The Nachmund Gauntlet is a precarious but vital warp route that threads through the heart of the Great Rift, one of the few reliable passages linking the two sundered halves of the Imperium. Named for the Nachmund system that anchors it, this corridor of relatively navigable space is a lifeline in an age when the galaxy itself has been torn asunder.
When the Great Rift split the heavens, it severed the northern reaches of Imperium Nihilus from the light of the Astronomican and the support of Terra. The Nachmund Gauntlet offers a rare means of crossing that impassable divide, allowing fleets, reinforcements, and crusades to pass between the Imperium's sundered domains. Its strategic value is therefore beyond price, and whoever controls it holds a key to the fate of half the galaxy.
Because of this, the route and the worlds that guard it are ferociously contested. Every enemy of Mankind covets the passage, and the systems along its length endure relentless assault. Chief among its sentinels is the embattled world at the heart of the Vigilus campaign, whose defence became emblematic of the desperate struggle to keep the gauntlet open. To hold the Nachmund Gauntlet is to keep a thread of unity alive across a broken realm; to lose it is to condemn countless worlds to isolation and death.