If I have a quarrel with Black Library and/or Fantasy Flight Games it is over the lack of a decent encyclopedia/atlas/ gazetteer for the Calixis sector. The little snippets of information dropped here and there are all very nice and good for flavour, but neither do they really provide us with a good sense of the overreaching structure of the sector, nor provide us with planetary descriptions that are actually worthwhile in terms of what a GM can use as inspiration for his games.

And it’s not that FFG cannot do it; the Lathe Worlds supplement proved that they are quite capable of detailing both individual worlds and an important chunk of the Adeptus Terra in a most excellent fashion. Unfortunately it’s too little, too late. None of the other source books contain details like that; the Book of Judgment was nice, even had some stuff about the Adeptus Arbites, but contained no significant amount of really new world information. Same for the Book of Martyrs; it mentioned a lot of places and gave us the location of the cardinals’ courts, but provided no new world descriptions. And of course with DH 2.0 we won’t be seeing much in the way of new material, so there goes the last faint chance of getting more flesh on the Calixian bones.

Which brings me to my next point: This is as good a time as ever to produce a fan-made Calixian gazetteer. With DH 2.0 coming out and the switch over to a new sector there won’t be any new Calixis-related stuff coming out; nothing to suddenly invalidate whatever is written in this supplement. In other words: Perfect timing for this supplement!

Not that it matters all that much; GMs are notorious for picking bits and pieces they like and twisting thing around to fit their games. So whatever I write in here are no doubt going to be picked apart and twisted around in a million (a slight exaggeration perhaps) way. Indeed, if you looked at a hundred different DH games I’m pretty sure that not two of them are exactly alike in their interpretation of the setting or in their presentation of official source material. If you can keep that in mind then it shouldn’t really matter if this book is official or not.

Yes, that’s right. Despite the devilishly cunning layout: This not an official product, and therefore absolutely 100% not canon. That said it’s always nice to keep in mind GW’s own definition of canon; there is no such thing. Anything goes: The 40k setting is big and varied enough to have room for everything. It is what you make it out to be. Which is kind of fitting IMO, since the original Rogue Trade made no secret of having been more than slightly inspired by a variety of existing sci-fi tropes. Being quite unofficial has does have one major benefit though; get it for free, which should be a nice bonus!

But enough of what this supplement isn’t and a little about what it is: It is a gazetteer that provides you with a pretty detailed overview of Calixis as a sector. It looks at stuff like stellar geography, sector history, politics and commerce, warp routes and navigation, subtle threats and outright war. It covers the sector as a whole, including its relations to neighbouring sectors and the Imperium as a whole. It details each of the sub-sectors and provides at least a snippet (and for some planets longer entries) for every listed world or system (plus a few extra ones).

It goes on to discuss the role of the Inquisition and the Calixian Conclave in some detail. It provides you with several possible solutions for the Tyrant Star and it touches upon the nature of the Haarlock legacy. At the very end there is an Index (kudos to Adam France and Adeptus B) which is useful if you want to look up official references to this and that in published books.

In the process of writing the Encyclopædia Calixis I’ve had to make some assumptions. Assumptions about the size of the sector, the number of worlds, their populations. Assumptions about the number of Inquisitors at large. Assumptions about the nature of private enterprise and how a sector is governed. YMMV. You’re not required to agree with all of that to use this supplement. If it doesn’t work for you; change it. For example: If you’re one of those who feel that Inquisitors should be truly rare, cut their number. You can still enjoy the planetary descriptions – they are not dependent of number of Inquisitors.

B.