The Dark Cells & Other CREEPY Unsolved Mysteries | Warhammer 40K Lore

I'm not sure if you were aware or not but we're only about 6 months away from the start of spooky season so there's never been a better time like the present to talk about some more of the creepiest Unsolved Mysteries from the Grim dark future of Warhammer 40K in this video we're going to talk about a frozen mining planet where hundreds of workers mysteriously vanished overnight the only clue to what happened a circle of polished skulls a dying star that if rumors are to be believed sings an incredibly disturbing song that lurs void farers into an early grave by causing all who hear it to go absolutely insanee we're also going to be talking about an underground Labyrinthian jail deep beneath the Imperial Palace on Tera where the darkest and most disturbing entities known to mankind have been locked away whatever's down there has got the higher ups so freaked out that they believe if any of them were to escape it would bring about the extinction of mankind we're going to be getting into all that in a whole lot more in this video but before we dive head first into the Grim dark growing up I would never have considered myself an anxious person but then all of a sudden out of nowhere in 2014 I started having panic attacks every single day I had never had one before so I didn't know what was going on I thought I was having like micro Strokes or heart attacks or some kind of catastrophic Health Emergency needless to say it was the worst year of my life and after racking up an enormous medical bill my doctor eventually diagnosed me with generalized anxiety I got put on some anxiety medication and I'm sure that helps other people but for me it just made things worse as a last ditch effort I decided to give therapy a chance and let me tell you that therapist changed my life Not only was it a judgment free zone where I could open up about everything that was going on but she taught me all of these different techniques to prevent my anxiety from turning into full-blown panic attacks and I'm happy to report that nowadays although I still have anxiety I haven't had a panic attack in about 6 years and I understand finding a therapist that works for us and fits within our budget is something that's difficult to do but thankfully there's today's sponsor better help they make therapy convenient accessible and affordable all from the comfort of your own home if you think you might be somebody that would benefit from therapy then click on my link in the description below or go to www.b betterhelp.com wammer to save 10% off your first month there you'll take a quick questionnaire that will help them match you with a therapist that's right for you usually in as little as 48 Hours again click on the link in the description below or choose the West Hammer option at signup to save 10% off your first month big thanks to betterhelp for sponsoring this video number five the skull pit of Lucien's breath the Milky Way galaxy of the 41st Millennium has no shortage of creepy and mysterious planets yet out of all of them none have generated more fear and speculation than the Frozen mining world of Lucien's breath that many claim is cursed and is harboring a dark and terrible secret despite the fact that the planet was originally discovered by Road Trader Sebastian winterscale in 258 m41 Humanity was not the planet's first owners you see long before the rise of mankind the world was inhabited by an unknown xenos species who left behind some truly bizarre ruins that have baffled Imperial scientists for years their cities were made out of a very strange substance these solidified gas impregnated ice that was common on Lucien's breath that remarkably is said to be even stronger and more durable than ceramite each and every one of these cities was centered around a huge sinkhole filled with bubbling pools of pure neum well deep beneath the surface exist Ed a Labyrinthian network of tunnels and Warren not of natural origin It is believed that they were carved out using such Advanced Machinery that there's no indication anywhere along their length of any actual tool being used to this day we still know very little about the Ancients of Lucien's breath we don't know who they were what they wanted or why they seemingly disappeared without leaving behind any trace of their existence other than their cold and forgotten cities of glass the planet is incredibly hostile to human existence sporting both an atmosphere that is so thin it's basically useless and air that is said to be so frigidly cold that if one was to attempt to breathe it without a specially designed rebreather their lungs might very well freeze before they suffocate it despite its hostile nature though Lucien's breath attracts a wide array of Rogue Traders Pirates Raiders and more all seeking to lay claim to its neum deposits which is a highly flamable substance that has a number of unusual properties and is highly coveted by the adeptus mechanicus foring centuries rumors have circulated throughout Tavern bars across the cxus sector that Lucien's breath is a cursed World there have been numerous documented accounts from workers that managed to complete a contract here that spoke of strange writhing Shadows that could be seen moving within the glassy walls of the crumbling zenos ruins some say these Shadows are vaguely humanoid in appearance undulating and writhing with malevolent sentients whereas others said they resembled something altogether more alien and terrifying with no discernable human attributes at all what these things are or why they are appearing is still unknown as the Rogue traitors seem to only care about their quotas being met from their perspective such talk is nothing more than an ill-gotten attempt to scare away Prospectors from a rich cash of neum however recently rumors have begun circulating that the camps controlled by Rogue traitor opice Corda have had workers seemingly vanish Into Thin Air leaving behind no sign of their passing or any evidence to what happened to them the most infamous and mysterious example of this phenomenon can be traced back to an area the locals refer to as the skull pit an insulated mining camp once home to over 300 indentured servants convicts and captured Raiders turned miners everything seemed to be going to plan and by all accounts the camp had been incredibly successful with only a few minor setbacks that was all until the year 814 m41 when all communication with the camp suddenly ceased numerous attempts were made to reestablish contact believing that recent ice storms had caused some kind of Vox system out Mal function however no matter how many times they tried the only thing playing back over the Vox waves was cold dead static eventually a tech crew was dispatched to investigate and what they found only left them with more questions the entire facility was empty of workers yet all evidence pointed to a seemingly normal day there was half eaten food still on the table bunks that looked recently slept in and the miners protective gear was all still in their lockers and accounted for it was as if they had simply vanished Into Thin a as attempting to leave the facility without this gear would have surely been a death sentence the rescue team would continue their search and eventually came across a lone survivor a man named vetto Hayne who had been a former Raider Commander that upon his capture agreed to work the mines and exchange for his life by the time the rescuers found him however he had been reduced to a gibbering wreck mumbling the same phrase over and over touched the pool touched the pool as he stared wide-eyed off into the distance at an unseen Spectre despite the slim chance that any of the miners would have survived outside of the camp the team decided to search the surrounding area when they checked the neph sinkhole that the camp was built around they found a truly disturbing scene polished white skulls had been arranged around the entire perimeter of the sinkhole each and every one of them turned outwards so the empty eye sockets could stare back at any who attempted to approach and creepily enough the number of skulls in the ring added up precisely with a number of missing miners with the exception of one being unac accounted for sometime later the rescue team would give their official report and would state that voleto had gone crazy and murdered his crewm mates one by one that he alone had been responsible for The Disappearance and thus he was executed for his crimes it was simply an open and shut case of Madness derived from isolation and prolonged exposure to hazardous working conditions but something just wasn't adding up to this day there had been no official attempts to reclaim the sinkhole or even remove the skulls despite the fact that for all intents and purposes the mine is still fully functional and its continued operation would be incredibly lucrative the Rogue traders that compete over this world are absolute Cutthroats that don't exactly value human life and whose moral compasses seem to only function when it's convenient for them so what is it about the skull pit that is scaring them off is it possible that some unspeakable evil was encountered by the original rescue team and was conveniently left out of their report we still don't have definitive answers and thus the skull pit of Lucien breath remains one of 40 K's creepiest Mysteries number four the Dark Cells beneath the Imperial Palace for many years now the Dark Cells beneath the Imperial Palace on Tera have been a source of nearly endless speculation you can think of them as a massive Prison Complex that exists deep beneath the Earth and is said to hold Horrors so unspeakable that Humanity would not survive their release because of just how dangerous these prisoners are said to be an entire host of custodian guard known as the shadowkeepers is employed here at all times to watch over them the dark cells are perhaps the most secured and tightly guarded location in the entirety of the Galaxy next to say The Golden Throne itself they are barricaded by both runic locks and santic warding circles and are so completely and utterly secured that in a figurative sense it is as if they are outside of the bounds of time and space this place is said to be incredibly unnerving to exist in as nothing not even light or sound will escape from its forbidden cells the air here is so sat ated in an everpresent feeling of inescapable dread that it causes the Shadows themselves to squirm and crawl even the custodians who are like superhuman versions of the asardes are said to always be on edge here to exist in this place is to constantly be bombarded by a feeling of profound emptiness that would drive lesser men to Madness in mere moments yet many of these custodians will stand guard existing in this terrible place for decades at a time speculation about what could be lurking within the Dark Cells has run Wild on the internet for quite some time and some people believe there could be a clone of the emperor down there there could be a master STC an intact Katon one of the old ones the two missing Prim marks the men of iron a lesser deity the list just goes on and on However unfortunately they just really isn't a lot to go off of with this place in the lore whatever's down there is normally just described as an unspeakable Horror in one instance or the quote unquote last Terrors of old KN and another that being said we can make a few educated guesses now whatever's down there has to meet a few different criteria it has to be deemed too dangerous to be allowed to exist uncontained yet simultaneously too valuable to Mankind's continued existence to completely destroy or conversely it has to be something so powerful that mankind physically can't destroy it with the technology that's currently at our disposal and to me this rules out anything demon related as normally killing a demon will only send them screaming back into the warp where they will eventually be remade but we do know that there are some weapons that are capable of permanently killing a demon such as the emperor's sword that is now wielded by Gillan so from my perspective if the Dark Cells were just harboring a bunch of superp powerful demons he could just go down there with his flaming sword and poke a whole bunch of them make a solid afternoon out of it now despite how secure the Dark Cells may seem to be they are not completely impenetrable as the eighth edition custodian codex tells us that shortly after the formation of the Great Rift it was said that several of the jail cells were discovered to be empty their occupants having been Spirited Away by unknown means this has led the shadowkeepers to occasionally be deployed on missions of reclamation whenever the location of a former prisoner has been discovered one such shadowkeeper was named J harl Feld Doris gal and he had been deployed on a mission to track down and slay an entity known as the slithering dreamer a grim achievement to be sure but one that once again were given very little insight into other than its name so yeah unfortunately the vault s beneath Tera although being an incredibly spooky and creepy mystery that people love to speculate on we just don't really know enough about this place yet so your guess is as good as mine when it comes to figuring out what's actually in there let me know in the comment section what you think is locked away in this place personally I hope this is an area of the lore that Games Workshop decides to expand upon in the future but at the same time from the imperium's perspective perhaps some knowledge is just best left forgotten number three the siren Star as is the case with many of 4k's creepiest Unsolved Mysteries the next one I want to talk about begins with an unexplained disappearance but this time it wasn't just a group of colonists who pushed too far into Uncharted Territory or a bunch of convicts turned miners on a frigid ice world that went missing this disappearance was that of a famous Rogue traitor named Gren as well as the entirety of her Fleet who vanished Without a Trace somewhere in the Heathen Stars region of the Galaxy although it's never exactly been confirmed what happened to them a few years back a lot of deranged voidsmen that claimed to be the sole survivors of the Rogue traitor capital ship avarest began turning up in both Port wander and footfall whether or not these men were telling the truth has never been confirmed but the tales they spun were equal parts fascinating and deeply disturbing they spoke of a song sung by a lonely star that wept for the death of her beloved children a song as melancholic as it was beautiful and irresistible a song that spoke of riches beyond their wildest dreams and everything their heart could possibly desire so Bewitched they were by the song's promises that they were unable to react quickly enough when a violent warp storm suddenly appeared out of nowhere and smashed the fleet apart against a nearby asteroid field as these men were common voidsmen none of them could properly articulate what exactly happened to them how they managed to be Shipwrecked how they survived or what exactly it was they encountered at first these were nothing more than rumors but as they started circulating over and over they quickly became cemented as Legend and then as the years rolled on similar reports from equally mad men and women started popping up all across the coronis expanse each and every account was different and strangely enough many of them claimed to have emanated from different regions of the expanse but they all spoke of an irresistible Melody that echoed across every frequency a siren Call that caused even the most seasoned of space fairing veterans to be gripped by an irreparable Madness those who were Afflicted threw all caution to the wind and headed straight into the heart of a nearby system in search of the song's origin some more experienced captains were said to have given compelling arguments why their course needed to be altered despite the protest of their crew whereas others were driven into a deep Insanity that caused them to murderously lash out at any that would dare stand in their way there were even a few that were said to be so far gone that they threw themselves out of their own airlocks in order to get closer to their Celestial Muse if the rumors are to be believed it's said that only those that managed to overcome this song's grip and flee before laying Eyes Upon This siren Star as it has come to be known were able to escape with their lives as all who have ever seen it have been lost to the void so what exactly is going on here is there any truth to these stories or is it simply a case of Sailor tales that have taken on a life of their own well as is often the case with Legends very few details about the rumored siren star are correct and whatever truth can actually be gleamed from these accounts creates even more questions than answers the Imperial record state that within the Heathen Stars region of the Galaxy not far from the baleful light of the Rifts of hecaton is a little known and abandoned system that was charted Millennia Ago by an unnamed surveyor now although some of these ancient reports have more information than others this one stands out as being particularly Bare Bones the individual labeled the system as Diva serium and simply stated the type and size of its Star as well as its number of planets and known navigational hazards the only thing that actually really stands out not aside from the lack of information itself is a note stating Celestial anomaly in reference to the star the system is long dead scoured of all Life by some Celestial disaster that occurred potentially millions of years before its Discovery the star at its Center is a dim white dwarf that doesn't have a lot of time left before it completely burns out it languishes in the center of the system struggling to cast its weak guttering light to the outer planets that have all frozen over the only evidence that suggests that these planets ever supported life is a small handful of dead artificial satellites of non-human origin that float aimlessly around the outer planets however the strangest thing about this system is also surely what its original Discoverer meant by Celestial phenomena emanating from the system's dying star can be heard a sharp Keening whale it is a jumble of frequencies that can be picked up on nearly every Wireless communication system that drives men to distraction or Madness and compels them towards the center of the system and to the star's eldrich Embrace whatever is causing the star to sing and broadcast its song to passing ships Still Remains a mystery some Imperial scholars believe that it is simply an unknown natural phenomena whereas members of the Inquisition have stated that it may be some form of demon or an ancient zenos technology although we don't have any definitive answers on what exactly is going on here I'm going to be honest with you this was one of the most depressing things I've ever researched when looking into 4k's creepy Mysteries something about this lonely dying star that is surrounded by the remnants of a long dead civilization that long ago depended upon it for life just really resonated with me now I'll admit this is just my own personal depressing head Cannon but I don't think this thing is malicious in nature I think this star is in mourning unable to accept the death of its children both the planets that orbited it and the untold billions of organisms that it once gave life to its song calls out to any that will listen not because it wishes to draw them into an early grave but maybe simply because it's lonely and knows that it won't be around much longer to me the star is like a loving grieving Elder who has lost everyone that she ever cared for and simply doesn't want to be alone when she dies number two the year of ghosts do you remember how earlier in this video when we spoke on the vaults of terara how it was one of 4k's greatest Mysteries but we just didn't have a lot of information to go off of well the next thing that we're to talk about takes that to an entirely different level as it's probably the most vague and cryptic thing that I've ever spoken about on this channel this so-called year of ghosts has only ever been mentioned in a single location and we as the audience are only given a single sentence to account for a supposedly incredibly pivotal event in the 40K timeline the source of this little mystery comes from the fifth edition 40K core rule book on page 124 where it simply states that in the year of 831 of the 33rd Millennium the honored dead rose up to defeat the Terrors of the warp now I don't know about you but as a big fan of all things spooky and in particular spooky ghosts uh this little passage had my imagination going absolutely crazy I played dinosaurs and ghosts over an age of Sigmar and for the briefest of moments I pictured in my head my nigh hunt Army on a galactic scale rising up in their trillions to fight against a demonic incursion and as badass as that sounds it's probably not what happened ghost are a well well documented phenomena within the grimart future and they come in all different shapes and sizes but when we're specifically talking about the forces of humanity and more specifically ghosts that would seek to defend their living descendants for a lot of people the first thing that's going to come to mind is the Legion of the Damned and don't get me wrong they certainly fit the bill here as the most commonly accepted Theory to what they actually are is the vengeful spirits of slain Space Marines given new Purpose By The God Emperor however the timeline doesn't exactly line up as their first documented sighting wouldn't be for around another 6,000 years at the beginning of the 40th Millennium also correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the theory that they are ghosts of slain Space Marines although being generally accepted by the Warhammer Community is a not confirmed and B even if it is true is not known to the Imperium it certainly wouldn't be known by any historian or lowly scribe that was cataloging the imperium's history personally I think that it was something else something that had a lot more imp as this entry is listed alongside some other incredibly pivotal events in the timeline such as the Horus heresy the scouring the rise of the Beast and the howling Games Workshop and more importantly the black library is notorious for leaving Little Seeds of information like this throughout their text quick little references to Crazy over-the-top events that they don't bother explaining and then years down the line when they're looking for the subject of a new novel or campaign they can reach back and pick up one of those little seeds and expand on them I'm pretty conf confident that that's what's happening here and Games Workshop if you're listening to this this has got to be at the top of my list of things I want you to expand on how are you going to sit there and tell me that there was potentially a galaxy-wide uprising of ghosts that went to war against demons and you're not even going to bother giving me any extra details about it at all nothing unforgivable so yeah that was the year of ghost we don't know anything about it but it probably was something pretty crazy and hopefully we'll find out more about it in the future number one the Watchers in the dark so I'll admit that I'm not the biggest Dark Angels lore buff I skipped over their Arc and the Horus heresy as quite frankly I it was boring as especially compared to what came before it how are you going to go from the high of the drop site Massacre to a bunch of kids running around in the woods calaban not saying it was a bad book but it was a jarring change of pace anyways one element of the chapter that has always really struck me as deeply creepy and mysterious is the tiny and somewhat adorable entities known as the Watchers in the dark they appear as small robed figures that rarely ever speak and whose true nature and Origins remain unknown some within the Imperium believe that they are revered by the Dark Angels and maybe that's true for a couple of them but to say that the Dark Angels are not fond of aliens mutants or warp entities is a pretty huge understatement so there's definitely something else going on here these little guys have a long and sorted connection to the chapter's history its ancient secrets and specifically their Primark Lionel Johnson as before his Reawakening it was said that it was the Watchers in the dark that exclusively watched over his sleeping body although they appear as cute little Jaa guys that simply want to help out their Space Marine buddies this is nothing more than a facade an intentionally humble illusion that belies their true nature as an unknowable Cosmic horror the truth is that their tiny physical form is only the smallest sliver of what they actually are the only portion of them that the human mind is capable of perceiving it is as if we are a bunch of fish staring at a Giant's finger that has pierced the watery surface of our Realm and were incapable of even comprehending the rest of the digits owner they are said to exist outside of time and space and are everywhere and nowhere all at once although genuine interactions with them are relatively rare we do have a few examples of them speaking and in one they claim to have helped shape humanity and guide the species for over 15,000 years which from their perspective is no greater or lesser a span of time than any other in fact it was revealed in the novel Dreadwing that they do not see time as linear here and by their own word it's more of a mosaic it is three-dimensional and beautiful despite their remarkable abilities they claim that time cannot be viewed as a complete image no matter how many trained eyes fixate on it instead every single detail and facet of a timeline needs to be viewed in isolation and judged on its own merits to this end they foresaw the destruction of caliban and welcomed it as an event that needed to occur for chaos to eventually be defeated what I find so particularly creepy about them is that they are are this unknowable Cosmic entity that clearly possesses an enormous power yet they present themselves as Tiny humble servants if you'll excuse the cliche analogy it reads to me like a wolf in sheep's clothing except instead of a sheep it's a cute little guy in green robes and instead of a wolf it's an eldrich Abomination outside the realm of human comprehension to further illustrate just how creepy these little guys actually are I want to share with you a quick passage from the short story fate Unbound where in the changeling a notably powerful demon of Z encountered one of them while attempting to infiltrate the rock the cathedral Monastery of the Dark Angels now a quick note demons are not normally noted for feeling the emotion of fear and on the rare few occasions where we have seen demons get scared it's normally in the presence of a Godlike entity like the Emperor or at least one of his primarch sons and even then it's less that they're afraid of what they're fighting against and more the fear of failure that will result in punishment from their Associated deity but when the changeling came face to face with a Watcher in the dark that day its presence chilled it to the core a shudder a rare sensation ran down the changeling's borrowed spine the shadow of an instinctive reaction born from its time wearing mortal flesh skin prickled and the servos and the illusion of its power armor word as its fist clenched around it for the first time since it had set events in motion fate buckled there was something at the far end of the cell Corridor the changeling could not so much as see it as sense the absence of The Ether around it to the Demon's warp site the thing was really an un thing a black void without tangible thoughts or emotions to Define it the demon tried to look upon the un thing with azriel's flesh eyes it was diminutive in size its form hidden beneath thick folds of bone-colored cloak as though in Imitation of the Lion's Suns the Shadows beneath its deep cowl were utterly impenetrable as dark to Mortal eyes as it Soul presence was to the changeling's warp Vision it did not move it did not have to the changeling found itself taking a step back the Demon's flesh quivering fear was something the changeling could not feel only feed upon but the sight of the un thing watching him from the Shadows caused the demon an indefinable icy discomfort the changeling could not stay here it could go no further this part of the wider plan was unnecessary anyway a mere addendum to the ritual that would carry the Demonic trickster away and drag the lions with it the changeling doubled back the way it had come the cells untouched Fates weave morphed the future a new born fresh entity behind it The Watcher in the dark remained silent and unmoving it was still there unseen when back within the angel aasta depths The Lion The Wolf Knight and Angel Hunter finally caught the changeling at Bay perhaps we will never know exactly what the Watchers in the dark actually are but for Humanity's sake hopefully their intentions remain benevolent and that was five of Warhammer 4k's creepiest Unsolved Mysteries which one do you think was the creepiest and why what do you think the Watchers in the dark actually are are they demons aliens or something altogether more horrifyingly unknown what do you think is lurking in the shadowy vaults beneath the Imperial Palace and what about that siren star is it actually as depressing as I think it is or am I just reading way too much into it let me know all of your thoughts comments Corrections and suggestions for future videos down in the comment section below as you all know I read just about every single one of them and try to respond to as many of them as I can let me know if you know of any other creepy 40K Mysteries that you'd love to hear me talk about oh yeah and if you like content like this go ahead and like the video subscribe to the channel if you haven't already I know YouTubers say it all the time but it really does help out anyways with all that said big thanks to everyone who supports the work that I do and I'll catch youall in the next one

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 177,017

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer lore, warhammer horror, grim dark, mysteries, unsolved mysteries, scifi horror, dark lore, creepy stories, scary lore, scary stories, warhammer 40k lore, xenos lore, horus heresy, rogue trader, rogue trader story, rogue trader game, space marines, space marine lore, astartes, space marine 2, chaos, chaos lore, chaos gods, chaos daemons, khorne, nurgle, slaanesh, tzeentch, weshammer, chaos space marines, dark angels, dark angels lore, lion, lion el'jonson

Id: gNUUSAAUx1o

Length: 27min 39sec (1659 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2024