The Hades Gate

The Hades Gate is a semi-stable Warp anomaly dominating the central region of the Pegasus Gulf, making travel across the middle of the sector both difficult and dangerous. For as long as it has been studied and recorded, it has disgorged space hulks and ships into the Gulf, sometimes crewed by merchants or admirals, jarred by arriving at the completely wrong time and place. Other times they are ghost ships, their crews long dead, after being lost in the Warp millennia ago. More often than not, derelict civilian ships or jettisoned cargo was all that came out at any given time. During the Expedition to Ravenforge, Boss Mek Boltbrainz constructed a gargantuan orkish tractor beam designed to catch the flotsam and jetsam spewed by the rift. The Eldar of Craftworld El'dorryn for a time, used the beam to stabilize the Hades Gate, inversing the tractor beam's gravity well to force the Gate to collapse on itself, and seal in any craft that may emerge. This was short lived, however, as the tyranid menace soon infested the station beyond salvation.

Since then, the Hades Gate has only continued on its slow burn of destabilization, opening the Gulf up to more Xenos raiders, and pirates from the Maelstrom Chaos clans.

The Crucible
The Crucible was a former Imperial mining world devoured by the Hades Gate's rapid expansion during the Ravenforge gravity event. The colony has since been utterly changed for the worse by Khorne's influence, and its people have degenerated into psychopathic survivalists and cannibals.

They have recently been united by the Chaos Lord Asmodus, a traitor captain of the crusading Void Krakens, and he has been staging an annual Great Hunt during the past decade Crucible has been in the Warp, despite it being consumed by the Hades Gate less than a year ago in Standard Time. He has been using the bait signal sent out by Bolt Brainz' derelict machinery to lure people within the event horizon of the Hades Gate and shepherded their vessels to Crucible using his larger fleet. The signal stopped after Bolgog Skullkrusha finally slew Boltbrainz and destroyed his compound, which ended Asmodus' primary source of combatants, and he is now forced to rely solely on unlucky Warp travellers.