Nowhere Fastnesses

Orkspace is filled with areas that, to most other species, would be considered undesirable, if not uninhabitable. The 'Nowhere Fastness' is a term for a cluster of stars and their attendant planets – mostly rocky dwarf planets devoid of atmosphere – which occupy an area where the materium is particularly robust. As a result, travel into and out of the Fastnesses is nearly always only possible through sublight speeds. Ships which attempt to move through the Fastnesses become becalmed and drop into realspace – the void equivalent of running aground.

This, of course, is of little concern to the orks, as the by-product of this is that an array of unwary travellers end up slowed to a deadly crawl. As a result, nearly a dozen petty empires and warbands ply their trade here, looting and fighting one another, and uniting to descend on unwary travellers and merchant ships that are foolish enough to risk the tides of the warp. Ork piracy is rife here, and if a warboss can put up with the tedium of travelling at sublight speeds for a time, he can find willing freebooter mercenaries and fighting opportunities amongst the Fastnesses. 

An interesting by-product of the voidshallows here is that the flotsam and jetsam of the warp is often deposited here. As a result, meks can find many interesting 'widgets and doobries' from hundreds of species and periods of time simply floating in the void. Of significant interest to Imperial commanders is the fact that the Fastnesses serve as an unusual kind of shipping yard for the greenskins, by virtue of so many ships and hulks 'washing up' around in the area. Due to the unpredictable nature of the warp (not to mention the orks themselves), it is unlikely that the area can ever be properly subjugated, and that ork strikes from the Fastnesses will harry Imperial shipping whenever they attempt to pass.

From the ork perspective, the Nowhere Fastnesses serve both as fortress and delaying tactic – to be used in deadly combination with the fast-strike fleets of the orks.