The Deathwatch has to deal with many, many words in the Reaches, and some of them are more...interesting than others.

Bloody Murder

Deathworlds of any sort are not uncommon in the Imperium. From Catchcan to Phyrr to Woe, a thousand thousand worlds have life and organization on them that is deadly to humans in any form.

And then, we get to Bloody Murder and you get the feeling that those other worlds were just for practice.

The odd flare cycle of the star that Bloody Murder orbits is merely a warning of the hell that is on the world. Life is vicious and hungry and always devouring. The only difference between predator and prey on Bloody Murder tends to be whom eats whom first. Most carnivores eat their food live-because there are enough scavenger beasts that could strip to cracked bones a freshly dropped carcass from the mouth of an animal until it hits the ground. The only thing that life on Bloody Murder hates more than each other is invaders-no settlement outside of the South Pole has lasted longer than a month. And that one started with a massive area sterilized by two Imperial Navy battleships using a lance bombardment. A Deathwatch team of fifteen, in a desperate effort to rescue an astropath on the planet, barely survived eight hours-and only three came back, one so badly injured as to need to be encased in a Dreadnought upon return.

What makes Bloody Murder so valuable that nobody has just declared an Exterminus on it (and the fears that life on the planet might survive that) is the massive variety of drug and chemical compounds that the planet offers. A lander full of some of the compounds, shipped to some of the nearer sectors, could pay the entire operating costs of a Rogue Trader fleet for a year. Rumors of a massive complex from the Dark Age of Technology has seen many sponsored and "wildcat" expeditions to find the complex. This worried many people when Hive Fleet Odin passed through the area, however much the Imperial Navy was happy that the Tyrranids were going to eat all life on the planet. However, when the Navy returned, all they found were several Tyranid ships as devoured husks with life from the planet on them-and some of the life on the planet using Hormogant-like weapons. Serious thought is brought up again about an Exterminus-if any of the life on the planet develops an ability to travel through space, it may be needed...

Because of the placement of the system, a Watch Station is located on Bloody Murder's south pole (far enough inland that most land or amphibious-based life cannot reach, and most of the flying life cannot pick up or harm a Space Marine in full armor. Usually.), mostly tasked with watching Eldar, Hive Fleet Loki, and Salleen movements.

Looking Glass

What makes Looking Glass unique is that orbiting the fifth world in the system is an impossible moon. This moon is a perfect sphere nearly 1,500 km wide, of slightly glowing white except for a single black iris or opening right in the middle. The black iris faces the planet, in an orbit that is naturally unstable-yet not even the most sensative of detectors can indicate how the moon just stays up.

Efforts to explore the moon have failed because of an odd defense mechanism. The more a ship or lander tries to approach the moon closer than 5 km from the surface, the more the planet seems to "push" ships away, at about a ratio of 1.3:1. Even the most gentle of landings will eventually result in a ship being brought to a halt, then repelled from the moon at 1.3 times the amount of speed of the approach. A very hilarious vid slate shows a certain Ork ship trying to ram the planet, and just being pushed away, no matter how hard they try...

The Ordo Xenos has faction members that want to do more study, and a few that want to "poke it with a stick and see what happens". Nobody has authorized more direct action yet, but it is merely a matter of time.