Known for penetrating into the Eye of Terror, the Inquisition’s Null-ships always returned with their crew filled with a new hatred for the daemonic powers!
Via our good friends at Lexicanum
The Inquisition‘s Null-ships are known to have penetrated into the Eye of Terror, where their arrays of psychic shields made them invisible to the denizens of the Warp. Those crew that returned from such journeys had their convictions renewed and hold nothing but hatred for the daemonic.
Some, however, do not return from these voyages and are damned as both their physical and spiritual forms suffer torment at the hands of the cruel creatures of the Immaterium.
The original and older series of nullships are known to have been constructed as an act of desperation and were believed to be the best that could be built at their time.
Through regular nullship probes, the Inquisition maintains a watch upon the systems within the Eye of Terror. These spy vessels are hidden behind their screening shields and psychic barriers whilst they use their massive sensor arrays to take physical readings of the worlds within the warp-filled region of space. This allows them to collect data on the Traitor Legions‘ various bases and fortresses. Specially-trained psykers that are monitored for signs of Chaos contamination are attached to these expeditions who monitor the thoughts and feelings of the Traitor Legionnaires.
Despite these precautions, much of the information gathered is fragmentary and much more is lost to the natural hazards within the Eye, or else the ships themselves are lost, either destroyed by the psyker crews being driven insane by the images they have witnessed, or taken prisoner in boarding actions by the Traitor Legions.
In spite of the manifest dangers of these missions, the nullships are periodically sent by the Inquisition into the Eye; some grains of information are yielded and then stored within the records of the Ordo Malleus. Some of these discoveries have been so explosive as to shock the higher levels of the Imperium, with the High Lords of Terra debating long and hard on what action to take.
As of the 41st Millennium, it had been more than a hundred seventy-eight years since the last nullship had been sent into the Eye of Terror. Prior to this point, there had been twenty such spy ships that had been dispatched where none had returned or sent back anything useful. At this time, the prophetic visions of a Psyker imprisoned on Mars attracted the attention of Magos Technicus Ipsissmus who decided to construct a new class of nullship that had ten times the screening of the older model, was larger and better armed, had the capacity to carry more fighting men and had the ability to travel the entirety of the Eye of Terror without being detected.
He arranged a meeting with the Inquisitorial Representative about launching an expedition into the Eye to ascertain the details of the Psyker’s prophecy. The mission was accompanied by a Librarian of the Purple Stars Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The expedition and a follow-up mission determined the rise of Abaddon‘s 13th Black Crusade within the Eye of Terror.
