Institutions of Cloudburst

Imperial Navy
As with so many sectors of the Imperium’s edges, the Imperial Navy bears a heavy burden.  Pirates, aliens, heretics, and Space Hulks lurk everywhere outside the Naval patrol routes, and sometimes on the patrol routes.  The Navy of Cloudburst has to be aggressive to fend off its many threats, but it also has to be careful not to stray too far from its perimeters.  The Cloudburst Sector’s habitable worlds tend to bunch together near each other, with great spans of empty space between clusters that have never been explored or are otherwise empty.  Enemies of Mankind can and do hide in these dark spaces, waiting for a chance to assault worlds left unguarded by layabout or overaggressive Naval officers.  The huge freight convoys that pass between the planets of the Sector band together for protection, even when the Navy is present to protect them.  Often, Rogue Trader and Free Captain ships and even Explorators join up in these convoys, turning them from potential targets to impromptu warfleets.
The Navy has responsibility for neutralizing slaver and raider ships that threaten the Imperium’s citizens and military, and for ensuring the safety of the systems that can’t protect themselves.  The Navy also maintains a number of deep space anchorages and sensor platforms that collect information and supplies for Naval deployments.  Some Imperial Sectors, including Cloudburst, operate Naval Intelligence as its own sub-department of the Munitorum command elements for their jurisdiction.  This responsibility usually falls to a junior flag officer who has shown more of a knack for desk work than field command.

In the case of the Battlefleet Cloudburst, both it and Battlefleet Celeste headquarter with the Cloudburst Departmento Synopticon, the military intelligence branch of the Imperium, alongside the Templars Psykologis and Logis Strategos.  Their command structure, in which jurisdictional battles fought with impeccable handwriting and polite requisitions are as bloody as a Waaagh, resides in the sprawling Stormwell Station, a monstrous space station that hangs high in orbit above the capital moon.  With the anchorages of the system scattered broadly to allow the Guard staging areas for long deployments, the Celeste system itself is quite secure, and so the Navy is free to range broadly across the Subsector.  Other Subsectors enjoy noticeably less protection, save Delving Subsector, which the Blue Daggers help patrol, and Subsector Cognomen, which the Basilikon Astra Cognomen patrols.

As the sole provider of non-transhuman aerospace forces for the defence of Cloudburst, the Imperial Navy in Cloudburst often deploys transports and carriers packed with gunships and bombers, fighters and shuttles for the use of accompanying ground troops, in accordance with the strictures of Roboute Guilliman.  Eleven thousand years of war have passed since the end of the Heresy, but that law the Navy still obeys.
The presence of multiple deep-space bomber factories in two Subsectors, Delving and Cognomen, have allowed Battlefleet Cloudburst to field full bays of Marauders and Starhawks on their warships.  This ensures that the Navy can provide strategic air options to Imperial Commanders fighting off the Glasian hordes, so long as their transports can actually get there.  Because of the relative isolation of the Sector, and the relatively recent nature of its threat, the Cloudburst Sector has only had the means and need to build heavy capital ships for a few centuries.  The cloud of distrust under which the Cloudburst Mechanicus operates in the eyes of Mars has only very slowly cleared, and time will tell if the Cloudburst Sector shall one day be as well-equipped as their older counterparts.

The lack of vessels heavier than a Cruiser in the Septiim system is a noted and increasingly loud complaint from the SDF and the Blue Daggers.  Why, they ask, is the Navy unwilling to lend any more firepower to the defense of a regional powerhouse like Septiim, especially given how the Glasians are guaranteed to attack it?  The answer is that the Navy of the Cloudburst Sector is highly overstressed.  The sector has relatively few systems to defend; however, given its sheer size, the absolute volume of territory that needs protection, and the regular losses it suffers from extragalactic incursions, circumstances add up to rapid force depletion.  Building massive battleships is expensive, especially in a sector with so few Forge wWorld quality shpyards, and while the Septiim system is easily worth defending, so too are dozens of others.  Two Retribution battleships are under construction at the Cognomen shipyards, but their time to completion can be measured in decades.  In the interim, two Grand Cruisers of different models (Avenger and Furious) are also under construction, and will launch in one year.
Battlefleet Cloudburst had little active campaigning to do prior to the beginning of the Glasian incursions.  This is not to say that they were idle, far from it.  Their confrontations with Orks and pirates, both endemic to the region to some extent, allowed them at least to maintain a reasonably experienced officer corps.  All of that changed with the arrival of the Glasian menace.  Now, the local Navy accepts the requests of Battlefleet Ultima for support only during those times that the Glasians are not forthcoming, and desperately raids any and all pirate or otherwise uncommitted forces for their shipbuilding capabilities.  They have had very little success in this.  Aside from one or two Raiders captured from pirates and a single, barely-functional Gorlock class pre-fabricated ship cradle captured from the same pirates, the Sector Navy has had no luck in expanding their forces through offensive action.  Battlefleet Rampart has had more luck.  AlTthough they have managed to push the limited Chaotic presence in the region back even further, the Navyy are is totally reliant on the Mechanicus to expand the Navy flotilla now, and both Cognomen and Cloudburst know it.  Mutual defense priorities demand that they co-operate, for now, and this is perhaps the reason that neither faction is keen in reporting the less-than-perfect adherence the other has to strict Imperial protocol.  This has also resulted in some SDFs in Cloudburst being far stronger than the Imperial Navy contingents in their home systems, which is not always without acrimony on the Navy’s part.  How, they ask, can the Navy keep up with the demands of the local systems if their SDFs gobble up all the new ships?

There are immense opportunities for a Rogue Trader or Imperial Privateer in the Cloudburst Sector in this regard.  The taking of worlds is all well and good, but the Cloudburst defenses are stretched as it is.  The acquisition of new ships or shipyards would allow the Navy to expand their defensive and expansion abilities.  This is especially of interest to Rogue Traders Missionary, and the occasional Proseletyzer fleet of the Ecclesiarchy.  The Adeptus Ministorum is fully aware of the threat of the Glasians at its higher levels.  They demand that the humans of the Circuit, whether left over from pre-Imperial colonization efforts or colonists from the modern Imperium, be extended the protection of the Holy Armada, so that they may be free of the menace of the Glasians.  Any attempts to capture more ships or modular shipyards for the Imperium would meet with active Ecclesiarchal support, for however little that might be worth.

The flagship of the fleet is an Apocalypse, but it is not stock.  The ship, an Anvilus-built battleship, is a former test bed of the Navy.  Named the Vulpes Ferrum, the ship appears stock from a distance, but closer inspection reveals a few small changes to its forward, ventral, and rear areas.  The armor around the engine nozzles is thicker, and the nozzles themselves longer.  The fighter bay has thicker armor around it as well, and the armored prow sports two extra frigate-weight fore-firing turbolasers.  The interior is more heavily modified.  The Navy sought to minimize the size of internal components whenever possible to increase carrying capacity, and also added four Lightning interceptors to the ship’s contingent, but the Mechanicus struck their test down as being too close to the crime of innovation, and so only one vessel was given the modifications.  The ship was shuntedSegmentum Command shunted it off into a backwater sector in M40, out of the way of potential embarassments of the Navy.  The Navy of Cloudburst couldn’t care less about the Segmentum Battlefleet’s embarrassment, however, and gladly received the upgraded ship as their new flag -carrier.  Because of the widely-distributed nature of the Battlefleet Cloudburst, its supreme command never changes, and is always the office of the Lord Admiral on the Vulpes Ferrum.  When Lord Admiral Maynard does need to station himself somewhere immobile, his preference is for the Coriolis anchorages, or those of Cloudburst itself.

The majority of new ships in any given Cloudburst manufacturing allotment are assigned to the defense of the Sector’s worlds from the endemic pirates and centennial Glasian incursions.  Septiim’s fleet allotment is listed separately, since their contingent rarely leaves.  Generally, given how decentralized the Cloudburst armada is, the individual Subsector Battlefleets are rolled into the Battlefleet Cloudburst contingent.  Exceptions will be noted specifically.

Battlefleet Cloudburst Contingent: Flag vessel Apocalypse battleship, one Retribution battleship, one Emperor battleship, one Avenger grand cruiser, two Exorcist grand cruisers, one Vengeance grand cruiser, three Mars battlecruisers, four Overlord battlecruisers, one Mercury battlecruiser, nine Dictator cruiser-carriers, seven Dominator cruisers, eleven Gothic cruisers, twenty Lunar cruisers, two Tyrant cruisers, twelve Dauntless light cruisers, two Defiant light cruisers, three Endeavour light cruisers, one Endurance light cruiser, one Enforcer system control cruiser, six Defender escort cruisers, one Turbulent heavy frigate, forty one Sword frigates, nine Firestorm frigates, two Infidel raiders (Captured), one Falchion escort frigate, thirty Havoc merchant raiders, forty eight Claymore corvettes, thirty six Cobra destroyers, eleven Viper missile destroyers, nine Escort Carriers, twelve Fast Clippers (courier variant)

Imperial Guard
The Imperial Guard forces of the Cloudburst Sector serve as its shield, and in the Circuit, its sword.  The Guard are as diverse and complex here as in some of the older sectors of the Segmentum, thanks to the wildly varying standards of living of the sector’s worlds.  The Cloudburst Defenders enjoy the most expensive non-powered armor money can buy, Forge World lasers and shotguns, and even a few Inferno Pistols, while the Fathon population can’t even support a Guard contingent, much less Stormtroopers.  However, regardless of the world on which they were raised, all Cloudburst regiments incorporate anti-invasion tactics into their standard training doctrine as a matter of course.  The Glasians do not care about human politics or standards of living.  They care only for conquest, and their precious Passage.

The archetypal Imperial Guard regiments of the sector base their patterns and their rank systems on that of the Septiim system, itself based on the pre-Unification Terran system of Albiona and Britanne.  Worlds that can’t afford Septiim-level deployments may make do by removing the battalion from the command structure, and scaling down its force organization appropriately (battalions become regiments, Divisions become Brigades, etc).  Common to all organizations of the Cloudburst Guard are special formations designed by the sector’s Officio Munitorum commanders, as ordained by the Adeptus Terra on Cloudburst itself.  Officers empowered to act on the sector’s behalf in command or even battle, usually holding the rank of Brigadier General, command these formations.  They tend to lead large ‘honor guards’ of hundreds of men and machines, sometimes the strength of several platoons, and fly about in reconditioned freight carriers or troopships, taking command of Imperial forces that lack an appropriately ranked leader.  Officially, these miniature command elements are called ‘Emergency Command Asset Forces,’ or ECAFs.  The troops over whom they tend to command call them glory stars, if not something less polite.

The Cloudburst Guard had seen ample action prior to the Glasian Migrations.  The nearby Cloudburst Circuit and Oldlight Exo-zone ensure ample opportunities for local Guard forces to travel into the darkness and fight for the Imperium.  The nobility and PDF of many worlds in the northern Cloudburst Sector and southern Circuit descend from the Guard recruited or pressed into serving in the retinues of Rogue Traders.
Like many of the martial forces of the Sector, the local Guard specialize in the use of specific weapons.  Unlike the Space Marines, Sororitas, or Titans of the Cloudburst Sector, however, individual worlds in the Sector choose which weapons to focus on.  Clegran Hunters, for instance, like to use plasma and Hotshot weapons, while Septiim regiments prefer bolters.  This specialization ultimately stems in part from tradition, and in part from the real logistical concerns that once held back the production of more diverse arms on Cognomen.

By raw headcount, the Thimble military contributions have been the largest, followed by Hapster by virtue of its age.  Contemporarily, the Septiim and Cognomen militaries contribute the highest percentage of their population to the Guard, while Hapster contributes the highest percentage of its population to the Navy followed by Nauphry.  However, given the percentage of the sector that is Feudal or Feral in nature, the forces the civilized worlds contribute are often spread out over a broad area, sometimes thinly enough that all active military assets must move to defense and pause exploration.  The Rogue Traders and Explorators of the Sector often hesitate to push too deeply into the Circuit and Exo-zone during the Glasian Migrations, since there will be no backup available if something foes awry out in the darkness.

Ultimately, whether their command stems from locally-appointed officers or an ECAF taking command in the face of an invasion, the forces of the Cloudburst Guard have one task that supercedes all others, at least for now.  The forces of the Cloudburst Guard must keep the Glasians from conquering a world.  The one time the Glasians were allowed to take a world, Chlorit, they destroyed it, preventing anybody from recolonizing it, including themselves.  Imperial Segmentum Command is aware that the preservation of the Cloudburst Sector, though valuable, is not paramount to the survival of the greater Imperium, and is prepared to evacuate the region if needed.  Local Imperial Commanders staunchly refuse to consider the possibility.  They insist, in the face of a crumbling Imperium and a darkening galaxy, that Cloudburst can hold the line.  Against the Ork, against fleets of desperate pirates, against Glasians, and the dread claws of the Lord of Change himself, they insist, Cloudburst will hold the line.  Time alone can tell if this is true.

Organization and Ranks
Organization
Note: the ranks below are the Septiim standard, and all comments reflect on their Septiimi use alone.
Conventional Septiimi Force Allotment
Unit name	Typical Conventional Numbers	Typical Specialist Numbers	Typical commander
Fireteam	5 (4 PVT, 1 CPL)	x	Corporal
Squad	10 (preceedingx2)	x	Sergeant
Platoon	55 (preceedingx5 + cmd sqd)	1-6	First Lieutenant
Company	226 (preceedingx4 + cmd sqd)	25	Captain
Battalion	910 (preceedingx4 + cmd sqd)	100	Lieutenant Colonel
Regiment	9200 (preceedingx10 + cmd cpn)	1000	Colonel
Brigade	27620 (preceedingx3 + cmd team)	3000	Brigadier General
Division	110510 (preceedingx4 + cmd team)	12000	Major General
Corps	221040 (preceedingx2 + cmd team)	24000	Lieutenant General
Army	665150 (preceedingx3 + cmd team)	72000	General
Army group	1326320 (preceedingx2 + cmd team)*	144000	Lord General

Stormtrooper Septiimi Force Allotment
Unit name	Typical Trooper/Scion Numbers	Typical commander
Fireteam	4	First Sergeant
Squad	9	Lieutenant/Tempest Prime
Platoon	37	Captain
Company	150	Major/Master Tempestor
Battalion	752	Lieutenant Colonel
Regiment	1510	Colonel
Brigade	4540*	Brigadier General
*Never raised, maintained as a theoretical

Ranks
Terrestrial	Astralnautic	Space Marine Voidship Crew	Pay Grade
Lord General	Lord Admiral	-	O10
General	Admiral	-	O9
Lieutenant General	Vice Admiral	-	O8
Major General	Rear Admiral	-	O7
Brigadier General	Commodore	Fleetmaster	O6
Colonel	Captain/Senior Commander*	Shipmaster	O5
Lieutenant Colonel	Commander	Shipsmate	O4
Major	Lieutenant Commander	Crew Mate	O3
Captain	Senior Lieutenant	-	O2
Lieutenant	Lieutenant	High Rate	O1
Chief Warrant Officer	Chief Warrant Officer	-	C2
Warrant Officer	Warrant Officer	-	C1
Master Sergeant	Voidmaster	-	E7
First Sergeant	Chief Petty Officer	Voidknife	E6
Sergeant	Petty Officer	-	E5
Corporal	Junior Petty Officer	Voidcrew	E4
Lance Corporal	Senior Voidsman	Senior Voidsman	E3
Private First Class	Voidsman	Voidsman	E2
Private	Junior Voidsman	Junior Voidsman	E1
*The rank of Captain in the Astralnautic forces is reserved for the seniormost officer of a ship


Institutions
Within the greater Cloudburst Sector, the Imperial Adepta are hard at work.  As a zone of expansion for the Imperium, the Cloudburst Administratum oversees colonization efforts and tithe efforts in a large and ever-changing area.  As a result, the tithe and psyker collection ships they administrate need additions at all times.  This, combined with the recent increase in needs among the military forces of the Sector, puts intense strain on the shipbuilding capabilities of the Sector.

It is in the Cloudburst Circuit that the Imperial Adeptus Terra loses its grip, and the more militarized forces of the Imperium pick up the slack.  Rogue Traders, Explorators, Navy patrols, the occasional Blue Daggers ship on its way to a surgical strike mission, and Merchant Privateers all cross the red-hot gasses of the Circuit on various missions.  There are technically no ‘colonies’ in the Circuit, thanks to the fact that the Cloudburst Sector expands to include all colonies that are established in the Circuit.  Since this means that the infrastructure of the Sector would have to expand to worlds far from the centers of industry and travel in Cloudburst, most of the Imperial-controlled worlds in the Circuit are instead referred to as ‘outposts,’ with all the lack of formal support that indicates.  Some of the systems of the Circuit have been added to the Sector over the years.  Many actual outposts, such as research stations and mining nodes, benefit from little protection, and crew of Navy ships posted there consider it hazard posting at best.

Some of the cultural trends that have taken root in other Imperial Sectors have been slow to arrive in Cloudburst.  The use of subcutaneous Electoos, for instance, which are all but mandatory on Prison Worlds and Forge Worlds in the Segmentum Solar, is unheard of except among the spectacularly rich in Cloudburst, though it is making slow headway.  Conversely, the Ecclesiarchy in most Imperial sectors is tightening its belt in these times of shortage and warfare, while the Cloudburst Ministorum has never been more profligate.

The Techpriesthood
Because of the somewhat contentious circumstances of the founding of the Cognomen Priesthood, there are odd cultural motifs that wormed their way into the common practice of the Cloudburst Tech-adepts and Priests.  None of it strays far enough from Martian dogma to be considered Heretek, Cognomen makes sure of that, but there is an oddness to it that any Solar visitor can pick out.

Among the stars of Cloudburst, there is no institution older than the Adeptus MechanicusMechanicus is.  Their growing Forge Worlds of Cognomen and Solstice hang in the darkness of the spacious Sector, aglow with the fires of industry.  The expanding Sector has an unquenchable need for resources, ships, and machines, and the Techpriests are there to meet it.

The aftermath of the Horus Heresy left total anarchy on Mars.  The Red Planet was all but destroyed by the bitter in-fighting.  Collapses and fires started in the Librarius Omnis destroyed what few databanks had survived five thousand years of stagnation and decay.  Though exabytes of data survived the scrapcode, the war, the ecological exposure, the actual and electronic daemons, and the radiation of the Schism of Mars had destroyed hundreds of yottabytes the Librarius once held.  The surviving Techpriests united in their fiery hatred of the Hereteks, the Chaos-worshippers, for the affronts they had levelled against the Machine God.
However, even the Loyalists were divided.  After the war ended and the next began, that of the Great Scouring, the surviving leaders of the Martian priesthood were dissatisfied with their vengeance against the Heretics.  They were losing autonomy, thanks to the reforms of Guilliman, and though the Treaty of Mars was still intact, the dogmatic trend the newly rebranded Adeptus Mechanicus was showing indicated to the schismatics that their preferences would not be allowed forever.
The schismatic sect of Techpriests believed that the human body was as sacrosanct as the Emperor said, and so were machines.  To fuse them when it was not necessary was an insult to the human form and the machine function, they claimed.
Technically, this was not a violation of Mechanicus doctrine.  Techpriests in the personal employ of the Lord Commander Guilliman himself had preached that exact doctrine; a force of Techpriests who practiced it, also, freed Calth.  The Mechanicus’ numbers had not been so lightly damaged that they could afford to be picky on points of non-Heretek doctrine.  Still, the movement against human-replica augmetics was growing and forceful.
Both for the good of the Mechanicus and for their own sake, the schismatic faction agreed to separate from Mars.  Somewhat surprised by this, the new Fabricator General allowed it, under the strict commandment that the schismatics not create a Titan Legion unless Mars gave them permission.  Disgruntled, but able to smell the changing of the wind, the schismatics agreed.
Taking to ship, the schismatics flew as far as they could from the Red Planet without leaving the Astronomican’s light.  The massive Ark Mechanicus they had chosen as their vessel was a true monster of the Basilikon Astra.  Named the Archetype, a relic from before the Age of Strife had so fully damaged the archives of the Librarius Omnis that much of the knowledge of mega-engineering was gone, the twenty-kilometer Ark had more than enough space and defenses to protect the schismatics, and ferry to them to their new home.

Of course, finding one would prove challenging.  The sheer volume of space beyond the reach of the Imperium ensured that the schismatics would find themselves lost more than once.  As the pre-made human-form augmetics they had brought with them ran out, they schismatics were forced to compromise with the naked steel ones they opposed on general principal.  They traveled on, finding world after world that was lost to heresy, destroyed by the Eldar, scorched by the Warp, polluted by Orks, or else under Imperial control.
After nearly twenty years of nonstop flight, the Archetype finally found the savanna world, covered in recognizably Diaspora-descended plants.  The vast ship discharged its passengers and cargo, and they began the work of settling their new world.  The coordinates from the gravestone had brought them to their new home.

For two hundred years, the schismatics worked around the clock.  Temples, factories, farms, mines, gantries, docks, laboratories, and far more rose from the rock and dirt like metal trees.  Though the new colonists had to be careful to preserve as much of the planet’s ecosystem as possible at first, thanks to their lack of Agri-worlds to feed themselves, the world still became an unpleasant place to visit before long.  Regular psychic and courier communication with Mars established in the Red Planet’s minds that their breakaway cousins were still intact (and still loyal, more importantly).

After two centuries of hard work, Cognomen was declared a Forge World by Mars, and the planet settled in.  Though the original rejection of non-flesh-form augmetics had slackened somewhat by necessity, they remained more popular than the naked steel sort did, and the planet’s people were determined to maintain their adherence to Mechanicus doctrine in all respects, lest Mars think their colony was going rogue.

Isolation treated Cognomen well.  Though they had no satraps or vassals, the world grew regardless, and their sizeable defenses proved to be enough to drive off the occasional opportunistic Ork or pirate who thought to loot the world.
Occasional interactions with other Imperial worlds allowed for a small-scale trade economy, mostly with worlds in the Hapster subsector and the Drumnos Sector to the galactic south.  The presence of the massive radioactive clouds present all around the world, and the asteroid clusters and black holes to the trailing direction, meant that Cognomen sponsored little Exploratory and colonization effort in the time between their founding and MacDonald’s excursions.
Their isolation worsened with the catastrophic loss of Archmagos Dominus Velcra Osterman and the Archetype in a joint military exercise with their brethren from Naxos, when the exercise was suddenly assaulted by a vast fleet of Ork Freebooters.  Though Osterman fought with ruthless courage, the Orks were too many.  He was forced to detonate the antimatter/plasmic hybrid power core of his ship in order to prevent the greenskins from stealing it, and the resultant explosion destroyed much of the Ork fleet.  Though the Basilikon Astra was able to mop up the Orks and salvage the materials of all the destroyed ships, the loss of their ancestral home, their war leader, and their best ship led Cognomen to seal themselves off further from the rest of the Imperium.
However, time was not on their side.  The sudden discoveries of their brilliant Magos Explorator Justin MacDonald of several shirtsleeves-habitable worlds within a non-Navigated flight from their homeworld – well within their telescope range – led to an uproar on the Forge World.  How, the people of Cognomen asked angrily, had they managed to miss prizes so obvious?  They could have built their own network of satraps, vassals, perhaps even Knight worlds, if they had only known about those systems.  Their stars were easily visible from Cognomen’s orbit, also, which only raised further questions.
The leadership of Cognomen’s Techpriesthood, sheepish at the depth of their error, publicly admitted to nothing.  However, even the most militantly isolationist Magos of the Cognomen senior leadership could smell the changing of the wind again.  In fewer than ten years, over two hundred Explorators, Rogue Traders, and Departmento Cartigraphicae convoys had departed from nearby Drumnos and Naxos.  By far the most came from the glorious shipbuilding hub Fabique, a subsector battlefleet anchorage and vast Forge World in the neighboring Naxos Sector.  Systems, shipwrecks, bizarre astral phenomena, a Warp Storm, and far more appeared on maps and charts of the Oldlight Proximate Circuit.  Cognomen’s isolation was ending.

MacDonald, of course, was obligated to share the discoveries he was making with the greater Imperium.  If Cognomen wanted their strident objections to claims of Heretek and subversion to be heeded at all, they couldn’t simply keep their discoveries for themselves.  Therefore, when Hapster Subsector Master of the Administratum, Subsector Lord Fisher, contacted Cognomen with a proposal to add Cognomen to the expanding Subsector, the Techpriests listened patiently, considered the offer, and told Fisher to stuff himself.  If the Forge World were going to become part of the larger Imperium, they would do so on the terms of the Mechanicus, not the Administratum.
The High Fabricator contacted Mars himself, using a courier boat.  Aboard the boat, he included all manner of information about the sector, including all of MacDonald’s discoveries, what little they had managed to map before he had gone on his journeys, and lists of known threats.  When the courier boat was lost with all hands in a pirate raid, the Fabricator tried again, and this time, his message got through.
One year later, an Astropathic message returned from Mars, with basic information about what the Senate had decided about the region.  Cognomen learned that the region was to become a new sector, with the capital to be decided, and Cognomen was to become its infrastructural lynchpin.

This was not the idea solution, from Cognomen’s perspective.  The world certainly could expand its facilities enough to allow for such a boost of industrial and military production, but not without destroying its agricultural and mining capacity.  Furthermore, that sort of expansion would necessitate the creation of far larger defenses and offensive projection capacity, simply to defend its off-world resource base.  That would all but demand creation of a Titan Legion, which Mars had specifically outlawed.
When this was tactfully pointed out to Mars by a series of Astropathic messages, Mars replied that the stricture against Titan construction was lifted.  Cognomen was left stunned.  They were free to build their own War God-machines?  Further, the next message imparted, Cognomen would benefit from an entire army of Skitarii, and the right to manufacture all hulls of Imperial vessels and armored vehicles.  Six Titans were dispatched to serve as the core of the new Legion, led by the Ded Morozko, a Warlord, under Chief Princeps Leminkova.  After their loss, enough wreckage was returned to begin the reassembly of one Reaver.
Things began happening very quickly.  While the leadership of the planet sent requests for clarification to Mars, asking if the stricture against Knights was also lifted, Cognomen sent out a dizzying array of vessels, to begin the creation of Agri-worlds for themselves, and scout vessels to identify proper sites for satrap Forges.  When the wave of colony ships began flying all around them after MacDonald’s successes in the Oldlight Exo-zone, Cognomen was ready.
Dozens of worlds began feeding tithes to Cognomen’s vast forges.  Orbital cradles, manufactorae, synth-presses, STC-standard constructors, and assembly lines rose from what used to be grassland, and girdled the slowly dying world with industry.  Temples to the Omnissiah and Arbites precinct-houses took their place alongside ancient warehouses and server farms.  Hundreds of thousands of vast apartment towers for the rapidly rising population of the world and over fifty military bases sprouted from the ground.  After several further attempts to gain clarity on their permission to build Knights, Cognomen gave up, and decided to build them anyway, though they edged away from building Cybernetica robots just yet.  One forested world set aside for agriculture was quietly earmarked for use as a Knight World, and that fact conveniently forgotten when it came time for Cognomen to next report to Mars.

The fleets of the Cognomen and Solstice Basilikon Astra and Explorator ply every route between every cluster in the young Sector.  Rogue Traders and Inquisitors who comb the Cloudburst Circuit for secrets and wealth often welcome Explorators flying the proud banner of MacDonald’s Finest, knowing that the Explorators of Cognomen have a desperate need to prove themselves, to Terra and Mars.

The Explorators of the Cloudburst Sector, regardless of their Forge World alleigiance, seek archaeotech caches and habitable worlds for the Imperium.  The fact that Cognomen was sitting in the middle of a habitable star cluster and never noticed for many thousands of years is a huge embarrassment to them.  The fact that their glorious predecessor, Archmagos Explorator Justin MacDonald, was able to find over a dozen habitable systems in under a decade of searching, is a point of pride to them, and the fact that he found them within visible distance is a huge shame to them.  Now, driven by the need to make up for past laxity, for the extra scrutiny of Mars, and the need to find fresh resources to take the fight to the Glasians and Orks, the Explorators of Cloudburst scramble across the Circuit, hunting down the vaguest hints of treasure and technology.
Unlike in some other Segmentum Ultima border zones, Rogue Traders and Explorators in Cloudburst work together readily and voluntarily.  Fleets of them, working in tandem, have dragged Space Hulks to Cognomen or Grand Anchor to be ripped apart, seen off alien invasions before the Administratum even learned about them, and discovered whole networks of lost human colonies to loot and plunder.

The Basilikon Astra of Solstice and Cognomen is both less numerous and far better equipped than the Imperial Navy.  Their warships patrol the Warp routes between Cognomen and Septiim, and Cognomen and its satrap worlds, with ceaseless vigilance and the best weapons money can buy.  Although their ancient flagship, the Archetype, is long gone, the fleets of Cognomen are still formidable.  The Cognomen yards are enormous and growing, and although it will be another thousand years before they catch up to the current size of the great Fabique Forge Yards, they are already large enough to manufacture every model of common Imperial ship.

As is usually the case, the Mechanicus reserves its best ships for itself.  The cruisers that form the backbone of its flotillas are the most heavily armed for their tonnage in the Sector.  Its


Among the military forces of the Sector, the mightiest is the Legio Congelatio.  Although the Frostbite Army is miniscule compared to some older Legions, its short and bloody history has earned it infamy among other Imperial institutions.

The Legion originated as a sop to Cognomen’s needs by Mars.  Cognomen was a world Mars thought of poorly, when they thought of it at all, and the various Titan Legions of other Forge Worlds looked at their legion-less kin with pity.  Cognomen was born of a schism, one rooted in ideological differences.  As such, it never had a Titan Legion of its own, by ancient decree from Mars.  When the Cloudburst Sector was born from the Oldlight Proximate Circuit after the Explorator Justin MacDonald discovered the many livable worlds in the Circuit, however, it was no longer safe for Cognomen to remain isolated, or lightly defended.  The growing needs of the Sector demanded growing capacity from Cognomen, and the growing capacities of Cognomen demanded growing defenses to protect it.
Eventually, Mars aceeded to the increasingly pointed requests from Cognomen to establish a new Titan Legion.  After the loss of its initial batch of Titans, the rebuilding produced the beginnings of a viable legion.

The battle in which the destruction of the Legio occurred was a savage affair, with the Legio Congelatio squaring off against a Traitor Guard force of far greater size during the War for the Corumbino Nebula.  The war engines of the Legio were able to drive off the scout and forward armor elements of the Traitor force without too much trouble, but the pressure applied by the Chaos force was relentless.  The Corpus Secutarii forces protecting the Titans encountered rough terrain as the Titans advanced, and the Titan crews were left with a coice: abandon their escorts, or allow themselves to be slowed.  The Legio chose the latter, and endured a punishing Manticore barrage from the Traitors.  The final problem was that of a Chaos Titan force that accompanied the Traitors, from a Legio that remains unidentified.  The Titan force consisted of four engines, accompanied by a pair of Chaos Shadowswords.  As soon as they came within range, the Congelatio Titans engaged with the super-long range energy weapons that were the hallmark of the Legio, and managed to destroy a Ravager before it could return fire.  However, just as the Chaos force and the Loyalist force entered direct battle with each other, a third party entered the fray.
A wing of eighty-five Dark Eldar aircraft armed with Void Lances appeared at the edge of the engagement.  Raking the assembled Titans with their dark energy beams, the Titans withered under the unimaginable technosorcery of the evil xenos.  Chaos and Imperial Titans alike fell, destroyed or crippled, as the Chaos artillery kept up its savage barrage.  When the Black Winter Warlord Titan of Cognomen’s force detonated from a lucky reactor kill, the chain reaction that ensued destroyed all of the Titans left in the fight, which had been forced together by the bad terrain.
The stunned Chaos and Imperial forces outside the blast radius fell back.  The loss of their Titan cover meant that the Chaos artillery could no longer operate so far from their caches, and they turned tail and ran.  The Imperium noticed this and pursued, eventually driving the Chaos force off-world.

Since that time, Cognomen has been hastily expanding their Titan force.  Although only one engine could be salvaged from the disaster that destroyed the Legion, Cognomen has since built ten Battle Titans and fifteen Scout Titans.  A Warlord and a Reaver never leave Cognomen, to ensure that the disaster of Corumbino never recurs.  Another Warlord was lost in the duel with the Ork Supa-Gargant Bloodcrunch in M41.962, leaving the effective strength of the Legion at two dozen Engines.  That is pathetic compared to Anvilus, Mars, Voss, or even the Lathes, but it is more than enough to have driven off the Third Glasian Migration unaided when the aliens foolishly attempted to conquer the Forge World in M41.600.

Contemporarily, Cognomen has begun to expand its Titan Legion and its Corpus Secutarii.  The Secutarii of all Titan Legions, of course, answer to the leadership of the Legion itself, not its attendant priests or Skitarii.  However, the savage beatings the Legio Congelatio has endured over the years have hammered a sense of fatalistic and even remorseful pride into the Secutarii of Cognomen.  The prevailing belief among the Titanshields – as the local Secutarii dub themselves – is that the world is not at fault for any of the troubles that have befallen the Legion.  Rather, the very sector itself, the untamed wilderness of Imperial space beyond, or even the nature of the galaxy are siding against them.  Secutarii of the Corpus Congelatio paint their armor black with green highlights, and are perhaps the most enthusiastic wielders of phosphor and irrad weapons in the Sector.  Though this is understandably a huge liability in the largely defensive wars of the Sector, the Titanshields demand the right to wield the ancient hate of Mars.
Naturally, this is why the Titanshields are so often rebuked by other Imperial Commanders who do not share their passion for uninhabitable wastelands.  The Titanshields therefore, often reluctantly, field Arc Weapons, Hellguns, and Galvanic weapons when they are fighting on Imperial worlds.  The Axiarchs of the Titanshields are also sometimes seen adorning their armor with pieces of the destroyed six engines that started the Legio, as a mark of their shame and their determination to prevent it from happening again.  This is a devoted effort, as no living Axiarch was present for the Corumbino campaign.

Cognomen Skitarii are loyal to Mars first and Cognomen second.  Their postings take them all over the world, in small offices, massive barracks, and rapid response call bunkers.  Though the initial contingent was a mere eighty thousand, the size and importance of Cognomen have increased immensely, and so has the Skitarii.  Onager Dunecrawlers and Ironstriders patrol the dying savannas, marching legions of metal-legged soldiers circuit the factories and construction sites, and elite red and black robed guards keep vigil over the Containment Vaults and Iron Armory.  Cognomen’s desire to stay on Mars’ good side expresses itself in the Skitarii it arms being given the very best weapons the expanding Forge World can afford to build.  The Skitarii of Cognomen, however, take the exact opposite approach to warfare as the dour and gloomy Titanshields.  They have no fixation on penance or purging mistakes.  Skitarii of Cognomen fight to see the Imperium – through its alliance with Mars – expand and grow.  The Skitarii use weapons like the mighty Galvanic Rifle, the Transuranic Rifle, and the Eradication Beamer in their formations.  Of course, these weapons do leave some impact on the world around them, but it is transitory at worst, not the crawling horror of Phosphex or permanent irradiation of Radium Blaster Rifles.

The Solstice Techrpiesthood concerns itself with the Quest for Knowledge as all Tech-priests do, but their relative newness and lack of established infrastructure limits their ability to project much firepower.  They do have a Legio Cybernetica contingent on their Forge Moon, which even Cognomen lacks, but their presence in the greater Sector is presently too small to weigh heavily on the future of Cloudburst.

The Techpriesthood of Cloudburst fills many of the roles they fill elsewhere in the Imperium.  In addition to administrating and maintaining the various manufacturing facilities of worlds in the Sector and Circuit, they also keep a weather eye out for any sraps of archaeotech that may yet linger among the bones of the ancient human Federation.
This is more likely to be effective in this sector than in many others.  Unlike the core sectors of old Imperial space like Ultramar or Cadia, the Cloudburst Sector has had both very few Imperial colonization attempts by proportion to its size, and fairly recent ones.  Unlike regions of space with constant piratical activity or extensive Imperial trade shipping, there is little traffic in the Cloudburst Sector’s history, and none before M39.  This means that archaeotech caches in the region are more likely to have never been touched since their abandonment when the Imperium finds them, and that makes the likelihood of finding them intact much higher.

Of course, the odds of any STC surviving the fifteen thousand years since the last known one was built are slim, but the Mechanicus never gives up.  The vastness of the Sector and Circuit have never stopped yielding treasures to loot and worlds to settle, not once since their mapping has begun, and the Explorators of the Basilikon have never ended their search.

The Mechanicus also maintains the crucial defenses of the Sector, especially the many surface-to-space guns that its worlds need now to defend themselves from the evil Glasians.  The Mechanicus has built and installed hundreds of silos, Defense Lasers, and satellite weapons across Cloudburst, and demand is only increasing.  The Cognomen Techpriesthood considers these weapons to be sacred implements of the Omnissiah and Machine God, and the brilliant discharge of their arms to be the roaring hate of the Motive Force.  Each gun or silo, regardless of locale, serves as a local temple to the Cult Mechanicus.  Whole armies of Skitarii and even Legio Solstice Robots have fielded in defense of these guns on the eve of Glasian Migrations or pirate raids.

Among its duties to proseletyze, defend, and explore, the Mechanicus also runs the arms factories of the Sector.  After the disastrous loss of Chlorit, Brotherhood, and Scalding, the Imperial Sector Command finally admitted that the traditional Imperial system of having interconnected industry between the worlds of Cloudburst was too dangerous to continue while the Glasian attacks worsen.  The vast space between the habitable clusters of stars in Cloudburst makes the odds of relief forces being able to respond to sudden assaults against Imperial worlds slim, and Cognomen’s strapped resources mean it is not able to supply all industrial goods to the Sector.
Consequently, much of the Mechanicus’ duties outside exploration, religion, and war revolve around building and operating factories and smithies in the cities and outposts of the Imperium in Cloudburst.  Cloudburst’s major population centers – Septiim, Nauphry, Thimble, Hapster – tend to be either fresh Imperial colonies in places of colossal resources, or ancient human worlds the Imperium has reclaimed.  Thus, these worlds usually have both a large resource and infrastructural base to manufacture goods and an insatiable need for them.
The Mechanicus operates many of these facilities, and the prevailing view among the Machine God’s adherants in the Sector is that the production of these goods is second to the importance of maintaining their mechanical charges in perfect working order.  That they are paid to do this and that people enjoy their products is nice, but the working order of factory machines is paramount and all-encompasing.  The few remaining archaeotechnolgical factories in the Sector are heavily-guarded relics, protected at all times by solemn Tech-Guard and chanting Priests, who wave incense burners and iron cogwheels in supplication of presses and assembly lines.

The Mechanicus has one final duty, one that is both expensive and onerous.  The Techpriesthood of Cognomen and Maskos especially find themselves burdened by the responsibility of disposing of the gigatons of Chaos-tainted remains after each Glasian Migration.  They include wrecked ships, destroyed vehicles, and millions of corpses.  Athough the Mechanicus accepts this duty as a necessary one, faced with the alternative of widespread Xenotech-Heresy or mass contamination, it is an unproductive and dangerous responsibility that some Techpriests regard as punishment detail, fairly or not.


The Ecclesiarchy

As with all other aspects of Imperial life, with the colony ships came the preachers.  The Administratum founded the Cloudburst Sector long after the reforms of Sebastian Thor, and so when the colonies of the Sector began their establishment, the modern Ecclesiarchy of the Sector began alongside it.  The worlds of Cloudburst have a history of odd interpretations of the Imperial Creed, however, including some that alarm the Ordo Hereticus.

The majority of the Adeptus Ministorum presence in the Cloudburst Sector is innocuous enough.  The Ministorum asserts control over things like arranging marriages between nobles and the general spiritual guidance of its charges on most Imperial worlds.  The many Feral and Feudal Worlds of the Cloudburst Sector call for Missionaries regularly.  The sheer size of the Cloudburst Circuit and Oldlight Exo-zone mean that a Missionary may begin a process of converting a primitive world generations before it concludes at the hands of an apprentice.

The Inquisition finds other trends of the Ministorum Cloudburst troubling.  The similarities between the modern Ecclesiarchy of Cloudburst and the pre-Reformation Ecclesiarachy are stark, enough so that eyes have been drawn from as far away as Calixis.  The ideology of Drake’s Ecclesiarchy is that of the Imperial Cult, sure enough, but his means of expressing and encouraging faith are heirlooms that date back to the very dawn of Cloudburst.  The trouble is that they are are also akin to what the Ecclesiarchy now calls the Temple Tendency, or as they were once known, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor.  Banished and crippled by Sebastian Thor, many thousands of years ago after the Reign of Blood and rebirth of the Daughters of the Emperor, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor once claimed supremacy over all theological and many military matters of Imperial state.
Although the leaders of the Cloudburst Ministorum find the very idea repugnant when asked, the fact is that the doctrine of their faith does resemble that of the pre-Thor era.  The Synod Cloudburst is a joke, given its size.  With only a few tens of billions of humans in the whole sector, the Synod consists at present of two old men.  However, as the Inquisition knows all too well, any time two people with limitless power meet, conspiracies are born as if by the will of the universe.  The Ordo Hereticus has seen sufficient evidence of Saviour Emperor tendencies among the lay clergy of the sector to suspect that any infiltration of the Ministorum comes from the top.  This is glaringly obvious in contrast to the spartan Ecclesiarchy of Drumnos, and the pragmatic militarism of the Naxos priesthood.  However, preliminary investigations of the Ecclesiarchy’s conduct in Cloudburst have revealed the opposite trend.  Some of the most embarrassing events in Ministorum history in the sector have come about because the Ecclesiarchy took their tendencies towards opulence and self-armament too far, and were chastised for it.
For example, the problem of conscription by Ecclesiarchal ships from Hapster led directly to the arrest of an Archbishop after a humiliating mutiny on Thunderhead Station.  Three worlds in the sector have either endured outright Exterminatus or at least civil war because Bishops or Archbishops were undiscovered psychics or remorseless charlatans.  The Temple Tendency has become the nuisance it is elsewhere in the galaxy because of their discretion, caution, and restraint.  The Cloudburst Ministorum displays none of these traits.
Where exactly the truth may lie, the Inquisition does not know.  However, given the building resentment between the Canoness Superior Lanbrie and the sector Cardinals with Drake and Lamarr’s constant overspending, lavishness, militarism, and lack of oversight of their subordinates, any Inquisitor so inclined could find a ready ally in the firebrand Battle Sister.

The Imperium has had some major issues with Ecclesiarchal staff and clergy mistaking their proximity to the divine for permission to do as they please in the past.  The Ecclesiarchal Palace on Celeste is one obvious example of this, with its abundant decorations and lavish design.
Jodhclan’s Paradise, the only true Shrine World in the Sector thus far, houses an even more obvious deviance from the typical Ecclesiarchal restraint.  Jodhclan’s military, which trains under the Battle Sisters of the Sacred Rose Order, is expanding faster than that of any other Cloudburst world save Cognomen and Oglith, one of which is a Forge World and the other of which is under Ork invasion.  Cardinal Lamarr insists that he is simply being cautious, and that any military force he builds is to defend the faithful from the Glasian menace.  The truth is that he is a student of history.
Lamarr is aware of the historical trend of verdant, beautiful, unspoiled paradise worlds being abruptly claimed by the Eldar as long-lost Maiden Worlds.  As he watched Jodhclan’s Paradise grow from a mere Rogue Trader discovery to a major Shrine, he saw the familiar patterns emerge.  All it took was a few nearby Dark Eldar slaver raids, and his natural paranoia filled in the gaps.  Lamarr is terrified that the Eldar, be they Craftworlders, Kabalites, or Corsairs (he is not worldly enough to know the difference by sight) will soon come to evict him from his beautiful home.  The fact that the Eldar do not even seem directly aware of the planet’s existence simply drives him to imagine that they are pooling their strength.  He is also unaware that his paranoia, which fuels his military expansionism, has placed him firmly in the sights of the Ordo Hereticus and Ordo Militarum, both of which see his actions as deliberate violations of the Decree Passive, which the Cloudburst Ecclesiarchy has had trouble following in the past anyway.
As a result, Jodhclan’s Paradise sits in the incredibly uncomfortable position of being both host to an Inquisitorial Chamber Militant and the world against which it is likely to deploy.  The capital and many other cities are places of peace and piety, but Lamarr’s paranoia is bringing subtle pressures to bear against its people.  Though he has not yet slipped to the extent of turning on his own citizens as Eldar spies, he is gradually falling prey to his own fears.  The religious orders on Jodhclan’s Paradise are anathemic to the Eldar, of course, so he has little reason to suspect that they may turn on him, but the civilian population on the planet is large and diverse; realistically, he can’t control all of it.