newest cloudburst material

System: Mendic

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Hapster Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 6, 1 habitable

Dead World: Scalding

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: N/A

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

Adept Presence: N/A

Climate: N/A

Geography: The size of Terra, barren rock and open lava vents

Gravity: 1 Terran Gravity

Economy: N/A

Principle Exports: N/A
Principle Imports: N/A

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: N/A

Contact with Other Worlds: N/A

Tithe Grade: N/A

Population: N/A

Description:
At one point, this world was a breadbasket of the Imperium.  Remarkably similar to ancient Terra in size and biosphere, it was a world of purers, massive grox herds that roamed over low hills and through shallow rivers, and cities of glass and stone.  The planet, then named Letrione, had over two hundred million Imperial souls, and aside from some common and annoying volcanism and diastrophism, the world was a perfectly unremarkable Agri-world of Imperial humanity.
This came to a horrific end thanks to the forces of Chaos.  The world played host to massive slaughterhouses for the grox and bovine herds that traveled its surface.  Within the slaughterhouses, a misread psyker aptitude test resulted in one young psyker escaping the Black Ships.  Unaware of their psychic power, they began to hear the prayers of their neighbors to escape the endless drudgery of the slaughterhouse life.  He took pity on them, and reached out to bestow upon them gifts of psychic power, which changed their lives in many ways.  The simple, superstitious people of Letrione took this as a miracle, and offered up prayers and sacrifices to the Emperor for granting them the powers.
This, in turn, attracted the attention of dark beings.  The sacrifices turned from small piles of money and burned paper offerings to bloody ritual and debasing human misery.  The psyker who began it all felt the pleadings for release in his mind once more.  Reaching out to grant that release, his body exploded as a Warp Rift opened in his corrupted soul.
Within two weeks, eighty percent of the world’s population was dead, and an army of daemons rampaged unchecked over the planet.  When an Inquisitorial response force arrived, they immediately recognized that the world was lost.  Consigning the world’s population to oblivion, they pelted the planet with Exterminatus-grade weapons from their Longstrike cruiser.  The world’s massive volcanoes erupted as the tectonic plates of the world sank into the mantle, and the Inquisition left it behind, leaving only some automated warning beacons and the world’s new name: Scalding.


System: Cygnmo

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 2, 1 habitable

Feral World: Cygnmo

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 20%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon gasses .01%

Religion: Holy Emperor Star Cult

Government Type: Primitive

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites

Climate: Cygnmo has periodic ice storms that follow the planet’s long day cycle, stretching from the equator to the polar circles, but is largely desert or pine forest

Geography: 1.9 times the size of Terra, with thin topsoil and rocky formations jutting from the oceans

Gravity: 1.11 Terra gravity

Economy: Local scrip

Principle Exports: Timber, Gravel, Textiles, Natural Gas
Principle Imports: Machined Parts, Plastic

Countries and Continents: Eight continents, roughly seven hundred small nations

Military: Celestial Guard barracks, Cygnmo Warbeasts (low quality PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Almost none

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: 11,000,000

Description:
As the fleets of Explorators and Rogue Traders aplenty scoured the worlds of the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit, patterns emerged at once.  Within solar months of the Gold Rush One beginning, these explorers found worlds with clear signs of human occupation in their past, or even some worlds that had whole populations that had since reverted to barbarism.  Cygnmo falls into the latter category.  Although there are some worlds in the Cloudburst Sector that have allowed their technology levels to rise since contacting the Imperium, Cygnmo has steadfastedly refused to allow modernity to pierce their traditionalism.  The onset of the Glasians may well bring about a change in this attitude, however.
The Cygnmen are a hardy and self-reliant force.  The Technofetishism and bland autocracy of the Imperium do not appeal to them in any way.  Although the population of the world has gained more Cloudburst-like traits over time, largely as a result of Celestial Guard barracks troops taking local spouses or going native, the hundreds of feral tribes of the world refuse over and over to be more active in the greater Imperium.  It is easy to understand why, looking at the world’s magnificent vistas, endless resources, and strong mystical traditions.  Cygnmo has withstood plagues, the passage of millennia, Imperial colonizations, and its own downfall, but their bone-deep stubbornness lingers.

For thousands of years, Adeptus Ministorum priests and Missionaries have pressured the world to adapt to the Imperial Cult, and eventually succeeded.  The ancient, variable mystical traditions of the people of Cygnmo faded in favor of Emperor-worship.  If the Ministorum had hoped that this would yield more Imperium-friendly conduct in the natives, however, they were sorely disappointed when the opposite occurred.
Cygnmen have a long history of valuing pride and military independence over cooperation.  Though avoiding inbreeding has necessitated some exchanges of clan grounds and women over the years, the individual clans, and the five or six individual tribes within each clan, would rather kill each other than work together.
Exceptions arise at times.  Chieftains of great charisma and willpower may forge multiple clans together into a proper warband.  These warbands may be allowed to run riot over the world by the Adepta, or they may be recruited into serving as the world’s PDF as needed.  Ultimately, the very mightiest of these warlords may even establish a kingdom among the clans, though these rarely outlive their first sons.

However, there is substantial evidence among the remains of these failed states that this was not always the case.  Imperial archaeologists, working in the zone the greater Imperium has claimed for itself on the surface for the Celestial Guard barracks, found architecture, coinage, art, and technology that the primitive clans of the worlds could not have possibly made for themselves in their current state.  Missionaries working with the nomadic tribes have also found evidence of complex religious hierarchies, a few scraps of working STC technology, and even complex sculptures of great formations of organized men in battle.
Any oral histories of what could have happened to break up this past triumph are long dead.  Physical evidence, however, suggests that this organization was not the result of purely local development.  To the surprise of the Missionaries and archaeologists, the Mechanicus made the fateful discovery.  While excavating resource deposits in one of the great, uninhabited, rocky islands of the world’s oceans, the Mechanicus located what could only be a sign of past interplanetary presence.  To their shock, the Mechanicus unearthed a fully functioning Maskos mining machine, complete with an STC manufacturing serial number dating to the late Age of Apostasy.  All around it, the Mechanicus found more evidence of human work, including pre-fab housing units, laser guns, and mysterious powders in the refuse piles and trash heaps.  Spectroscopy revealed that this powder was dust from Maskos’ fine sandy shores.
Eventually, the Imperial colony concluded that the world had once been approached for trading rights by Drolorium, after the Age of Strife ended but before the Imperium recontacted Drolorium.  Preliminary dating work done on the remains of the ancient Cygnmo cultural artifacts suggests the timeline is accurate.  Why Drolorium left Cygnmo to its fate, nobody knows, but it clearly happened quickly, if the invaluable Maskos mining machines had to be left behind.

However, the presence of an interplanetary colony site on the planet does not, by itself, explain why the Cygnmen seem to have once had a world-spanning and successful culture of higher standards than it currently enjoys.  It would suggest how that culture was initially supported, perhaps, but given that Drolorium seems to have given nothing to Cygnmo in return for its resources, it could not have sustained it indefinitely.  Some newer dig sites have revealed that an even more advanced culture, with some parallels to early Imperial culture, may have once existed on the shores of the world’s great oceans, and traded with the ancient Cygnmen clans.  This one appears to have been of entirely local origin, and perhaps its own collapse accelerated the decline of the majority of the worlds’ clans, as a symbiotic ecosystem fails with the loss of the largest member.

Regardless of the ancient history of the world, it is clear that the previous efforts to civilize the Cygnmen had no more success than the current Imperial effort.  The Imperial Missionary and limited Administratum efforts to bring the Cygnmen into a more modern way of life have convinced only a few dozen clans of the many hundreds that existed on the world.  Some clans have even attacked the Imperium for the temerity of suggesting that they may enjoy living in places with clean water and impartial law enforcement.  Once the offending clans were exterminated, these raids ceased, but the underlying displeasure with the Imperial lifestyle has never gone away.

Those clans who have elected to become more normal Imperial citizens have enjoyed their decision’s fruits, at least for the most part.  A modern Imperial city has sprung up in the shadows of the world’s largest mountain, and its comforts are freely available to all who dwell there.  The tall electric fence that rings the city keeps out those who would not work for what they have, while a small Precinct Fortress of Arbites keeps order and trains the friendlier locals in Imperial law.  What defenses the world has are generally in the hands of the permanent Celestial Guard barracks on the planet, though it is not uncommon for a tribe of overly hostile Cygnmen to be snatched up in the night and taken as defenders of the world in its notional PDF.  There, they can look at great Imperial buildings and bases in astonishment and awe, and perhaps come to a better appreciation of its virtues.

To the interest of the Administratum, some of the more isolated populations of Cygnmo are developing along the same historical tracks as their ancestors.  Patrilineal kingdoms of warriors, organized around a small cadre of priests and sages and led by their greatest general, have started to conquer and absorb


System: Nauphry

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Capital Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: Lord Subsector Nauphry Matheus Soldati

Planets: Seven, two inhabited

Industrial World: Nauphry IV

Satellites: Nauphry IV has two moons, both uninhabitable

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide .04%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum

Climate: Temperate, formerly oceanic, becoming toxin seas

Geography: Active tectonics, landmasses occasionally damaged by catastrophic earthquakes, .92 times the size of Terra, large oceans

Gravity: 0.91 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Cogitator Parts, Terraformation Starter Kits, Processed Metals, Fertilizers, Imperial Guard, Plastics, Starships
Principle Imports: Raw Resources, Food, Servitors

Countries and Continents: Two countries, one of which serves as the hub of Imperial government, spread out over three continents

Military: Nauphry Guard, Nauphry Ironclads, Nauphry Bastions (high quality Guards, high quality Navy, high quality PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Constant, as a Subsector Capital

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular

Population: 9,090,000,000

Description:
The proud home of the Cloudburst Imperial Navy, a smog-choked hell, and the Imperial world most likely to dissolve into civil war, Nauphry is by any metric a fascinating world.  The planet’s lengthy day-night cycle and steep axial tilt makes most days recognizably different from the day before in weather, and its sky routinely darkens from the number of ships passing by in its orbit.

Nauphry IV – never Four – is an Industrial World.  These worlds tend to have been in the exact position between the number of people needed to make a Hive World and having the technology to actually do it at the time the Imperium contacts them first.  As a result, they also tend towards being polluted, heavily populated, and suffering from nationalistic fervor.  Of course, as long as the world continues to produce and refine minerals and goods for the Imperium, the Adepta generally do not care much about the specifics of each world’s environment and local governing.
Nauphry IV may be an exception to that trend.  The planet is not only a major Imperial Navy anchorage, but also a local hub of trade and travel thanks to its neighbor, Nauphry VII.  The world contributes a higher percentage of its population to the Adepta than any other world in the sector, including Celeste.  Cloudburst itself barely contributes less.  Consequently, the Imperium is more aware of local political rumblings on the planet, and the Inquision has at least two Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus and one of the Ordo Militarum present at all times.

The actual government of the planet is that of the Adeptus Terra itself, with the System Overlord serving as the Subsector Overlord, and with no Planetary Governor serving between them and the structure of the plantary administration.  This was an effort of necessity, stemming from the binary nature of the planet’s civil government.

Nauphry is a world divded.  At the moment, two countries, each controlling roughly half the planet’s population, sprawl over the surface of the world.  Neither is permitted to build up local militaries.  All defensive military assets on the planet stage from large bases under direct Imperial control.  This was a precaution, to prevent the two active nations from destroying each other.  While this has allowed for the local PDF to reach a level of preparedness and non-tribal mindset that few other PDFs reach, it has forced the governments to compete by other means.  At times, this competition has taken the form of friendly sporting events, building increasingly opulent cathedrals to the Emperor, or similarly good-natured efforts.  More recently, however, the competition has switched to rapid resource generation, to satisfy the planet’s tithing effort.

Obviously, this is of huge benefit to the Imperium, which has successfully built multiple starships from the resources raised on Nauphry and plans to build more.  However, the comparatively primitive technology of the planet is both inefficient and polluting.  The surge in huge manufacturing and mining efforts is now polluting the planet so heavily that one of the two nations of the world has calculated that the world‘s agriculture will fail within the century.  The nation intent on pillaging the planet’s resources without constraint, Emericos Federocracy, presently represents a majority of the world’s industrial base and tithe, and is thus favored by the Administratum.  The nation that has successfully predicted the planet’s economic failure, Barnap Federocracy, is physically larger, but its less productive and more efficient manufacturing systems produce about 40% of the planet’s tithe output.  It also plays host to the planet’s largest Scholam Progenium, though its Abbot makes a conscious effort to stay detached from local politics.  The planet’s growing ecological problems are not the concern of the Adepta, though Barnap officials are appealing to them for aid in resolving this dispute.

The two nations are forced by system law to contribute identical tithes of troops for the PDF and other military, which they do on the surface military bases of the Officio Munitorum.  The world’s military forces have allegiance to their home nation beaten out of them in training, thanks to previous incidents of friendly fire between PDF platoons of differing nationalities.  The PDF garrison in chains of partially-underground buildings, mass-built by the Mechanicus.  The structures usually have a surrounding maze of barbed wire coils and sentry towers.  Road access to these imposing bases is denied to all vehicles that can’t present identification for every passenger, and those who fail to provide it are turned away at the first checkpoint and vaporized at all checkpoints after that.
Nauphry PDF tithe their most skilled 10% of each rank and rating up to the Officio Munitorum, though not all up to the Guard.  Some are instead tithed up to the Imperial Navy, and do so at a higher rate than any other world in the Sector.

Nauphry IV also fields a wet navy, with aircraft carriers, submarines, and battleships.  It patrols the shores of the islands on which the world’s Mechanicus temples and Astropathic shrine are built, and also guard the gigatonnes of shipping that crosses the world’s increasingly polluted seaways.  The SDF of the system recruits heavily from the larger cities of the planet, so the surface and space defense fleets rarely draw from the same population.  This can create more of the sme rivalries that have all but paralyzed the PDF in the past.  For now, the planet’s government and defenses are just potent and functional enough that the Inquisition and Arbites have not stepped in, but they shall if things get any worse.

The Nauphry system also provides many of the colonists drawn from the Sector to colonize worlds beyond.  The Cloudburst Circuit is the largest destination, but is not the only one.  Worlds in the war-torn Naxos Sector and pirate-ravaged Drumnos Sector also sometimes require Cloudburst colonists, and Nauphry IV provides hundreds of thousands of them.  The ships upon which they fly are the product of Nauphry’s own shipyards, the unique Glowing Light colony barge.  The barge is designed to be as radiation-resistant as Mechanicus technology can make them, to best survive the arduous flight through the curtains of gas that bedevil the Cloudburst Sector.  After all, just because the gasses do not leak into the Warp doesn’t mean that colony ships will be able to fly directly to their targets.


Agri-world/Contested: Nauphry VII

Satellites: Nauphry VII has one moon undergoing terraforming

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide .01%

Religion: The Imperial Cult

Government Type: Local Prime Minister

Planetary Governor: Yes

Adept Presence: Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (in orbit), Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum

Climate: Temperate, with arctic poles

Geography: Tectonically active and violent, with jagged mountains and deep canyons

Gravity: .91 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Food, leather, manganese, copper, silver
Principle Imports: Agricultural equipment, convicts, agri-servitors, clothing, amunition

Countries and Continents: No national divisons, military training confined to single island

Military: Nauphry Shields, Nauphry Bastions (high quality Guards, high quality PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Infrequent, as needed

Tithe Grade: Solutio Extremis

Population: 1,000,000,000 (human), 500,000,000 (servitors)

Description:
While its neighbor roils in political tension, the breadbasket world Nauphry VII enjoys tranquil agriculture.  The whole world has been retasked to farming from pole to pole, save for one large island chain where the military and Mechanicus headquarter their assets.  The planet’s quiet, peaceful agrarian life and abundant natural resources make living on the world far more enjoyable and comfortable than living on Nauphry IV, but that comes at a cost.  The world’s personel transportation, luxury resource, and non-religious entertainment sectors are far less developed.  The loss of the world’s natural vistas and most wildlife also make the world rather monotonous, outside of the few cities.
Nauphry VII’s peace and quiet are hard-won.  At one time, the planet had a troublesome feral Ork population, though it was tiny compared to Oglith’s or even Oromet’s.  The native Orks seemed content to stab each other in the hills and valleys of the earthquake-wracked planet, until the human population of colonists moved in.  The Orks promptly turned on the invaders, and two full regiments of Coriolis Light Rifles rush to the world to keep the greenskins from killing the entire colony.  After two years of grueling war, the Light Rifle regients killed the last known Ork being in the system and set fire to their primitive dwellings and cave garages.  The surviving Coliolans were given Rights Of Conquest, and became the new nobles of the planet.  Because the world’s entire noble population enjoy common history and are not from the contentious nobility of Nauphry IV, the planet does not endure the sectarian competition of their more populous neighbor.

Nauphry VII does have some heavy industry, generally in the polar areas where year-round planting is not possible.  The metallic products that the world makes ship off to Cognomen and Thimble, and Nauphry IV to a lesser extent.  The world imports all of its ammunition for its military from Cognomen, but has just enough industry to manufacture some of its own local armaments.

The nameless island on which most of the world’s government holds court plays host to the single largest Arbites Precinct-Fortress in the system, a towering sixteen-storey ziggaurat that looms over all nearby.  The building is equipped with its own Astropathic Choir, a Triple Icarus AA battery, and over three thousand Arbites and Marshals.  The fortress actually sits atop the underground prison that holds most of the world’s criminals, separated from the main prison body by a Void Shield of the type more typically seen in cities on worlds with catastrophic volcanism like Nocturne.
The Arbites insist that the colossal fortress is the final fallback of the system, if all of the orbitals, palaces, garrisons, and other bastions of system defense and administration are overrun.  The fortress does have a shielded VTOL pad and retractable landing platform to allow visitors to bring their entire shuttles inside.

Outside the fortress, the island also houses the few million PDF and hundred thousand Guard of the Nauphry VII defense, in a sprawling base that boasts a half-mile runway for non-VTOL aircraft and thousands of housing buildings.  Somebody who grew up in the island’s massive military and law enforcement overbuild would no doubt be floored by the sight of the massive grain fields and vegetable plots of the majority of the planet.  There are thousands of points in the farmlands of the planet where one could stand on a stepladder and look around, and see literally no artificial structures as far out as the horizon.  Large Mechanicus harvester engines crawl about the fields like ships in the green and gold sea, collecting food and dispersing fertilizers and water.  The population of the mainlands live in planned communities dotted about the endless farms, and enjoy the Ministorum’s direct guidance in arranging marriages.  The world imports convicts from other planets and puts them to work in chain gangs, maintaining the roads that carry the massive harvesting combines.  Sometimes these individuals are used until broken and rebuilt as servitors, but more often, they are deemed rehabilitated after end-of-sentence interviews with the local law enforcement officials, and granted limited colonization rights, often doing the same work they were doing before without the chains.

Nauphry Military

The war colleges of the Nauphry System serve as the training grounds for many of the officer recruits taken from other worlds of the Cloudburst Sector.  Coriolis and Thimble provide many such recruits, while Septiim and Maskos generally keep their officer candidates for their own fleets.  Nauphry enjoys extensive support from the Navy in this effort, and officer colleges in Nauphry have produced most of the Lords Admiral Cloudburst.
However, their record is not spotless.  The leader of the FCC, Admiral Reith, is a graduate of the Nauphry war colleges, and so are dozens of other pirates from the sector’s history.  The Nauphry college administrators consider it a stain on their honor that so many of their students have turned their guns on the Imperium.  Of course, all Sectors have had piracy problems, including the Sol Sector itself, and the war colleges have produced hundreds of thousands of other officers who have never lost their way.

The Nauphry Guard are the Guard of the Nauphry system, creatively enough, and their regiments always strive to reach the highest standards of military conduct and performance.  Although their forces are based on the regimental structures of the Septiim system, their individual tithings are quite different.  Unlike Septiim’s year-round recruitment drives, the Nauphry Guard recruit solely in year-end tithings of manpower to the Munitorum, and draw their forces at random through lottery from the general Nauphry Bastions.  Nauphry Guard have made a name for themselves in fighting in the opposite direction of the majority of Cloudburst Astra Militarum regiments.  Most Cloudburst Guards troops either fight their way out to the Circuit and Exo-zone or defend the worlds on which they were raised from Glasians or Orks, but the Nauphry Guard have sortied over one hundred regiments in Crusades that staged in the Drumnos and Naxos Sectors, usually fighting corewards, against enemies within the Imperium’s borders.
This is not a conscious decision on the Munitorum’s part, but a fluke of random chance.  The Crusades and other campaigns in those older Sectors are generally retributive actions by the Munitorum against raiders or Chaotic forces, which assault the Imperium whenever they think they can get away with it.  The fact that Nauphry akways has ships and men to spare thanks to their lottery just means that they are the planet most likely to have Guard forces to spare at any given time.

The Nauphry Ironclads, however, are unique.  Nauphry fields a massive surface naval fleet, larger than any other in Cloudburst or the Circuit.  The planet’s history of being attacked by pirates seeking new space vessels, or Glasians doing whatever it is that they do, means that the world’s two nations often find themselves scrambling their navies to defend their shores from attackers.  The planet’s Administratum knows that the two competing superpowers could use their navies to attack each other, and has forbidden it.  The world’s Adeptus Terra refer to both fleets interchangeably as the Ironclads, despite their distinct names and designations, to drive home the point that they could sieze the fleets for their own use any time they wish it.  Both fleets can sortie over two dozen fixed-wing and VTOL aircraft supercarriers, and of the fifty carriers on the planet, three can launch surface-to-space missiles to aid in the defense of the orbitals from pirates or aliens.


System: Oscar India Golf

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Uncategorized Region

System Overlord: N/A

Planets: Two, one barely habitable

Orkhold World Gorkypark

Satellites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 20%, Argon 1%, Carbon Dioxide 0.5%, Methane/Ethane 0.5%

Religion: Gorkymork

Government Type: Big Mek Oligocracy

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: None

Climate: Gorkypark is a toxin zone that spans a world, with massive carbon storms and raging wildfires

Geography: Barren, rocky land that barely supports plant life.  Algae flocs and blobs dominate the land, with Orkanisms living in the few large liquid bodies

Gravity: Gorkypark has 1.4 times Terran gravity by default, but its gravity is in constant flux

Economy: Teef

Principle Exports: Petrochemicals, junk, orks
Principle Imports: Teef, junk, orks

Countries and Continents: None to speak of, no volcanism or tectonics

Military: Orks

Contact with Other Worlds: Routine contact with Orks passing through the system

Tithe Grade: N/A

Population: Unknown

Description:
Gorkypark is an Orkhold, and one of few anywhere near Cloudburst.  The planet hangs in the void between the Celeste and Oglith Subsectors.  Were the founding of the Cloudburst Sector the result of a single, overwhelming Crusade, like the Sabbat Worlds Reclamation or the Angevin Crusade, there would likely be no such gaps in Imperial coverage, but as the worlds of Cloudburst were instead colonized piecemeal, Gorkypark was simply overlooked by the Imperium.

The planet is hopelessly, perhaps permanently contaminated by Orks.  The entire ecosystem of the planet is now Orkyformed, with Orkoid spawning algae now growing in such profusion that the blooms are visible from space.  However, the planet’s permanent Ork population is actually quite small, given that the algal blooms could easily generate far more Orks than it presently is.
The cause of this lesser spawn rate is the world’s atmosphere, and the Orks can only blame themselves.  The planet’s atmosphere is contaminated with chemicals that could choke a human comatose in under an hour, and what little oxygen recycling there is on the world is at constant risk of fires thanks to the Meks that run the world.  If the atmosphere were more breathable, the algae would surely produce millions more Orks than it is, but for now, the spawn rate and die-off rate are match almost perfectly, to the Ordo Xenos’ acute relief.

On the rocky surface of Gorkypark, Orks fight, eat, and amuse themselves.  The Orkysystem is entrenched enough that Squigs spawn regularly, and several tribes of nomadic Orks chase them around, harvesting them for meat and bones.  Larger Squigs, like the Squiggoth and Leviasquig, sometimes spawn as well, providing temporary delight for the Ork hunters if they survive.
The main industry of the world, however, is chemical refining.  When Ordo Xenos investigators first responded to the sudden diversion of an Ork fleet in M41, they found the system in the path of the Ork ships.  From a distance, the system looks relatively normal, save the binary planet in the Habitability Zone.  The two worlds, Gorkypark and Morkypit, are a highly atypical binary, consisting of one large rocky world and a gas giant.  The rocky world, Gorkypark, spins around the larger gas giant Morkypit in a stable orbit.  The Ordo Xenos leaders of the Imperial fleet thought that the rocky planet was somehow siphoning atmosphere from its neighbor, but as they drew closer in stealthy chase of the Ork ships, they realized that the gasses flowing from the gas giant were condensing and forming stable liquids as they entered the atmosphere of the rocky world.  Furthermore, the gasses were not moving with the gravity of the two worlds, but were actually moving against the pattern of gravitational attraction between them.

A covert shuttle landing with baffled engine exhaust revealed the cause of this bizarre phenomenon.  At the heart of a massive Ork city on the rocky world, a huge metal object in the shape of an Ork tusk rose high over the ramshackle buildings.  The tusk glowed with eldritch light as a coil of gas soared by overhead, and as it did so, the gas suddenly arced down to splash as a liquid into the surface of a nearby ocean.
Instantly, another tooth, sticking from the ground some fifty miles outside the city, flared its own colorful light.  The shuttle team listened in shock as Techpriests on the Ordo ship in orbit reported that an impossibly fast-moving coil of gas spooled off the giant and moved through space towards the rocky planet as soon as that happened.
Back on their ship, the Ordo Xenos team poured over their findings, and came to one conclusion: the Orks of the world had managed to bring online a Graviton Compressor Array from the era of the Prime-Ork named the Beast.  How it had wound up here, the Inquisition could not determine, but there was no mistaking one in action.  Where the Beast had used his Compressors to destroy whole worlds, the Orks of this world were using to make money.  The Ordo observed the Orks using their starport and their endless fuel supply to gas up the Ork ships, then use the resources they received in trade to manufacture all manner of xenotech, most of it befuddlingly indecipherable.
The Ork fleet scattered over Cloudburst, Naxos, and Drumnos, but the Ordo Xenos ships remained stealthed at the edge of the system, beginning a centuries-spanning watch over the world below.  Now, the system hosts a permanent Watch Point of the Deathwatch, who keep an eye on the Orks of Gorkypark, waiting for a chance to steal the Compressor.

On the surface of the world, Orks from visiting ships spend their teef and booty on various entertainments.  The planet’s orbit is not clear enough to allow for much construction in near space, but it is stable enough for ships to stay in orbit for a while, and so the surface is a teeming morass of Orks.  The chemical oceans emit noxious gasses that would knock a human cold, so there is no real chance of the world ever becoming a human colony, but the environment is bearable to Orks.  The main city – if it has a name, no human knows it – sits on a high plateau in the southern hemisphere of the world.  The Graviton Compressor looms over the city, glowing green, and casting light over the revelry below.
The streets fill with greenskins around the clock.  Pirates and Boyz lurch from pub to pub, drunk on grog, while nobs and Offizers carouse in squig-hunting ranches.  The whole city rings with gunfire as Orks celebrate their inebriation and free time with hearty gun battles, while Mek creations stomp around the edges of the plateau, testing new Tek.

The lowlands are almost as festive, in the Orky way.  The great oceans of chemicals don’t cover the whole surface of the world.  On the shores and lowlands, Orks find a good time in the faire atmosphere of the smaller settlements.  Meks with nothing better to do set up great pinwheel devices, festooned with chains and hooks.  Orks can pay one toof to hitch their foot onto a hook, then be spun about by the turning machines for a few minutes.  Elsewhere, Freebooterz who rarely get to enjoy the benefits of planetside life may spend their booty on fancy clothes and big hats, while Nobs bully herds of grots and snotlings into minefields for the entertainment of cheering crowds, who often place bets on the spectacle.

Thousands of Orks jostle and fight on the Mud Spot, where the natural Ork impulse to beat the living hell out of each other can be exercised without too many fatalities.  For the more relaxation-inclined Ork, there are Twirly Fings on cliffsides, where Orks can pay teef to watch prisoners or squigs be flung to the oceans below as determined by the pattern of colored balls that fall out of giant plastic lottery machines run by Meks.

For the thrill-seeking Orks, there are always the Buggy Races, where dozens of Speed Freeks and other daredevils can line up their ramshackle machines and roar over the flats, competing for Mek upgrades and piles of gold and teef.  The contests sometimes feature hidden pressure plates in the sand that trigger spike traps or catapults that send nearby hapless drivers careening into the stands or back to the start, to euphoric applause from the boyz.
Even more dangerous are the expeditions.  Enterprising Orks with a sense for helmsmanship will lead gangs of boyz out into the chemical seas to go Squiggin’.  In this pastime, the Ork Kaptains will pack their steel boats with eager Orks and give each one a line and some bait.  The Kaptains then steer the boats out into the chemical seas and kick back to watch.  Each Ork competes with the others catch the biggest squigs, sometimes the size of Terran whales.  The Kaptains of larger boats will usually buy a camera to send the images of their fishing passengers back to the city, where Orks can wager on which passenger will get the biggest squig or die first.  It’s all part of the fun, after all, and cheating is just playing more kunnin’.  Some Kaptains will surreptitiously drop concussion grenades into the chemicals to lure largepredators near, just for the chance to watch giggling boyz get dragged into the chemical ocean and eaten while the others scramble for his pile of squigs.

Gorkypark isn’t all play, though.  Outside the settlements, there are regions of the planet indistinguishable from a Forge World testing ground.  Carefully-built metal gantries and catwalks span huge gorges carved by experimental weapons, bunkers and pillboxes peer out over killing grounds, and in places, electricity crackles and arcs through the air from Weirdtek.
This is the center of Gorkypark industry, and the true prize of the Ordo Xenos.  The planet is not run by a Nob or Boss, but by Big Meks, and the world’s entire future hinges on their being able to create new Tek faster than a Waaagh-bound Mek could.  In the testing grounds, Meks barter with visitors and each other for new junk and bitz, and immediately set to ‘improving’ it in their scattered workshops.  Periodically, the Deathwatch Brothers watching from space will see a Mek emerge from their workshop, point some gizmo or flash at the ground nearby, and push a button.  Sometimes, they immediately explode, sometimes the ground does something exotic, but most of the time, nothing happens at all, and the angry Mek will throw the machine away and trundle back into their shop to try something else.  Other Meks will usually scramble to claim the machine and try it for themselves.
These Meks also pick over good scrap brought in from visiting ships.  The Freebooterz especially drag tons of loot to the planet for trade and testing, and the Meks are happy to oblige.  Over glowing forges and casting troughs, Meks labor furiously to create ever more flash bitz of armor and weapons for their pirate patrons.  In their free time, some Meks will collaborate to develop new gear for themselves or a visiting Warboss.  When a ship arrives in orbit for fuel, the Meks in the city begin collecting the appropriate chemicals with suction hoses, then inject the fuel into huge tankers, which then fly up into space and deliver the fuel.  The Meks collect teef from shuttles that bring it down to them.

However, the Meks are not servants to any one Waaagh or chief.  The Ordo Xenos has noted with interest that Gorkypark has actually turned their Compressors on ships that showed up to try to bully their residents into joining a Waaagh.  Exactly why the Meks are lethally obsessed with maintaining their neutrality is unclear.  Perhaps they do not wish to be beholden to a single leader, or suspect that their work will be unappreciated by the singleminded warlike nature of a Warboss.  There seems to be no single leader among the Meks.  The ones who create the items and weapons of the greatest value can lay claim to the main city for a brief while, before a rival challenges them.  The challenges are usually displays of explosive potency or unique technology, but sometimes involve ‘accidental’ killings.  However, for Orks, the planet is remarkably free of intercene warfare.

The planet does not have a centralized defense system, nor does it need one.  Every Ork is a killer, and the Graviton Compressor Array is more than enough to dissuade any attacker.  The Inquisiton has learned from careful surveys that the planet could be rendered lifeless with a single cyclonic torpedo, as the chemical oceans would ignite if placed under sufficient pressure.  However, that would be a criminal waste of a Graviton Compressor Array.  No living being can make one, not even the Big Mek Orkimedes, and the Mechanicus would kill to have it.

The problem facing the Inquisition, however, is that of availability.  The massive logistical requirements of invading an Orkhold daunt the Navy, and with Oglith’s own Ork problems and the imminent Glasian Migration, the sector has larger concerns than some technoarcane trinkets.


System: AZH2109 [Xenolabel: N’zark]

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Undefined Region

System Overlord: None

Planets: Unknown
Description:
N’zark is a mystery.  The system, and its one planet of the same name, are only known to the Imperium because of happenstance.  Two hundred twenty years before the Seventh Glasian Migration, the alien race known as the Reliok assaulted Imperial space from the Circuit.  The aliens were apparently laboring under the impression that the two Explorator ships that had visited their territory the some years ago had been the full extent of the Imperial fleet.  The Reliok attacked Cassie’s World with seven frigates, and were promptly chased down and annihilated by the Navy and SDF.  Tracing the route their primitive ships had taken from the Circuit had been the effort of days, and a combined Mechanicus and Navy fleet ground their homeworld, ATK38912, into powder.

However, in the ruins of ATK38912’s sole orbital, a Mechanicus team found something odd when searching for salvageable xenotech.  The team stumbled into a chamber that was not on the orbital’s one interior map.
Inside the chamber, the team located a carefully hand-made chart of a system the Imperium did not have on their starmaps.  The system had a name scrawled on the star, with arrows pointing to a planet in the system, and the word repeated over a hundred times in data files on nearby cogitators.  None of those cogitators were networked to the rest of the station’s cogitators.
Intrigued, the Mechanicus copied the data down and destroyed the orbital by slamming it into the planet below.  The Inquisition’s Ordo Xenos and the Administratum’s Departmento Astrocartigraphicae worked together to establish that the system had not appeared on Imperial star charts because a dense nebula had blocked the sight of the star from the Sol system, and even from far closer, it was very hard to see with optical telescopes.

With so many other priorities, it’s perhaps not surprising that the Imperium has not sent any ships to explore N’zark.  However, Mechanicus assets are gearing up for such a trip now, and will depart as soon as they are able.  If there are riches to be found, the first to find them could bring home mountains of wealth to the Imperium, or they could face a threat that the Reliok thought beyond them.


System: Aule Windows

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 13, 0 habitable

Dead World/Mining Worlds: 7, moons of gas giants

Satelites: Hundreds

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: Cult Mechanicus, Imperial Cult

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Astra Telepathica

Climate: N/A

Geography: Gas giants, rocky moons

Gravity: Varying

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Promethium, Fuel, Silicon Wafers, Methane, Nitrogen, Nickel
Principle Imports: Food, Clothing, Machine Parts, Cogitators, Luxuries, Servitors

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: N/A

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

Population: 32,000 – 40,000 (human), 80,000 (servitor)

Description:
On the outskirts of Imperial space, infrastructure is at a premium.  Aule Windows sits at the vert trailing terminus of Imperial territory in the Segmentum Ultima.  The moons of this wealthy system only came to the Imperium’s attention in M41.758, and colonization began at once.
The Mechanicus has only slight control over the system, at best, and the practices of official faiths here trend towards the Ecclesiarchy.  Specifically, they trend towards the Terran Ecclesiarchy.  The populations of the mining colonies here find the wealth-obsessed Celeste Ecclesiarchy annoying and hypocritical.

Individual gas giants each contain different swarms of interdependent moon colonies.  The colonies feed resources through each other’s industrial processes, and tithe it all up to the Mechanicus.  As these worlds are not able to support themselves, and the finished goods of their industries are not usable locally, they tithe 100% of their products to the Imperium.  In exchange, the Administratum and Mechanicus reward these worlds with highly modern and reliable equipment and significant luxuries.

One quirk of the system’s age and isolation is that the Mechant and Noble houses of the Sector have no place there.  Though those worlds may sometimes sell surplus gear there, or transport goods if the Mechanicus can’t or won’t, these are individual contracts, without any governmental presence.

However, although this low level of outside interference allows the Auleans a degree of freedom and privacy, this also means that the system is largely lawless.  There are no Arbites in the system, and little defense from invasion.  If the system were invaded by the Glasians, Aule Windows would crumble as soon as they came within range of the aliens’ guns.

Some asteroid and lunar bases are just large enough for small subsidiary businesses to pop up between hab blocks and refinery chambers.  These businesses are usually small, sound-proofed buildings, where the families of miners can spend their stipends on goods that the business owners buy from Cognomen and elsewhere.  The system’s population is just large enough to buy these luxuries, but is far too small to afford a PDF.

The Mechanicus has its suspicions about the system, however.  The products of the system’s moon bases are generally of the quality expected of tiny frontier stations: middling to poor, and needing of further Mechanicus refinement.  One moon, Fardell, produces fuel from the gas giant it siphons, like many others.  Its fuel, however, is so high in quality that Mars itself couldn’t do better.  The additives and base chemicals of its fuel are STC-perfect, without a molecule of impurity in its output.
While this is no bad thing, it shouldn’t be possible.  The Fardell refining equipment is no better than the equipment provided to any other moon in the system.  The raw material harvested from the nearby gas giant is no better than anywhere else is.  The Mechanicus has performed cursory inspections of the base in question, and found nothing astray.
Investigators from Cognomen are convinced that the Fardell base has STC-quality refining equipment hidden somewhere in the base.  So far, this has come to nothing.  However, Cognomen’s patience for this mystery may not last indefinitely.  The administrators of Fardell insist that the base is simply the best, with no mystery to be uncovered, but Cognomen knows that to be what they would say regardless of the truth.


System: Coriolis

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Hapster Subsector

System Overlord: Supreme Marshal Emmitt Roscoe

Planets: Ten, one inhabitable

Fortress World: Coriolis
Satellite: Moon – Morole

Tropospheric Composition: Coriolis has Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, Argon.5%, Water .4%, Carbon Dioxide 0.05%; Morole has no atmosphere

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Military Hierarchy

Planetary Governor: Yes

Adept Presence: Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astartes

Climate: Coriolis has widely varying climates from pole to equator, from nearly-uninhabitable deserts and equatorial jungles to deep-freeze blizzards

Geography: Coriolis is smaller than Terra and has some tectonic activity, having 73.4 million mi² of surface; Morole is tectonically inactive, but has evidence of a biosphere in the past

Gravity: Drimmerzole has .92 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Soldiers, Textiles, Paintings
Principle Imports: Ammunition, Guns, Vehicles, Starships, Recruits, Convicts, Clothing, Chemicals

Countries and Continents: Coriolis has ten constituent military districts, each with its own distinct PDF; no continental distinctions

Military: Parts of each significant Imperial Guard detachment in Cloudburst; Coriolis Scharfschutze (High Quality Guard and PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Constant

Tithe Grade: Exactus Prima

Population: 7,390,000 (human_ +/- 1,000,000

Description:
There is no more a crucial world in the defense of Cloudburst Sector than Coriolis.  The planet is the premiere Imperial Military staging ground in the Sector, eclipsing Nauphry IV, Septiim Primus, and even Cognomen in potential firepower.  The Navy anchorage in orbit hosts three dozen combat ships just in its SDF, and another forty waships of the Navy itself.  On its surface, over a billion Guardsmen, PDF, and Stormtroopers train, muster, recruit, and prepare to fight.

Today, Coriolis is the staging grounds of Cloudburst, but in its original use, it was a refugee camp.  Seventeen thousand years ago, before Old Night fell, before the collapse of the Terran Federation, before the uprising of the Iron Men and the Psychic Awakening, Coriolis was home to four clans of the Homo Navigo.  Banned from Earth for crimes their ancestors had committed against the gene-wrights who had created them, the four clans – True, Gheniso, Adell, and Rosamund – had retreated to Coriolis, a forgotten colony of truly ancient Earth.  There, they had squatted, building military fortresses for themselved with Dark Age technology and fueled by bitter paranoia.
When the Iron Men had arisen against their masters, the four clans had managed to fight them off, though it cost them a world in their system to the Core Imploders of the robot army.  When the Psychic Awakening began, Coriolis barely survived it, as witch hunts and Warp Storms wracked the holdings of humanity.  The Eldar left the Navigators alone, but when the Fall of the Eldar toppled their ancient empire, the Emperor made his own move.
The Emperor had never forgotten the lost clans of Coriolis.  Before the departure of the first Martian fleets from Terra to Centauri, the Emperor made his way by secret channels to the Navigator’s world.  The Emperor was not yet drained by the need to fuel the Throne and Astronomican, and so the Navigators could see him in his fullest glory.  The clans fell over themselves to enter his service; especially since he made it clear to them that the Navigators would have a seat at the foot of the throne of Mankind with their indispensable talents.  He neglected to mention the Webway Project, of course.  The Navigators and their servants abandoned the world of Coriolis and left it to rot.

Why the Emperor did not add Coriolis to the Imperium, nobody today knows.  The Lord Marshal suspects that the Emperor did not want the people of Terra (or more probably Mars) to know that he had means of stellar travel that he had not disclosed to the Sol System as he conquered it.  Alternately, he may well have intended for the world to be reannexed, but the Rangan Xenocides and Horus Heresy prevented him from doing so.

Thousands of years later, the great Explorator Justin MacDonald rediscovered the planet.  Its decaying fortresses had partially crumbled away, but several stood still, defiant and empty save for animals.  The Officio Muntitorum claimed the world for itself, and set about the process of building the Cloudburst Sector’s new staging grounds.

After the fortresses rose once more from their empty foundations, some replaced entirely and some merely repaired, the Imperial Guard moved in.  The older fortresses are troves of archaeotech, but it is integrated into the buildings themselves, not merely laying about on the ground.  The Mechanicus insists that its expertise is needed to keep some of the structures operational, and the Officio Munitorum is not inclined to argue the point.

There are over four dozen fortresses on the planet, most of them ringed by great walls, with fields of farmland and training ground beyond them.  Each serves as the core of a great city.  The cities house anywhere from four to thirty-eight million people, with the smaller hab zones, bases, and farm towns beyond them housing the remainder of the planet’s population.  The orbitals above account for several hundred thousand more.

Each fortress is unique, but by design they do have some features in common.  Each fortress has its own thermoplasmic power plant, as well as a variety of alternate power supplies.  Fusion plants and solar panels are the most popular backup power sources.  Furthermore, the planet’s oceans are broad and cover much of the surface; forts on the water’s edges are required by planetary law to contain certain additional features.
All fifty-plus fortresses must be able to support a void shield that covers their entire inner defensive perimeter, from one edge of the fortress to the other.  At first, each was able to protect the cities around them as well, but all have grown far too large to do so now.  The fortresses also must serve, by law, as a staging area for a minimum of three million Imperial Guard troopers and local PDF if called upon to do so.
In addition to housing and shields, each fortress must be able to provide its own defense, and a means of evacuation if it comes under attack.  Thus, each fortress contains multiple VTOL and airstrip runways, in addition to whatever civil transport services each hub city possesses.  From orbit, the world looks like it has an illness that causes metallic blisters.  Each fortress and its hub city glows silver and black from space with roofing material and roadways.

The waterside fortresses must also provide berths to store and dock ships, of both the commercial and military variety.  This is a sore point for some of the fortress’ cities, since the forts inevitably consume extensive waterfront property, and the secured cordon around each one consumes even more.  However, the profit to be made in these beachfront fortresses is enormous, given their population, and thousands of freighters steam over the waters of Coriolis, bound for one city or another and laden with goods.

Outside the fortresses and their hub cities, life is far quieter and more peaceful.  Farms and mines toil and produce for the industries of the cities, and tracts of undisturbed, pristine wilderness beckon weary travelers to rest away from the hubbub.  Scenic mountains and hunting lodges provide ample getaways for vacationers and noble officer families to spend time apart from the Emperor’s militaries.

Inside the fortresses, however, the contrast with civilian life is sharp and wistful to the millions of soldiers that dwell there.  The heart of each fortress is the original Navigator palace, since the exiled Terran Navigators made their new home as much like their old as they could.  The palaces became fortresses over time, but their cores remained Old Earth luxury.  Naturally, these tend to become the lodgings of the flag officers that run each fortress.  The surrounding buildings have become the core of each Officio Munitorum fortress.  The ones that have original Dark Age technology in their construction are naturally more prestigious and efficient, but all of them are ultimately capable of housing their ration of men and equipment.
The outer rings of each fortress consist of barracks, garages, workshops, chapels, and defenses.  The largest fortress and unofficial capital city, Coriolis Abholen, has over seven times the population of the smallest, and the fortress there is large enough to swallow even the Astia Grand starport city on Septiim Secundus whole, with room left over for the entire Nauphry IV surface fleet.

The fortresses have nonidentical layouts for defensive reasons.  The Mechanicus certainly could have made each one internally identical (save the ones built on coastlines, obviously) but chose not to.  The conqueror of one fortress would glean nothing about the others from its shape.
Buildings fill each defense perimeter.  The ones closest to the edges of the void shields (which are only brought online for drills and maintenance) tend to be more heavily built and have their own power backups.  Farther away from the edges lie the civilian buildings of each base.  Barbershops, grocery stores, family housing, and civilian schools pepper the drab grey bases with splashes of color and commerce.
Of course, the centers of each base are all military, and off-limits to civilians.  This is where the Mechanicus keeps their defense silos, their laser batteries, their teleporters, their gigaton-yield self-destruct devices, and their core factories.  The Officio Munitorum has a degree of control over the deployment of these assets, in a manner that would be unheard-of anywhere but a Fortress World.  Like many worlds in Cloudburst, Coriolis has some underground tunneling, mostly between the fortresses, and the tunnels under each one are packed with weapons, equipment, survival gear, bunkers, and other contingencies.  Because the fortress cores predate the Cloudburst Sector’s obsession with digging, the old Navigator buildings rarely connect to the tunnels directly, but all have at least one secondary tunnel to the nearest main line.

Coriolis sees hundreds of millions of Guardsmen pass through its barracks, generally to wars elsewhere in the Segmentum.  Cloudburst recently dispatched over four million soldiers to the Oglith system, to secure it against the massive tide of Orks that had invaded it after getting lost on the way to Gorkypark.  In times of greater stability in Cloudburst, most of Coriolis’ forces are either preparing to move on to Crusades, or preparing to accompany Rogue Traders and other explorers in the Circuit and Exo-zone.

Because of the logistical demands of supplying a population of seven billion civilians and variable millions of Guardsmen, plus the ships in the system, Coriolis must import vast amounts of goods, but also manufactures as much in the way of valuable supplies as it can.  Mechanicus-operated forges and manufactorae produce tanks, armor, primers, aircraft, simple vehicles, and even some weapons locally, while importing teratons of more complex materiel from Cognomen.  However, all of Coriolis’ surplus industrial capacity goes to its own economy, by necessity.  The world has its own requirements, after all, and seven billion bellies and wallets to fill.  The world grows much, but not all, of its own food.  The wildly varying number of soldiers on the planet at any given time ensures that the actual demand for food is not stable, necessitating extensive stockpiling and importing in some years to offset higher demands later.
Most of the uniforms worn by the troops mustered on Coriolis come from their homeworlds, but any fresh uniforms troops may need, and the ones for the troops raised on Coriolis itself, are Thimblan.  Cognomen may provide the electronics built into some troopers’ helmets, but the great hives of Thimble provide the rest.  Coriolis has laws against its citizens being raised into the Guard directly, but its massive PDF can be mobilized as a Guard regiment if needed.

Coriolis may be more economically independent of its status as a fortress world than some others of the same classification may, but that is not always a good thing.  Massive, drawn-out Arbites Court battles have arisen from flight path conflicts between civilian and military aircraft.  The Mechanicus, local manufacturing concerns, and the Officio Munitorum have held precedent fights in the court of the Overlord to establish precedence for ownership of arms factories.  Cognomen has had to dispatch investigators to determine directly whether local companies had stolen Mechanicus designs or simply made some of their own.  Food prices skyrocket when large Guard forces arrive on-world or deply on short notice.  Worst of all, from the perspective of local law enforcement, is that when regiments arrive from off-planet, they must mobilize en masse to begin genescans of incoming troops, in case genestealers have infiltrated them.

Coriolis culture outside the military fortresses represents a conscious effort on the part of its citizens to avoid entanglement or stereotyping from the association with the military.  The world exports raw textiles for Thimble, and has a dedicated art culture.  The Imperium collects the world’s tithe from its service as a staging area for the Munitorum, leaving the well-to-do citizens of Coriolis free to labor as they please.  The planet’s art schools are justly famous across the subsector.  Paintings and sculptures from Coriolis artists decorate the walls of private manors and hotels from Oglith to Hapster.  The oil landscape that sits behind the desk of Lord Admiral Maynard was hand-painted by a professor at a prestigious Coriolis art college.

This focus on the arts is carefully overseen by the Ecclesiarchy, which often commissions promising artists to create devotional artworks of the Emperor and the Loyalist Primarchs for their chapels.  After all, a planet that routinely hosts millions of visiting soldiers with their attendant Chaplains has great need for devotional artwork and artifacts for use on long deployments, or the decoration of planetside cathedrals for transitory troops.  Ecclesiarchial leaders diligently oversee many of these artistic instutions for any sign of Slaaneshi infiltration or tendency.

They have not succeeded as thoroughly as they hope.  While they are correct in thinking that deviant artwork is a thing many Slaanesh worshippers display, the Ecclesiarchy of Coriolis has managed to identify the symptoms as a disease, and miss the infection.  Tzeentch’s stranglehold on Chaotic influences in the Cloudburst Sector is not as absolute as he wishes, and Coriolis has felt the caress of the Prince of Pleasures.  One of the major art schools of Coriolis, the Spinward Expression College, is a front for the Cult of Unbound Good.  Since the entire Cloudburst Sector is now Tzeentch’s playground from the perspective of the other Chaos Gods, the cult has had to be subtle, to the extent that it deeply frustrates the Slaaneshis.  Their normal impulse to seek out every possible physical sensation and let it drive them to new heights of ecstasy will get them identified and killed immediately by watchful Ecclesiarchial priests, or worse, the Ordo Hereticus.
As a result, the Cult of Unbound Good operates more like a traditional terrorist organization than a normal cult.  Each Cult offshoot is led by a cell commander, who reports infrequently to a Primary, who answers in turn to the Cult’s master, Merrick Unarvu.  Unarvu is a Professor Emeritus and Chair of the Expressive Arts at the Spinward Expression College.  He is very aware that the only reason his cult has not been uncovered by the Ecclesiarchy is that the Priest assigned to watch over his institution is an easily-distracted layabout.  Thus, he keeps the man in booze and distraction, and may even try to subvert him eventually.
The Cult limits its visibility, for now, but has managed to slip a few of its members into the crews of Imperial Navy ships that came to the world for fresh crew or supplies.  Ultimately, the Cult seeks to have a preponderance of numbers in place for when Tzeentch runs out of aliens to throw at the Daggers and their allies.  When that time comes, the Cult will rise up well behind Imperial lines and sieze control of their primary military installation, with their agents-on-remote causing distractions from one end of Cloudburst to the other.
However, the Cult has had no success subverting the military of the world.  The fiercely loyal and very public Munitorum District Commanders who run each of the world’s districts would be unable to hide Slaaneshi corruption, with their constant public appearances and heavy workload.  As such, the Cult is focusing on lower-standing officers, for now.

The ten districts each contain three to six fortresses and their surrounding cities, and employ identical methods for raising PDF, supplies, and civilian workers.  The planetary government is a token effort at best, and the Munitorum knows it.  The Administratum leadership of the world amounts to a few tithe-collectors waiting to retire.  The Supreme Marshal rules the system, and the incumbent is a retired campaigner from Cassie’s Rangers.

The Guard isn’t the only military force in the system, however.  The Imperial Navy controls the star lanes, and they have taken the time and resources to buy a vast orbital anchorage from the Mechanicus for the Coriolis orbital.  The anchorage is not as sizable as Thunderhead, but can defend itself ably, and thanks to its modular nature, could be upgraded any number of ways.  The anchorage is roughly the size of a Gothic cruiser, and serves as a fixed headquarters for the Imperial Navy in the Hapster subsector, even larger than the one at Hapster itself.  Much of the station is hollow, and serves as a massive cold storage lock for the thousands of fighters, shuttles, bombers, dropships, savior pods, interceptors, lighters, boarding craft, and other small ships the fleet may need to add to their complement for a specific mission.

On the ground, Coriolis does more than stage troops, it also trains them.  Inside the perimeter of most fortresses, there is at least one large training facility for raw recruits to the world’s PDF and Guard.  Each has some functions in common, including firing ranges, assault courses, recruit barracks, gymnasiums, armories with training and live weapons, a large infirmary, some cafeterias and mess halls, and at least one chapel.  The larger fortresses usually also include a scholam progenia, run by specialist Ecclesiarchy and Mechanicus teachers.
The troops raised locally – or born to visiting soldiers and compelled by contract to remain in the military – train in these installations or the schola, and join the Coriolis Scharfschutze when their training ends.  The Scharfschutze are PDF and Guard alike, and also technically the world’s pitiful surface navy.  The PDF contingent of the Scharfschutze also controls the world’s considerable defensive air force, while the SDF and Navy handle deep-space operations.  The Scharfschutze train to the highest standard, and have little choice in the matter; their pride would allow no other outcome.  If they were to be shown up by their visitors in preparedness or standards, that would constitute a grave offense to their martial capability.
Scharfschutze, despite their name, do not specialize specifically in marksmanship.  They deploy a wide range of vehicles and weapons in their arsenals, a wider variety than even Septiim Guard.  The Scharfschutze field Macharius and Leman Russ tanks in the main, but are perfectly capable of deploying other tanks with minimal retraining.  Scharfschutze have only one unique formation: the Coriolis Star, nicknamed the Coriolis Effect by the regimental trainers.  The formation consists of ten hotshot-equipped infantry outfitted with scaling equipment, climbing up cliffs or building facades and breaching inward, then turning whatever rock formation or building they have entered as a sniping roost, protected by claymores and mines the team brought with them in satchels.


The world’s moon, Morole, is a dead rock like Luna.  It has only minimal construction, but what construction it does have serves the Imperium’s military like its larger sibling.  The Mechanicus and Navy have built an antenna array on two spots on the world’s equator, each directly opposite each other.  These antennae make use of the moon’s low gravity and lack of atmosphere to extend over seven hundred meters into the vacuum, and can collect and broadcast signals on any Imperial frequency.  The towers are servitor-controlled, and have no permanent staff.


System: Lockehold

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 7, 1 habitable

Feudal World: Locke’s World

Satelites: 1 moon, uninhabitable

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77.5%, Oxygen 21%, Argon .5%, Water 1%, Carbon gasses .01%

Religion: Holy Emperor Star Cult

Government Type: Feudal

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Astra Telepathica

Climate: Wildly varies from pole to equator, with broad stretches of desert, sea, and dense forest

Geography: .9 times the size of Terra, large ridges of tectonic rock mountains separating climate bands, deep, salty seas

Gravity: .89 Terra gravity

Economy: Local scrip

Principle Exports: Dye, Oil, Salt, Stone, Iron Ore
Principle Imports: Refined Alloys, Electronics

Countries and Continents: Six hundred seven city states spread over five continents

Military: Celestial Guard barracks, Locke Doomriders (low quality PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Almost none

Tithe Grade: Solutio Tertius

Population: 18,120,000

Description:
As another of the worlds claimed by Rogue Traders during the Gold Rushes, the feudal planet of Locke’s World is hardly unique.  What is unique is its geography, and the effect this has had on its development.  The whole habitable zone of the planet is split into a maze of canyons, ravines, sharp mountains, deep seas, and plateau.  Between and among the rock formations, vast forests sprout from eroded soils, and hundreds of dueling city—states harvest food from the abundant plant life.

Locke himself was Veridal Locke of the Locke Rogue Trader house, which has long since moved on to greener pastures.  The planet was in a state of barbarism and poverty when Locke found it, apparently the result of a three-way war between the native humans, invading Warp beasts, and rebelling machines, many thousands of years ago.  Although humanity won, and managed to shut off the damaged robot factory before the planet was overrun, all infrastructure of the world was lost.  The residents of the planet had barely survived the crucible of war, and their world was unprepared for the collapse of time.

Eventually, as is so often the case, the Imperium came knocking.  The world resembled a farm plot from above, with steep cliffs and walls of rock separating patches of color from different plants.  A few were cauldrons of fire, from volcanic activity or raids between tribes of primitives.  Locke knew there would be little to do on such a world, and was not of the mind to bring the primitives to worship him.  He staked a claim on the world and promptly sold it to the Administratum.

However, unlike Cygnmo, the people of Lockehold are quite receptive to the idea of membership in the Imperium, for the most part.  The individual thousands of tribes of the world took greedily to knowledge of the outside world.  After a few centuries of religious and linguistic instruction, the people of Lockehold gradually readied for proper Imperial induction.
As time went by, obstacles arose.  The hard stone of the ridges between each valley is quite resistant to all but the most potent blasting and mining techniques.  Also, those tribes that did not want to become part of the Imperium expressed their choice violently, requiring costly pacification.
After a few more centuries of false starts and investments, several tribes that had shown especially fervent worship of the Emperor or logistical skill were allowed to become the new nobles of the world.  The system is something of an experiment on the part of the Administratum.  Each of the hundreds of city-states around the world is allowed some leeway in the design of their defenses, their tithe infrastructure, and their educational system, as well as the public level of religious observation.  As such, no two cities are alike, and thus make perfect grounds for observing the transition between Feudal World and Civilized World.

Some cities have enjoyed leaders that were far superior to their peers in efficiency, productivity, and faith.  Others have stagnated, for their lack of such leaders.  The Administratum has kept careful watch on the winners and losers of these contests, to see which deserve promotion to eventually become the Planetary Governor.
Until then, the cities produce resources for themselves, sometimes with enough left over for trade with other city-states.  The Mechanicus has withheld a degree of high tech support from these cities, for the purposes of the experiment.  At sea, however, the Mechanicus operates various resource derricks to collect petrochemicals and ores for export to Cognomen.  The main export of the cities is dye, which they harvest from a dazzling array of arboreal flowers and leaves, and ship to Thimble.  Overall, the planet’s development into an Imperial planet is proceeding slowly and in fits and starts, but for now, its export markets seem healthy.

The maze of canyons and ridges that define the blocky forests that any passing ship could see from high orbit makes for a perfect laboratory for evolutionary biology.  Several blocks of forest and city are physically isolated from other blocks by means only human transportation could easily cross, meaning that each one serves as an isolated test bed for biological testing.  Given that the Administratum to eventually develop naturally into a modern world, there are some limits on what can actually be tested, since releasing alien creatures into the environment would be very dangerous.
However, some testing has already begun, specifically on Drimmerzole’s miracle antibiotic, which the Magos Biologis of the Mechanicus have thus far proven unable to synthesize perfectly.  The natural bacteria of the planet have cell membranes similar to those of Terran bacteria, and some also have Gram-type cell walls, which Petals can kill.

The defenses of the world are far more robust than those of the majority of low-tech worlds in Cloudburst.  Locke’s World fields its own PDF, drawn from feudal levies of each city-state, and trained in Munitorum bases across the globe.  Its orbital defenses are far weaker, and almost certainly could not stand up to a Glasian invasion.


System: Delving

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: Lord Subsector Delving Miles laDremankine

Planets: 9, 2 habitable (1 uncolonized)

Mining World: Delving

Satelites: One moon, Delving b

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 20%, Argon 1% Water .01%, Carbon gasses .02%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Astartes

Climate: Dour, windy, smoggy air, with wide varieties of ecological habitats, frequent lightning storms

Geography: 1.09 times the size of Terra, with nineteen continents

Gravity: 1.1 Terra gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Stone, Iron, Copper, Xenon, Uranium, Promethium, Tungsten, Cobalt, Silicon, Oil, Alloys, Gold
Principle Imports: Food, Luxury Goods, Clothing, Mining Equipment, Soldiers

Countries and Continents: No political divisions

Military: Delving House Guards (medium quality PDF), Delving Field Guard (medium quality Guard)

Contact with Other Worlds: Daily

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular

Population: 7,008,090,000 humans; 1,875,000 servitors

Description:
There are many worlds and systems in the Cloudburst Sector that have unimaginative names.  Soak, for instance, is wet.  Cognomen has an obsession with titles.  Cloudburst is rainy.  Combine grows plants.  Among them all, perhaps, reaching highest upwards and onwards for that prize of ‘lease creative name,’ must be Delving.  It is a planet with lots of mines.
Delving is a Mining World, a Subsector Capital, and host to a dozen warships of the Sector and Subsector battlefleets.  Founded late in the Second Gold Rush, the planet was earmarked by the Mechanicus for exploitation within minutes of discovery by Archmagos Justin Macdonald.  The planet’s resource wealth is extraordinary, from rich metal ore deposits to bulging oil wells.  The planet’s shallow seas all but shone in Macdonald’s orbital scanners from their deposits of precious metals.
Beyond their simple wealth, however, the planet is located at a fortuitous crossing of ways.  Three Warp currents stretch within a few hundred million miles of the system’s outer edge, which makes it perfect for hosting rest stations for the Imperial Chartered Fleets and Merchant Marine.  Although the world would require some terraforming to be made truly habitable, that was an insignificant price to pay for the benefit of such vast wealth and strategic positioning.

Macdonald’s discovery made its way back to Cognomen, and the Magos agreed with their leaders’ argument.  Delving was chosen to host a new Subsector Capital as soon as the terraforming machines were quite done.
However, the demands on Cognomen were mounting.  The planet’s infrastructure and somewhat precarious agriculture had been crafted for protecting and feeding a world of a few billion people, far from anywhere else, and trading with nobody.  With Cognomen now serving as a regional capital and the industrial hub of hundreds of billions of people, they could no longer afford to maintain such a balance.  Cognomen was strapped for resources, and waiting for terraforming to conclude simply didn’t sound appealing.

Thus, a fleet of Mechanicus terraforming vessels had barely arrived on the planet and begun their work when the colonists from Fabique and other Naxos worlds arrived.  The world’s development spread in two contradictory directions.  The few spots on the surface where there were no resources to find sprouted cities under eco-domes, and the colonists set about the business of making the world, while thousands of Techpriests and hundreds of thousands of Tech-adepts set to work terraforming.  The reactivation of the Maskos machine STC allowed for the work to become both far safer and far more ecologically stable and safe.  Thousands of years have passed, and the contrast has only grown.
Now, the planet’s crust surges with wealth.  Some of it goes to Delving’s own factories, but most go to Cognomen or Thimble.  The terraformers are still hard at work, hundreds of years after they were due to stop working, thanks to the incalculable gigatons of industrial waste and garbage that the Mechanicus has released into the ecosystem.  The terraformers will adjust the atmosphere in one part of the world, just as an oil fire pumps vast amounts of carbon into the air somewhere else.  The Maskos machines will release oxygen and cleaned ore into the hands of their operators with no pollution, while a patch of trees on the surface under a hundred years old will topple because another mining team wants the gold under their roots.

This uncoordinated and self-defeating method of making a world habitable is clearly to the world’s long-term detriment, but the results are striking.  Although life on the world is unpleasant, occasionally unhealthy, and almost always dreary, the planet’s export value is higher than that of some lesser Hive Worlds, and even with an average tithe grade, it produces enough wealth to fuel both its own shipyards and those of Nauphry IV and Thimble by itself.

However, while this level of productivity and power is something the people of Delving can take pride in, it is not enjoyable.  The world’s cities may have crystal clear water and air one week, choking smog and orange water the next.  The churn and hum of business and industry may bring money and prestige to the Delving population, but that’s small solace when the food is so poor that the Guard does not accept it as rations on visiting ships.

As expected of a Mining World, the main imports of the planet do not remotely equal in volume the exports of its mines.  Luxury food and Thimble mining uniforms are the largest items by volume, followed by Mechanicus mining equipment (including Maskos machines).  The world’s garrisons were traditionally rather empty compared to other shirtsleeves-habitable Mining Worlds of the Segmentum Ultima, but that changed when the Glasians arrived.  Delving has never been hit, but that seems like it has to change sooner or later.  The current Lord Subsector has been scrambling to parley the remarkable metal output of Delving into larger military stockpiles for the PDF and Delving Guards.  So far, the planet’s PDF has barely managed to keep up with both its own orders to expand and the need of other worlds in the Imperium for soldiers.  Luckily, the planet’s orbital defenses are at least strong enough to hold back a limited invasion attempt by the Glasians, though a proper Cylinder would punch through after only a short delay.  The planet’s atmosphere is so unpredictable that the PDF often train in the original eco-domes for the colonies, which the civilian cities long out-grew.

As a Subsector Capital, Delving holds large Administratum structures and workforces.  The Administratum here has direct control over the central bureaucracy and military, and carefully balances the need of the system for more defenses with its need to meet its export and tithe quotas.  The planet imports some complex ordinance and equipment from Cognomen and Thimble, but much of its body armor is of local manufacture, as is its own domestic artillery system.  The Delving Guard field a self-propelled artillery piece, the DM-48 cannon.  The 48 is a dedicated formation-breaker, and it fires locally-built 203mm high explosive or smoke shells, perfect for breaking up enemy infantry or vehicle formations or coving the advance of an Imperial one.  It can take the same hull-mounted missile and smoke launcher upgrades as the Basilisk, and the extended communication suite of the Salamander, just in case.  However, unlike the Basilisk, it cannot support a hull gun or pintle weapon.

In orbit, Delving has the same assortment of administrative and military stations that every other Subsector Capital World has in Cloudburst, including a pair of shipyards.  The first is an official military yard, and routinely manufactures ships of Escort weight for the SDF and Navy.  The other is far larger, but actually belongs to the great Zhong Merchant Combine.  Most of the Rogue Trader ships that didn’t start life in the military are built here, at least for explorers of the Cloudburst Circuit.  The Zhong yard can build any vessel of under nine kilometers in length, which means more or less anything smaller than a Universe or Oberon.  However, the Zhong family does not have the technological know-how to produce the blessed picocircuit fabricators of the Saturnyne Yards, and so they cannot build ships that are especially resistant to daemonic posession; thus they never receive contracts from the Grey Knights or Exorcists, or any other daemon-hunting organization.  Individual Inquisitors of great wealth have bought upgrade suites for their personal ships from Zhong yards in the past, and even other Merchant Houses sometimes patronize the vast Zhong fabricators.
The huge volumes of resources, nearly every kind of metal and gem the Imperium can use (notably excepting ceramite), fill the resource needs of several Imperial institutions.  The Arbites Lockshields and Padded Carapace armor of twenty-five Imperial planets come from Underbar, and so do the officers’ gear of the Cloudburst Defenders.  Freight yards on the planet’s surface allow for train cars full of goods to drive straight into cargo carriers, which lift them up into orbit and off to other worlds, in a larger-scale version of the same devices in Civitavecchis on Celeste.

Delving does have a dark side that visitors are rarely welcome to see.  The planet has a history of rebellions, although they have never come close to success.  However, both rebellions have been halted only by the deployment of non-conventional, contaminating weapons: chemical agents for the first and plutonium bombs for the second.  These incidents, plus the rampant and unregulated changes made to the world’s climate on a near-daily basis, have resulted in the world of Delving having the Sector’s highest mutant birth rate by two orders of magnitude.
However, what other worlds would view as a curse, Delving sees as an opportunity.  Many of the mutants born to the world are not the flesh-crippled monsters or semi-psychic abominations that most Imperials think of when they hear the word mutant.  They are, instead, of the ancient abhuman breed known as Beastmen.  The Beastmen generally spawn only on their own worlds, and the Imperium barely tolerates them.  However, the Beastmen of Delving receive somewhat higher rates of acceptance into Imperial life, for two reasons.  First, both times that the world’s mutancy rate has risen, it has been as the result of actions needed to keep the world Imperial in the first place, and is thus a penance in the eyes of the Delving faithful.  Second, the mutations that are producing these beastmen are neither Warp-derived nor uniform.  Families that never produced a beastman may produce a whole generation of the, but those beastmen may sire normal humans instead, and none are more likely to fall to Chaos.
Thus, the Delving Beastmen are permitted as second-class citizens.  Some find work as laborers, some find work as Mechanicus resource deposit scouts, while others serve as bodyguards for less discerning nobles.  Most, however, wind up in the Imperial Guard, where they partake of an ancient Imperial tradition: the Abhuman Militia.

As far back as the Unification Wars, the mutants of the Imperium have had two fates: death or service.  Mutants that are genuine in their desire to serve mankind have been lumped into auxilia units to serge the Officio Munitorum since it was still called the Imperial Army.  Delving is the only world in the Cloudburst Sector (though, notably, not the entirety of Cloudburst, since the Circuit world of Crispin has some too) that produces armed Beastmen for the Imperial Guard.  The Delving Glaistig Auxilia mobilize in rough regiments, using the typical Imperial formation rather than the Cloudburst-specific Septiim template.  They usually append to Delving or Celeste regiments, and specialize in urban and jungle battle.  The animal they most resemble from the waist down is the now-extinct Terran Anthrohircius, or so the Mechanicus theorizes.

Regular Delving Guard organize in the Septiim template.  Since their Subsector houses the hugely productive Septiim system, and their system produces untold billions of pounds of high-quality ore and petrochemicals, Delving Guard are well-supplied with fresh, high-quality food and weapons, making them excellent campaigners.  As such, they have accompanied Imperial Crusades into regions of space at the edges of the Imperium and within its borders alike.  Delving Guard specialize in night combat and toxic-atmosphere war, but are capable of fighting in other environments if they need to and are warned in advance.

The same terraforming machines that are (occasionally) rendering Delving comfortably habitable are also now hard at work on the surface of Delving 7, which should be as habitable as any other Imperial world in eight hundred years.  If the stripping of resources on Delving itself ends before then, and its ecology stabilizes somewhat, some terraforming machines could be relocated to Delving 7 to accelerate the process there.  Mechanicus Magos Biologis have suggested dumping quadrillions of cyanobacteria on Delving 7’s slurry of chemical and water oceans to accelerate the formation of an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but so far, the budget for such things is all but spent on Delving itself.  Delving’s moon, Delving b, is a silicate-carbon block with some nickel and iron in it, of no resource value compared to Delving itself.  Once Delving is depleted, perhaps its moon’s exploitation can begin in earnest.

On occasion, Blue Daggers visit Delving’s capital, to inform them of the Chapter’s developments, actions, and needs.  Prior to each Glasian Migration, either the Chapter Master or an appointed representative flies to Delving to review the world’s role in repelling the aliens, and to drop off any Marines that will be needed to protect the world itself if the aliens have targeted it.


System: Maleard

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 3, 1 habitable

Mining World: Lordarine

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 19.8%, Argon .93%, Krypton 1.09%, Water .11%, Carbon gasses .02%

Religion: Cult Mechanicus

Government Type: Adeptus Mechanicus

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites (covert)

Climate: Noxious winds year-round, extensive and crippling lightning storms, frequent wildfires.

Geography: .89 times the size of Terra, 4 continents

Gravity: .91 Terra gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Gemstones, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Copper, Cogitator Parts, Uranium
Principle Imports: Food, Clothing, Mining Equipment

Countries and Continents: No political divisions

Military: Skitarii

Contact with Other Worlds: Uncommon

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

Population: 100,000 humans; 1,985,000 servitors

Description:
The universe has it out for Lordarine.  That’s the only explanation for their misery most can think of.  Lordarine is a world of tempest, hate, misery, and deeply, unyieldingly, crippling horror.
Renowned Archmagos Justin Macdonald discovered Lordarine and added it to the Imperium on his final mission before retiring to a desk job on Cognomen.  The world’s resource deposits read like a laundry list of the Imperium’s deepest dreams of avarice.  The world has precious metals, gemstones, radioactive ores, and abundant wind, thermal, and static energy.
Macdonald discovered the world’s immense resources by examining its spectroscopic and surface specular content after watching the discharges of static electricity in the world’s cataclysmic lightning storms.  The world has a poetic beauty when viewed from space that was lost on the near-robotic Macdonald.  The people on the surface do not get to enjoy this beauty, however, because the storms routinely rip rooftops off buildings and flip cars on the surface.  Storms have destroyed nearly every settlement on Lordarine’s surface, and the arrival of the Glasians in M41.900 worsened it all.  Now, parts of the surface are inaccessible from wreckage and ruins all about, and much of it tainted by the Warp.

Warp Storms lash the surface of Lordarine from time to time from the nearby permanent Warp Storm of Vasari’s Cruelty.  The more dilute temporary storms that reach far enough to hit Lordarine are still lethal to anybody caught on the surface when they arrive.

It is probably unsurprising that much of the world’s population has retreated underground.  Pride kept the little mining colonies of the world above ground for centuries, but now there is no advantage left to it.  Mechanicus mining teams have created underground caverns and artificial cave networks for the populace to hide in until either things improve or a better solution presents itself.

The world’s rulership is Mechanicus, through and through.  Larger Imperial worlds may have great guildhalls and corporate entities, but Lordarine is not so fortunate.  Thanks to its Warp Storm problem, the world goes months at a time with no contact outside the system.

However, it does have one advantage that allows it to survive the Warp Storms and lightning squalls.  The planet was once a world of the Terran Federation.  The damage to the surface of the planet obscured that when the Exporator Macdonald discovered the planet.  When the Mechanicus occupied the world for the Imperium, however, they eventually discovered several caches of archaeotechnology in an underground building, protected from the storms by thick shielding and a mountain.  The Mechanicus learned that the planet had once been a research zone for a surgical tool manufacturing conglomerate, but the rise of the Iron Men had forced the company that had run it to abandon their project.

The machines the ancients had tested there were devices that could rearrange the human body temporarily, and then unperform the same function.  Not all of the machines had survived the ages intact, but enough had that the Mechanicus thought the risk to test them worthwhile.

As the environmental conditions on the planet grew worse, thanks to the strengthening Warp Storms that bled from Vasari’s Cruelty, the Mechanicus

UNFINISHED