Editing The Atalantos Worlds (section)

====Hod's Hole: The Last Resort====
{{Infobox 40k Planet
|name= Hod's Hole
|bgcolor=black
|fgcolor=white
|image=
|class= Hidden World
|orbdist= 12 AU Perihelion, 1,327 AU Aphelion
|gravity= .65G
|temp= -300 Kelvin
|pop= 4,000,000 (Servitors/Cybernetica)
200 (System Overseers/Maintenance specialists)
|governor= Overseer Primus Rallim Feldus
|system= '''-CLASSIFIED-'''
|sector= '''-CLASSIFIED-'''
|subsector= '''-CLASSIFIED-''' 
|segmentum= Ultima Segmentum
}}

Hod's Hole, located by Rogue Trader Hod Wellmarn in the early 31st Millennium, is a tiny chunk of rock on an extraordinarily elliptical orbit around its small red dwarf parent star. A frozen iceball, the planet never reaches its star's warmth, and spends most of its existence alone in the vastness of the void. Normally the minute orb would never meet the Imperium's notice. It has no mineral wealth, no strategic position, no xenos stronghold in need of purging. But Rogue Trader Wellmarn was hunting elusive prey. The Void Krakens. His family had lost dozens of ships to the beasts, but with the help of the War Scribes the shoe was on the other foot, and Hod was on the warpath. Over the course of several years, he and the Marines hunted down almost a dozen of the titans and at last came to Hod's Hole where the Kraken broodmaster dwelled. Over the course of countless unknown years and generations, the Krakens had etched a hole completely through the planetoid, eating and feeding as they pleased. Inside were hundreds of destroyed ships from every race and time period in the galaxy, chewed up and digested. Their remnants were embedded in the tunnel's walls, encased in vile excretions created by the Krakens to strengthen the tunnel and prevent gravity from crushing their nest. 

Once the void-beasts were slain to the last, the War Scribes took possession of this unique planetoid and sought what relics they could in its wreckage. Fifty years went by with no results. The Heresy came and went, and from the ashes of that horrible conflict, an idea was born. The myth that the Imperium was unshakeable and immortal had gone, to be replaced with a new and bitter pragmatism among the Scribes. And so they began to build in secret. Hod's Hole was a perfect hiding place, unknown to all and nearly invisible in the blackness of space. No wealth was ever found there, so no treasure hunters sought to trace its location through myths and legends. The Rogue Trader who discovered Hod's Hole died a satisfied man, full in his accomplished vengeance. But he died alone with his knowledge, the last of his Kraken-eaten lineage. This world would belong to the Scribes alone. Their tool of last resort, the ultimate trump card to be used when all else might be lost. 

As the Scribes learned more of the dangers Chaos represented, they also noticed that the power of Chaos seemed to grow thin at the Galaxy's edge. Explorations across the Milky Way confirmed this. Perhaps beyond the Galaxy, there was no Chaos at all. Over the next ten millennia, the Scribes quietly diverted a small fraction of the Atalantos Worlds' immense industrial output, layering Hod's hole with vast arrays of cogitators, batteries the size of battleships, staggering quantities of capacitors and relays. And through the hole dug by Krakens, they embedded a colossal mass driver, ''Ultimum Dictamen Vernerum''. A staggering two thousand kilometers long, an almighty Ordinatus engine capable of hurling a projectile out of the Galaxy's gravity well with brute force alone. 

Knowing full well that the circumstances in which this gun might be used would likely mean that the Gods had tainted the Warp irrevocably, this launcher would obey Materium physics exclusively, rejecting the Warp's seductive swiftness. Though the journey might take two and a half million years or more in real time, the projectile itself and the inhabitants within would travel at almost the speed of light. For them, the time-dilated journey would be over in a few years. And at the end of the road lay the vast unknown called the Andromeda Galaxy. With this device, perhaps some fragment of Mankind could be saved. Or perhaps it was all a fool's errand, and those resources might have saved this galaxy instead of being wasted on another. But such is the way of the Scribes. If they deem it necessary, no project is too vast in scale to be considered.

For now the question remains unanswered. The supergun rests idle in cold storage, tended by a small army of servitors and cybernetica. Only a few hundred living beings reside here, having given their lives in tithe to monitor the facility in exchange for familial rewards. It is possible the ''Vernerum'' may never awaken, never be needed. And it is the fervent hope of every War Scribes Chapter master that this be so. 

But only time will tell.