Vorgossos

Vorgossos is a world of disputed existence, known in Imperial legend as a frigid planet orbiting a dead star and associated with the Extrasolarians — their ruling caste, the Exalted — and with the legendary pirate king Kharn Sagara, who turned the Exalted against one another, slew their captain, and took command of their ship before setting course for Vorgossos and making himself its king, taking the epithet 'the King with Ten Thousand Eyes.' In Imperial common memory, Count Balian dismisses it as 'a fairy tale pirate planet' and 'a thing in old stories.'

Vorgossos becomes a concrete military and intelligence objective when the dying Cielcin captain Uvanari names it as the place where it encountered humans as a child, before it became ichakta. Uvanari uses the Cielcin word fusumnu — related to fusu'un (world) — but qualified as 'dark' and 'between the stars.' Hadrian interprets this using the Cielcin word vohosum (between, literally between the stars) as a location associated with the Extrasolarians. Inquisitor Agari argues the name must refer to a real place, since Uvanari could not have known a human legend unless it had direct contact with humans there. Knight-Tribune Smythe accepts this reasoning and launches the covert mission to find Vorgossos, using Hadrian as translator and Valka as xenologist, with Bassander Lin as captain.