Vharax-Null (Warhammer 40k)

Author's Note: Vharax-Null is a forgotten frontier world on the edge of the Segmentum Obscurus, once an industrial jewel during the Great Crusade, now a polluted wasteland scarred by millennia of overexploitation. The largest and most ancient of the Hive Cities on Vharax-Null, Golganneth Spire stretches miles into the tainted sky. It is a fortress-city built atop the bones of a crashed Ark Mechanicus, its foundations infused with forgotten STCs and cursed tech. Its original purpose—research and weapons manufacturing—was twisted over the millennia into sheer production might. Ruling Golganneth is the Dominatum Synaxis, a collective of ancient cybernetic nobles and tech-barons, half-machine and barely human. They maintain order with vast legions of servitors, hive enforcers, and gene-bred worker clans who live and die in the endless foundries. Constructed centuries later by a breakaway faction from Golganneth, Morrak’s Rise was founded by a rogue Fabricator-General named Morrak Varn, who sought independence from the Synaxis. Though smaller, Morrak’s Rise is more efficient, colder, and far more militarized. Its upper towers are reinforced with macroplas and adamantium, its infrastructure less corrupt and newer by comparison. Morrak’s Rise is governed by a militant technocracy known as the Cohort Directive, who aim to one day eclipse Golganneth and bring all of Vharax-Null under one unified, logical rule. Mistrust runs deep between the two Hives—though they share resources via skyrails and convoys, open war is only ever one assassination away.