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Cadia Stands! Or at least it used to until the forces of Chaos rocked it pretty hard. This legendary planet in theWarhammer 40Kuniverse has quite a brutal and unfortunate track record over the millennia. Without it, the galaxy as a whole is a hell of a lot worse. But why is this floating ball of dirt so important?
Cadia is, unfortunately, one of those planets on the frontlines of some of the worst events in the 40K timeline. Though not much physically remains of this devastated planet, it played a very important role and left quite the legacy. So settle in for a depressing history lesson because here’s what happened to Cadia in Warhammer 40K.
What Is Cadia?
Cadia has been many things over the millennia: Xenos military base, lost human colony, bastion against the forces of Chaos, an Anti-Warp weapon, and the best source of troops in the Imperium. Before it all went horribly sideways, that is, andthe planet got hit like a bowling pinby a frustrated Abbadon The Despoiler. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Cadia is the Prime planet in the Cadian systemand is one of four worlds within a small yet vitally important patch of space. Much like Terra of old,Cadia is a world with a lot of ecological variety. Lush jungles, arid deserts, barren brutal tundras, and 70 percent of its surface covered in anocean full of warp-tainted creatures. It sounds relatively pleasant, but it’s far from it.
What Happened To Cadia?
To properly catalog the rocky road the Cadians got to experience, we’re going to establish a bit of a rough timeline of events, as it would require novels of data to go into every little rough event that got tossed Cadia’s way. From its discovery to its downfall,a lot happened to this poor little planetin the far reaches of space.
Before Humans
Before the Imperium of Man first took their steps out of their caves, and the gods of Chaos were but bubbling, rancid dreams of humans,the universe was engulfed in a conflict the likes of which has never been seen since.
Known as the “War In Heaven,” this was a bout between ancient Xenos Empires, mainlyThe Old Ones andThe Necrons. During that time,Cadia played the part of a Necron Military Base. Though the slumbering tomb filled with clanking Necrodermis nightmares beneath the surface hasnever awoken since those days, its touch is ever present.
Dotted all over the landscape of Cadia aremysterious black pylonsthat were basically hyper-advanced anti-Psyker weapons. When the war ended, the world seemingly became dormant as the Necron Empire went into extended stasis.
The Black Pylons were made from a material known as Blackstone. A mineral that couldabsorb and negate the psychic abilitiesand Psyk-Powered weapons of the Old Ones.
Humanity Arrives
Things quietened down for Cadia for a while. The War in Heaven was over, and the world, like many others, had time to heal. Then starships began to arrive again from above in the inky blackness. But this time, they looked a lot different.
Before the Age Of Strife,Humanity was in a Golden Age. Exploring vast reaches of space with hyper-advanced technology,Cadia became a distant colony of this gigantic Empire. And then things began to go horribly wrong.
The Age Of Strife began, and Humanity’s vast Empire was torn asunder by war between humans, AI, and all between.Contact with the colony was lost, and over the centuries, those left cut off from Earth began to regress. With such close proximity to the Eye Of Terror,those who called Cadia their home began to worship the dark entities and whispering voices of the schismin reality just next door.
In general, we know thatthis group of humans worshiped Chaos Undividedand suffered no major mutations because of it other thanpurple-tinted eyes. However, the same couldn’t be said of the wildlife. And so the planet existed as alost colony swathed in Chaotic influence for centuries.
At some point after the War In Heaven,the Eye of Terror formed next to the planet withthe birth of the AeldariChaos God Slaanesh, which was a great job all-round by the Eldar.
Then Lorgar arrived at the start of his religious gap year,and things got a lot worse.
Lorgar Stops By
Say what you will about the Primarchs of 40K; they did some good. Butthey also have a habit of absolutely ruining everything for their own egos, and Lorgar was no different. At the height of the Emperor’s Crusades, in which he wastrying to reconnect all the old lost colonies of old humanityto bring it together under the unmoving atheistic bootheel of the Imperium,The Emperormay have made a teeny tiny mistakethat snowballed badly into a massive civil war.
The Civil Wars origins can be pointed squarely at Lorgarand the huff he went into after dear old Space Dad told him off. When The Emperor learned thatLorgar had been convincing planets to worship the Emperor as a deity, he got a little upset about this.
Heforced Lorgar to tear down the shrines on the worlds he had just conqueredand then forced the Primarch, along with his entire legion of The Emperor’s Children Space Marines, tokneel using his psychic might. He embarrassed, chided, and told them that not only were they a disgrace but that they hadultimately failed in their efforts as Space Marines and Crusade members.
This was anembarrassment and shaming that Lorgar never got overand immediately turned him and his legions against The Emperor.
Since Lorgar and his cadre came from Colchis,a world intrinsically focused on religion and worship, they decided to go find someone or something worthy of their eternal worship. AndCadia had just what they needed.
The Warp Beckons
After translating into real space and discovering the lost Cadian System,Lorgars Navigators spoke of strange voices and whispers emanating from the nearby Eye Of Terror Warp Riftand the prime planet in the system in front of them. Lorgar landed on Cadia Prime, and after encountering the Cadian’s Barbarian Ancestors, he would be directed towards the Warp Rift and essentiallygiven directions to where to find the Dark Gods inside.
And so he left the planet and disappeared into the rift, emerging years later tohelp convert his other brother Primarchs, notably Horus, to the cause of Chaos, with Cadia becoming an outpost for Chaos for most of the Horus Heresy.
As Lorgar’s ship left Cadia, heordered the planet to be hit with multiple Cyclonic Torpedosto kill everyone andremove any witnessesto what had just transpired.
The Horus Heresy Ends
After the Universe was left reeling from the Horus Heresy,the Loyalists began reclaiming worldsinfected and ruled by Chaos while the wider universe burned.Cadia was one of those. As the Traitor Legions fled into the “safety” of the Eye Of Terror,the Imperium resettled a war-torn Cadiaand reinforced it substantially.
Great fortress cities known as Csars were erectedin key locations around the planet and the populace began a strict training regime that began at birth. From a young age,Cadians were taught to field strip a weapon in the darkand given the fundamentals of tactics and warfare before being taught to read and write.Training never stopped, and the gear and weaponry they produced and fielded were considered the best the Imperium had to offer. Other worlds and expeditionary forces highly sought their troops for theirprestige and skill.
It may seem like overkill on the part of the Cadians, but with theirclose proximity to the Eye Of Terror, it was warranted.Their world was always the first hitwhenever some Chaos Lord would launch a Black Crusade from The Warp. Plus, reinforcing this Bastion of Humanity allowed the Imperium to create what’s known asthe Cadian Gate.
This now meant that the Cadian System hadthe safest exit to the Warp but also the most heavily defended. So any Imperiumor Inquisition forcesgoing into The Warp would have superior reinforcements, and any invading force would eitherface annihilation or be stalled seemingly indefinitelyuntil reinforcements arrived. It was animportant stop-gap to the Forces Of Chaosthat they badly wanted to remove.
The Necrons Black Pylons also helped prevent the Warp Rift from expandingand claiming other worlds. As well as seriously dampening the effects of Chaos Sorcerers, Daemons, and anything born of the Immaterium.
Cadias Destruction
Things were locked in a stalemate around Cadia for a very long time.Chaos couldn’t expand, and the Imperium couldn’t do much other than continue to reinforce their proverbial damn. That is until Arch Magos Dominus Belisarius Cawl and the Necron Trazyn The Infinite got involved.
These two ancient tech heads brokered anuneasy alliance for the greater good of the Universe. The plan, to use the Black Pylons of Cadia topermanently close the Eye Of Terrorand cut Chaos off from this section of the Universe forever. But that wouldn’t be a particularly easy plan to pull off as they had a time limit.Abbadon The Despoiler was coming.
As part of his new 13th Black Crusade, Abbadon The Despoiler sought toactivate or at least destroy the Pylons. Either way, he wanted one thing:for The Eye Of Terror to expand. And if he was successful, it would cause the Warp Rift to grow and encompass the Universe.
The Last Stand
At the peak of the conflict, it seemedthe forces in battle above and below the planet were in a stalemate. Neither could win or lose; it was just constant attrition on all sides, and it made Abbadon very frustrated and desperate asCawl and Trazyn were proving to be successful in their efforts. The pylons were active andsiphoning off the Warp, causing the Eye Of Terror to slowly shrink.
To solve the problem he was faced with, Abbadon, not one for subtlety, decided it would be a good idea tocrash his biggest and best weapon into the planet. And so it was thatthe Blackstone Fortress, known as the ‘Will Of Eternity,’ would be sent straight to the strongest holdout on Cadia. The sheer overwhelming mass of the gigantic ancient construct worked better as a bludgeon than a weapons platform, it seems, as itcompletelydestroyed the planet.
A massive meteoric explosion followed, an extinction-level event the world wouldn’t recover from. The strongholds the Dark Warmaster sought to tear down were reduced to rubble, millions on both sides were incinerated, and the planet became physically unstable. Massive tectonic events ruptured it to the core, and thoughthree million Cadians would manage to evacuate, those left behind could only watch as their world tore itself apart. Cadia was no more; the Black Pylons were destroyed along with it, andthe effects were devastating and immediate.
The Rift Expands
Abbadon had won, and his reward was being able to watchThe Eye Of Terror expand exponentially, rapidly, and without mercy.Countless worlds were lost to the immaterium, the souls of those within now playthings of The Warp.The Universe was cut in half as the Eye grew unchecked, cutting off thousands of worlds from Terra and the rest of the Universe as they remained trapped on the other side.
Travel through the rift was impossible as the light of the Golden Throne was eclipsed,and now the Black Crusades had countless more exits and entrances into real space.The Imperium’s fight against the darkness became much harder,and that’s generally how we find things sitting in the current 41st Millenia of Warhammer 40K.
The Cadian survivors resettled on a Forge World renamed to New Cadia, though some also joined Imperial regiments, most notablyGaunts Ghosts. Yet still ‘Cadia Stands’ once more, for now.
