Phantine highlands

The Phantine highlands are the elevated terrain of the Imperial world Phantine, where settlements are raised above a toxic lower atmosphere. Phantine’s lower reaches are commonly described as choked with industrial fumes and volcanic gases unsuitable for prolonged habitation, obliging the world’s population to establish its hive-cities and landing stacks on highland peaks and elevated platforms reached chiefly by aerial transit.

The highlands accordingly form the principal inhabited and strategically significant zone of the planet, encompassing major hive-cities connected by skyway and flight corridor rather than surface road. The terrain’s reliance on air power made local aviators, organised as the Phantine Air Corps, integral to the world’s defence, and the highlands’ hive-cities served as key objectives during Imperial operations to secure Phantine for the wider Sabbat Worlds Crusade.

The Phantine highlands are best known from Dan Abnett’s Gaunt’s Ghosts novel sequence, in which the Tanith First-and-Only undertake an airborne campaign through this terrain to retake the hive-city of Cirenholm from Chaos-aligned forces, operating alongside Phantine’s native airmen amid the region’s characteristic high-altitude, low-gravity conditions.