Post originally by Archangel at 2003-07-09 19:03:09
Converted from Phorums BB System

You've been ~very~ out of touch, actually. :-)

When the Realm of Chaos books came out a few months after Rogue Trader, the Eye of Terror became a warp/realspace overlap in which was located a single star system, the sole planet of which was where the Traitor Legions had fled.

Since then, it's been rewritten as an 'Imperium of Chaos'. Although in a far more compact area of space, Imperial scholars suspect there could be as many Daemon Worlds within the Eye of Terror as there are Imperial worlds outside it. (The reason for this is that, whereas only a tiny percentage of normal planets are habitable, or populated by humans, almost every planet within the Eye has been transformed by its Daemonic patron into a hellish Bosch/Escher/Dante-style nightmare.

The Imperium ~can't~ touch the Eye of Terror, thanks to the hostile Chaos worshippers within it, Daemonic attacks, and the sheer mutating effect of flying through a mixture of matter and warp energy. They occasionally launch incursions or reconnaisance missions, but these are rare and incredibly costly.

These army lists represent the forces coming out of the Eye on Abaddon's Thirteenth Black Crusade - only the Lost and the Damned and the 13th Company (who aren't even part of the Imperium, but long lost Marines who may or may not be excommunicated for their corruption: using salvaged enemy equipment and the whole werewolf thing).

The backwater worlds idea that made up the original Rogue Trader Eye of Terror basically applies to a large number of Imperial worlds across the galaxy - it's actually a minority of worlds with a population above about a few million.