You will hear Vandros described as a minor system, and in one sense that is true. Its worlds are not the richest in the sector, nor its forges the greatest, nor its regiments the most celebrated. But strategy, cadets, is not a tally of what a world possesses. It is a measure of what the Imperium loses when that world is gone. Beyond Vandros, the Immaterium is treacherous, its currents uncertain and its passages ruinously unreliable. Through that wilderness runs the Vandros Corridor: a narrow artery by which armies, pilgrims, grain-ships and battlefleets may pass with something approaching certainty. The Veyr Gate guides them from the warp; The Kharon Bastion guards their approach; the Crown Dockyards repair and refuel them for the wars beyond. There are worlds a hundred light-years distant whose governors have never spoken the name Vandros, yet whose survival depends upon ships passing safely through it. Remember this lesson: a fortress is not important because of the stone upon which it stands, but because of the road it commands. If Vandros falls, the Imperium does not merely lose a system. It loses the road.”
— Magister-Strategos Hestian Vale, Schola Progenium lecture on Strategic Geography, Segmentum Obscurus
