moons of the Sol System, but entirely artificial in its composition. Crafted from a strange crystal of unknown providence that defies all attempts to study it, the Mantle is inscribed with great circuit like patterns and psy-boosting runes, carved exactly a kilometer into the otherwise smooth surface, all created to a precision impossible by even the greatest of Martian Machinery, leading many to believe that the Mantle was created not by machines, but by the mind itself.

The initial purpose of the Mantle of Deliverance is unknown, though some have speculated it was created in an attempt to pre-empt the failure of the system’s dying star, something that was clearly not completed in time, or else lacked some component that left it dormant for millenia. When it was finally rediscovered however, used by the Primarch Solaris, the Mantle of Deliverance proved its design was more than capable of living up to the current needs of the world, giving light to Noxim once more. Now, in the Age of Imperium, the Mantle of Deliverance is staffed not by a Primarch, but by a cadre of over a thousand Psykers, arrayed together in a great choir, their task to keep the Mantle of Deliverance spinning onwards, providing life to the world below.

The Night Wraiths
Noxim had many predators upon its surface during its history, creatures that could rend a full grown man limb from limb with little difficulty, evolved to hunt in the darkness in a way humans could barely match with the technology at hand. However, these were mortal creatures, able to be fought and killed in conventional ways by mundane means, the populace learning to fight against their kind, taking it in their stride with the other hardships they faced daily.

The Night Wraiths were different.

Created not by random chance or xenos intervention, the Night Wraiths were an all too human creation of the Dark Age of Technology, spun from the genelooms of maddened scientists for some unknowable purpose. Unaging, immune to even the most devastating of mortal weapons, and possessing a hunger that nothing could satiate, feeding on the very dreams of humanity, trapping their victims into a screaming nightmare from which they could never wake, locked into their terrifying slumber. Indeed, the world of Noxim only survived because the Night Wraith’s slumbered in the eternal darkness, leading some, Nocterra included, to believe the world's sun had been intentionally destroyed to stop their progress, the Mantle of Deliverance designed as a way to provide light that would not wake them once more, though whether the Mantle failed or Solaris simply did not take such an occurrence into account, none can say, for when the Mantle lit up the skies of Noxim, so too did it wake the Night Wraiths.

Infuriated by the new light but unable to step within it, the Night Wraiths began to strike all across the darkness left behind by the Mantle’s passing, uncaring of the weapons humans could bring to bear against them, the death toll spiking, Solaris ignoring it, promising his people he would lock their new star in place, giving them sanctuary from the evils of the night. Only Nocterra strode forth, as then unnamed, blades of darkened Nightmare Steel clutched in each hand. There, she did battle with the Night Wraiths, a god of the night as her brother was a god of the day, her weapons more than capable of rending the creatures apart and ending their miserable existence.

Soon, her deeds became known, leading the bravest of the world to seek her out, standing alongside her in a futile but meaningful gesture. Though they could do nothing against the Night Wraiths as they were, they were emboldened by their god, their nerves steeled, training not to kill, but to drive the Night Wraith’s to Nocterra so she may finish what they could not. Soon, Nocterra was named by her flock, the whispered name of Dark Lady becoming commonplace, though nowhere near the levels of Solaris the Lightbringer, Nocterra always remaining in her brothers shadow.

By the time the Emperor of Mankind arrived on Noxim, the Night Wraiths had been driven almost entirely to extinction, the Emperor unleashing his Custodes of the Warders of Rython to aid Nocterra in finishing their kind. Only when they were defeated did Nocterra finally bend the knee to the Emperor, Solaris having already done so upon the Emperor’s arrival, reforming the XIXth Legion into the Celestial Host. It was there, upon bended knee, that the Emperor told Nocterra of the extent of such horrors from humanities dark history, that the Night Wraiths were far from the only, or even the worst, of their kind. Without hesitation, Nocterra vowed that she would hunt down any such creatures that dwelt in the galaxy, within the realm of mankind or beyond, pledging her life and the lives of her chosen Angelis Noctem to the task, to forever emulate the Warders of Rython in their unending duty.