So I spent a good amount of time tonight whipping up an eye of terror map for an upcoming rogue trader game and thought I'd try and share it with everyone. Comments would be appreciated.

EDIT:

So what are some reasons you would want to use this map in your rogue trader game?

1) Iconic sector from the 40k fluff. Home of the majority of the Chaos Legions. If the players are thinking turning traitor now is the time.

2) A puritan rogue trader decides to help the war effort against chaos, lending resources whenever he can to Cadia and Segmentum command.

3) The final stop of a gang of rowdy players. As mentioned in Hostile Acquisitions and the Core Rulebook, a rogue trader might become a "Trader Penitent," forced to go on a crusade in or around the eye of terror as payment for crimes against the ecclesiarchy and the imperium. If the law catches up to the explorers, tell them to expect to have the majority of the wealth confiscated by the administratum as they spend the next 100 years fighting chaos.

Cheddah, that is a thing of beauty, well done, sir!

You probably know this, but as I recall there was a 13th Black Crusade worldwide table top 40k campaign back sometime during 2001-2003. It featured heavily in the White Dwarfs of the time. There were a number of Cadian Sector and Subsector maps which may be of use in mapping the Imperial side of the Eye of Terror.

wow, this map is awesome! I feel compelled to steal it for my own games! =D

I always had this question about WH 40K maps: what does spinward, rinmward, etc mean? I saw you put it on your map too, so maybe it's something important that I'm missing.

Maese Mateo said:

It's to do with defining "north" "south" "east" and "west" on a galactic scale for the purposes of a 2 dimensional map. There is no true "north" and "south" on something the size of a galaxy, so you need a common reference point to define where things are on a map. They use the shape of the galaxy and the direction it's spinning in to define relative positions.

If you imagine the galaxy as a spinning disc that spins clockwise, "Coreward" means the side of the map that points towards the centre of the galaxy, "rimward" means the opposite side of the map that points to the edge of the galaxy, "spinward" means in the direction the galaxy is spinning, and "trailing" means the opposite direction.

So if you imagine the galaxy as a clockface the size of a dinner plate, a square map the size of a postage stamp over the number "3" on the clockface would have "coreward" on it's left edge, "rimward" on the right hand side of the map, "spinward" on its base and "trailing" on the top.

(However I'm not entirely sure the galaxy spins clockwise as opposed to counter clockwise - I don't have my maps in front of me! )

Lightbringer said:

Thanks! Actually the only reliable one I found was a small purplish one I found on google. Thats why I wanted to make my own. Maybe I should do a search for 40k campaign map?

Maese Mateo said:

Feel free to use it - thats the point of me dropping off the link here.

Lightbringer said:

Its more of a fluff thing. Commanding voidships is supposed to feel like commanding an old timey ocean vessel, with paper star maps and "currents" in the warp. One of my players is convinced that I don't know space is three dimensional because I keep saying "in the galactic northwest or galactic east".

Lightbringer said:

That would depend on which side you're looking at it from. =P

Deciding to draw a map from whichever side makes it look like it's spinning clockwise would be perfectly acceptable, of course. It's an arbitrary decision since there's no up or down in space, just like there's no north. =P