some stuff

Local Armaments
The Imperium is simply too large for universal standardization of weaponry and ammunition at the galactic scale.  Given the Cloudburst Sector’s relatively small origins, however, the Sector has seen significant standardization that would be unfeasible outside its borders.  Predictably, most of its common weapon designs are those of the worlds from which it drew its pilot populations, plus those Cognomen developed in their long isolation.
Here is a table describing most of the local arms, munitions, vehicles, and other military gear common to the forces of Cloudburst.  Note that the Space Marines of the Sector are not covered here, as their equipment is specified to the Martian and Solar templates, and does not deviate from them.

Handguns and Sub-Full Guns
Bluebird Sealed Revolver – [8x31mm] A common weapon to the officers’ corps of many regiments of the local Officio Munitorum.  This revolver started life as the sidearm of choice for the Cloudburst Sector’s Rough Riders.  Although it is heavy, the revolver caught on at once with its intended market, because of its unusual cylindrical ammunition storage system.  When the slugs are loaded into the cylinder, the cylinder springs forward to press flush with the bore of the weapon’s barrel, forming a perfect seal that prevents any gas from escaping the chamber when fired.  This means that the weapon can be silenced more fully than any other model of revolver in the standard arsenal of the local Imperial forces.  When paired with Cognomen-pattern muzzle-thread gas catch silencers, this means the Bluebird can be effectively sound-suppressed to the extent that the Rough Riders’ mounts will not be panicked from the sound of the shot.  That allows the Rough Riders to finish off downed opponents or stage stealthy attacks without having to worry about handling a skittish mount.
However, the weapon really took off with vehicle crews and artillery officers of the Sector Officio Munitorum regiments, far more so than Rough Riders.  These troops are rarely issued much in the way of hearing protection that can be used outside their vehicles, and the cramped interior of Imperial military vehicles means that they are rarely able to fit a proper long gun in with them.
The Bluebird has few accessory options beside their suppressors, but they do often ship with a tiny laser sight that can clip to the bottom of the barrel.  The weapon’s ammunition cylinder flips out to the user’s weak side, and loads seven bullets from a speedloader or manual load.
One benefit of revolvers over self-loading pistols – indeed, one of the very few – is that it can cycle by the user’s control instead of through the action of a discharging powder load.  Thus, the weapon can trivially load bullets with any powder pack, from barely enough to clear the slug from the barrel to a standard subsonic load, all the way up to overpressure loads that would break the pistol in half if it were not maintained.  That makes it very popular with troops in artillery regiments who are responsible for quietly approaching enemy positions to call down strikes, since a coupled subsonic round and excellent suppressor makes their shots all but silent.

Ocelot PDW – [9x20mm] Among the most popular and flexible weapons in Sector history is the Ocelot.  This weapon is designed to be fully modular, albeit under the control of a blessed gunsmith.  In the hands of a properly ordained armsmaster, the Ocelot can be expanded or shrunk to fit the user’s needs.  Its barrel, slide, grip, accessory rails, and magazines are interchangeable in size, allowing it to fit roles as far removed as a pistol-caliber carbine or a derringer.  By default, it is automatic, but can be purchased with a burst mode as well.
Originally, the Ocelot was designed on Cognomen as a sidearm for vehicle and aircraft crewers in the Officio Munitorum PDFs of Imperial worlds.  The worlds of the Cloudburst Sector have enormous variance in technology levels, and getting the PDFs of all those worlds to the same level of basic self-defense readiness is an even bigger pain in the fundament than it is in the smaller Imperial Guard.  The Ocelot was created to serve as a weapon that could be dispatched to cavemen as easily as posh socialites or career soldiers.
The core of its flexibility is its fitting system.  With only a few simple tools, the slide and barrel can easily detach from the receiver, and be replaced with much smaller parts.  The grip can be shortened from a standard military pistol length to barely that of a pocket pistol or holdout weapon by similar methods.  Its standard fourteen-round magazine can be replaced with miniature magazines to fit the smaller grips, or even load stacked or drum mags with a hundred rounds.
To scale the weapon up, the barrel can easily mount suppressors, lengtheners, carbine-length barrel extenders, recoil compensators, and more.  To the back of the weapon, there is a slot on the weapon that allows it to plug its own holster in as a shoulder stock, and when paired with the lengthened barrel, allows the weapon to serve as a pistol-caliber carbine.
The most popular accessory for the weapon, however, is a folding wire stock that attaches on a pivot on the base of the grip above the magazine well.  The two wires extend back from the base of the grip with a clip between them to allow a suppressor to be stored in it, just behind the shoulder plate, allowing the grip to flip up one hundred eighty degrees over the weapon for storage.
The Ocelot can be suppressed easily thanks to its high-quality chamber and ejector design, which allow no gas to escape from the weapon except from the muzzle for just long enough for the slug to emerge from the barrel.  This makes it very popular with PDF on low-tech worlds that have not yet been entrusted with handling energy weapons, and must take care not to damage the hearing of its troops with unsuppressed firearms.

Mark VIIIa Laspistol – [Standard power pack] Before Cognomen received the very latest in Martian small arms designs to outfit its rapidly-expanding Sector with functional arms, it had to rely on its own to outfit the worlds of the Hapster Subsector.  The Mark VIIIa is one design that was not entirely phased out until long after the Cloudburst Sector itself was founded.  Nicknamed the ‘Villa’ thanks to its model number, this pistol saw millions of units produced to arm the Imperial Navy crewers and officers responsible for patrolling space near Cognomen and its precious route to Hapster.  Cognomen built these for thousands of years before getting better templates from Mars, but the new templates’ degree of superiority was small enough that it was deemed not worth collecting and decommissioning all of the old ones to be replaced at once.  Thus, some Mark VIIIas saw military service for thousands of years after the Sector was founded, and hundreds of thousands have fallen into the hands of local authorities or criminals after leaving the Navy.

Long Guns
Razor Rifle “The Quarter to Two” (slug) – [.25x2inch] A relatively updated take on a Martian classic.  When the ancestors of Cognomen’s ruling class of Techpriests left the Sol System, they brought their legacy with them: hundreds of crates of old Martian hunting weapons to protect the colonists from whatever threats existed on the planet they would pick to settle.  These weapons were antiques, designed by the ancient Martian nobles and corporate overlords as hunting weapons for their safaris on the surface of terraformed Mars.  When the terraformation systems of Mars failed during the Age of Strife and again during the Horus Heresy and Martian Civil War, these weapons were left by the wayside in favor of more exotic weapons.
The time of the Razor Rifles came once more when the Cognomen settlers began the process of building their new home.  Although their world had little native life, they still needed to be able to protect themselves from it, and arm their soldiers to see off incursions.  Two weapons were designed initially: the slug and laser variants of the Razor, which was patterned after the ancient Martian template.
The slug variant uses a simple, cased slug of quarter inch thickness and two-inch unloaded case length.  This gave it its nickname among the troops.  The slug can be cased in any number of metals and alloys, and the slug can be made of flattening osmium to piercing steel, or even boring uranium, as the armorer needs.
This variant is very popular on worlds with PDFs that have not received laser weapons.  The big, hard-hitting bullet can reliably punch through soft armor and flesh, crack concrete, and fracture glass and plaster.  The standard rifle comes with a built-in selector with safe, single, burst, and full-auto settings.  Eventually, caseless telescoped variants of the slug were introduced, and some worlds use them, but there are trillions of bullets manufactured to the original spec, and many worlds did not adopt the caseless system thanks to its higher maintenance requirements.
The weapon is highly accurate, but it does have one drawback: length.  The rifle is long, with a barrel of well over two feet in length past the receiver and four feet in total length thanks to its hefty stock.  In its roots as a hunting weapon, that was not a problem, but for military service, it can be clumsy and unhelpful.  After centuries of complaints from customers, Cognomen did produce a shorter-stock variant with much reluctance.

Razor Rifle (laser) – [Standard power pack] While this weapon may look like it is just a Cognomen Razor slug rifle adapted to fire laser blasts instead of bullets, there is more to it than that.  This weapon resembles its namesake, but only externally, and only for the convenience of troops outfitted with this version after being trained on the original.  The weapon is actually heavily modeled on the Mars-pattern Imperial Army Lasrifles of the early Great Crusade, after the Emperor decreed that they leave slug rifles for energy ones wherever possible.  Cognomen did not want to use the more exotic weapon payloads that were employed in some personal arms of Mars during the Age of Strife, since there would be no way to supply them in the remote Oldlight Proximate Circuit.  Instead, Cognomen based this rugged, accurate, and slightly heavy lasweapon after their Martian forebears’ household arms they used to equip their Taghmata during the Great Crusade.
This rifle is the most popular laser arm in the Sector by a factor of twelve.  Whole armies of Solstice, Coriolis, Drimmerzole, and Jodhclan are armed exclusively with this weapon and its long-las variant.  While all laser weapons are inherently as accurate as the shooter, this weapon’s length and practical sights make marksmanship fairly easy, even for poorly-trained PDF.

Shotguns
Hawkswood – [variable] This is technically a brand of shotgun, not a specific model.  While some of their competitors complain that Hawkswood got their exclusive military contract with the Sector military unfairly, no action has been taken on that complaint.
Hawkswood shotguns come in over fifty models, and four of them are standard for military issue.  The first is a simple pump-action weapon, with a tube magazine underneath the barrel.  This is identical to the one sold to many local Enforcer units on worlds where the Arbites are not the sole force of law.  It is useful for loading a variety of cartridges and powder loads, since a less-lethal cartridge may not work the action of a semi-automatic weapon by itself thanks to low powder load.  Two others are specialized tools for breaching hinges and doors.  The final is a breach-load, break-open target shooting gun that has been adapted to fire powerful flare cartridges.

Light Weapons
Razor Rifle – [.5x4inch] This rifle is a machine-gun variant of the same rifle technology that the more common infantry rifles of the same name use.  Firing a belt-fed fifty-caliber slug, this weapon is a crew-served or individual-operated light weapon in common use in the Cloudburst Sector militaries.  Many of these weapons wind up on the pintle mounts of military vehicles, or on the door mounts of light aircraft, but its primary use was and remains as an infantry team weapon.  Untold hundreds of millions of these Razors have been sold to armories across Cloudburst and beyond.

Heavy Weapons
Piercer – [20x127mm] An autocannon, usually used on vehicle-mounts.  The Piercer is not a template copy of the Martian standard patterns, but a local weapon designed to accommodate the same cartridge feeds used all over the Segmentum Ultima.  The Piercer is rugged, by design, and trades a bit of accuracy for reliability in wet environments.  While bulky, it is very easy to clean and maintain.  The many oceanic and swampy environments of the Cloudburst Sector demand such a weapon.

Melee Weapons
Harpes – The Harpes weapons were designed to be used by troops from the Drimmerzole Secundus Imperial Guard.  A scythe-like edged weapon, and a rarer Power variant, these weapons are difficult to learn to use and harder to master, but their unusual shape is something the users swear make them harder to predict.  The Officio Munitorum is not so sure about this, since Drimmerzole Secundus Guardsmen have a noticeable incidence rate of self-inflicted injury and dismemberment, but the weapons are powerful enough to remain on issue with Drimmerzole and Chlorit regiments.



Bishop Leena Asrolter, Presiding Clergywoman of Watch Fortress Dascomb
“May your steps be silent, and your soul clad in righteous contentment.  Blessed is the servant who comes to love their service, blessed is the slave who loves the lash, blessed is the Adept who strives to the example set by His Angel.”

An oddity among the Cloudburst clergy, Bishop Leena is in charge of overseeing the spiritual wellbeing of the crew of the Watch Fortress Dascomb, its ships, and any visiting followers of the Imperial Cult.  She has resided on the station for seventy-eight years, a length of time that would typically see her elevated in rank to Archbishop.  However, the incredible volume of secrets under which she labors, hearing the confessions and reports of the people concerned with the darkest knowledge of xenos as she does, means that she would not be well-suited to practicing in the clergy of a typical Imperial world, and she would feel she had abandoned her post if she accepted a promotion to a less strenuous rank on another world.
That is not likely, in any case.  The congestion of the See of Cloudburst and the Synod of the region means that most Ecclesiarchal promotions and reassignments are on hold regardless.  Bishop Leena is the only woman of her rank in the Cloudburst clerical hierarchy, although this is as much due to Cardinal Drake’s misogyny and disinterest in Space Marines affairs as it is the blocking of clerical appointments.
For her part, Leena Asrolter is a quiet woman off the pulpit, and uninterested in affairs of clerical discipline and appointment.  She has the enormous task of seeing to the people of the Watch Fortress, many of whom are routinely mind-wiped to prevent them from remembering the most horrifying secrets of the Deathwatch.  Thus, she finds herself occasionally taking confessions of people who do not remember confessing to the sins they have committed already, or delivering sermons to people who don’t know they’ve heard them before.  She has even had to perform marriage ceremonies between serfs that have been married for months, on occasion, and she finds herself disgusted after the fact at the sacrifices placed upon her flock.
Bishop Leena is a worshipper of the Primarch Sanguinius, and holds him up as the ultimate example for all Mankind.  In none other, she preaches, has the perfection the Emperor represents come to pass; he was soldier, scholar, statesman, psyker, and devoted son alike.  His death at the hands of a heretic is the greatest crime in the Imperium’s history, she speaks with zeal and bitter sadness.  The Sanguinala, the day on which Sanguinius’s selfless sacrifice is remembered, is the holiest day on Watch Fortress Dascomb, especially if one of the Blood Angel or Successor Chapter Marines can be badgered into attending.  Most find the practice repulsive, but swallow their pride long enough to at least be seen nearby when the menials and Adepts of the station give their toasts and sing their prayers.
Leena’s task also involves detection, as well as typical clerical responsibilities.  She is in charge of the difficult and spiritually-taxing job of discerning if artefacts brought from the field by Kill-marines or passing Rogue Traders have been sanctified to the Emperor.  This is not common, but on rare occasions, Kill-teams have preserved relics and items from the sites of alien invasions and brought them to Watch Fortress Dascomb.  When she finds a genuine relic, she and her aides must clean and restore it to the best of their ability, and then ensure it is passed along to Cardinal Lamarr, that he might distribute it to a fitting place in the Sector.



Curator Gein Smithlog, Keeper of the Hall of Arms
“By the hand of Man is the darkness of the xeno extinguished.  In the signing of this oath do I pledge myself eternally to the service of the Deathwatch, until I go to stand at the side of the Emperor Himself.”
Deep within Watch Fortress Dascomb, there is a great chamber called the Hall of Arms.  This is where the products of the Armor are kept; all of the weapons available to the Deathwatch Marines of the fortress can be found and requisitioned here for missions.  As Curator, Smithlog is tasked with the identification and preservation of the sacred arms of the Deathwatch, and ensuring that the relics that are specific to the history of individual Chapters are properly accounted for.  This is a delicate task, especially given the sheer number of Space Marine Chapters that have taken the Oath of Apocryphon over the millennia – upwards of nine hundred.
Some question why a mere human man is given the responsibility of ensuring the safe storage and distributuion of Astartes arms, given that most mortals are not even allowed to touch them.  The answer is that Gein Smithlog is an artificer beyond compare, perhaps the most skilled so outside the Techpriesthood in the Sector.  He is not unlike the Lastrum Core Clan of Terra, those most blessed with the chance to labor in the making of the armaments of the Emperor’s own Custodians.  Even those Techmarines that arrive on the station with the most dismissive and resentful attitude towards normal Mankind come away in astonishment at his savant skills with the Machine Spirits.
Gein himself owes everything to the Deathwatch.  One of the few people who successfully escaped the destruction of the world of Valhagoth in the Cloudburst Circuit, he was brought by ship to Watch Fortress Dascomb.  Athough the people of that world bore no suspicion regarding the world’s destruction, as there was realistically nothing that could be done to stop a Hrud Migration on that scale, they were not welcome anywhere else, as the superstitious Imperial people saw them as being cursed, or having invited the aliens.
Young Gein was left on the station as others slowly found new homes and resettled elsewhere.  Eventually, he was taken in by the Adepts of the station, who saw in him a strange potential for interaction with the machines, given how the cleaning and repair servitors in his dormitory’s ward never seemed to fail.
Their faith was borne out; as Gein was educated, he showed an understanding and recall of the fine points of weapons maintenance that shone unrivalled among the non-Techpriest population of the station.  Although the Techpriests of the Watch Fortress initially resented his elevation to the Curator role, their complaints have faded, as he had demonstrated staggering ability to clean, repair, identify, store, placate, and catalogue all manner of human weapons and wargear.
He resides in a sizeable apartment near the Hall itself.  Gein is aware of his talents, and takes pride in their use.  He treats his Deathwatch masters with courtesy, and makes his displeasure known in subtle ways if the Kill-teams do not bring ‘his’ gear back in the finest of working order.



Keeper Rengris of the Angels Vermillion
“Exterminatus is meant to be irrevocable.  There are no second chances.  Nor should there be; the Glasians are not inclined to pity nor mercy.”

Born on the planet Corinal to a family of Imperial Navy enlisted sailors, Rengris seemed destined for greatness even in his youth.  Excelling at every field of survival study or martial technique to which he applied himself, Rengris was a natural choice for the Angels Vermillion Initiate protocol.  Surviving the brutal, bloody Initiation, Rengris received his implants and became a Space Marine at the age of only seventeen.
His first several decades of time in the Angels Vermillion were unremarkable beyond his natural talent for microgravity combat.  As soon as he was elevated to Sergeant in the Eighth Company, however, his leadership talent and exceptional grasp of 3D maneuvering became clear, and he quickly transferred to the Thunderhawk wing of the Chapter Fleet.
There he stayed for many years more, quickly coming to rival in skill pilots of far longer tenure.  He worked his way into the ranks of the Shipmasters of the Chapter’s Fourth Company, and eventually became second in command of the Marine contingent of the Chapter’s Strike Cruiser fleet.
At this point, the Deathwatch called the Chapter to provide an expert in identifying and sinking alien ships to serve.  Rengris was the natural choice, and he flew to the nearest Watch Fortress to be initiated.  Shortly thereafter, the Deathwatch supreme command on Talasa Prime transferred him to Watch Fortress Dascomb, where he has served for the past seventeen years.
Rengris was quickly drawn to the Keepers, and entered into their ranks after a brief but thorough screening by High Keeper Elkop.  Putting his mastery of ships, microgravity tactics, and alien combat to use, Elkop assigned Rengris to command the ships of the Dascomb fleet when they receive assignments to engage in rapid transport of Killteams to war fronts against the Glasians and Orks that infest the Sector.

Although Keeper Rengris is not the longest-serving of the Keepers of Cloudburst’s Deathwatch contingent, he is the one trusted to range farthest afield.  Like many Keepers, he is trained in the art of secrecy and stealth.  However, he does not preside over dark, shadowy vaults of alien relics in the heart of a fortress; rather, he is responsible for the dispatch and use of Exterminatus weapons should the need arise.  The Dascomb vaults are hardly the ancient lock of horrors that some older Fortresses are, of course, but like all Deathwatch installations of the right size, it does possess an Exterminatus weapon to be used if a world falls beyond salvation.
Specifically, Watch Fortress Dascomb contains an antimatter lattice weapon, one capable of producing eighty-five kilograms of antiprotons.  If it is activated, and its two-user authentication system confirmed, it ejects the antimatter from its magnetic containment torus, causing instant annihilation of the surrounding continent.

Dascomb has never had to use it, but if the coming Glasian Migration costs the Imperium a world, it will be Rengris that kills it.  He does not enjoy that responsibility, but he understands it well, and will carry it out mercilessly.



Ruling Noble Houses and Clans

Ultragubernatorial House Quintus, Celeste
By the mandate of the Lords of Terra, the House Quintus is the ruling Overlordship of the Cloudburst Sector.  The Quintus family is a relatively recent ascendant to the loftiest status of the Sector, but it has been a major player in the Sector for thousands of years.  The family ultimately descends from an ancient house of Imperial military officers in the Naxos Sector, but that is so far back in its history that it is generally not invoked today.
The Quintus family maintained its status in the high court of the Sector through guile and political connections, draped wholesale over the skeleton of brutal backroom dealing and vertically-controlled industrial investments.  For thousands of years, the House Quintus partook of the dabblings of industry, buying up businesses here and there, doing trade with the Adeptus Mechanicus and Rogue Traders.  It was able to stay in the inner court of the previous Lords Sector by virtue of being far from scandal and close to success, and paying close attention to the advice of the Ecclesiarchy without seeming to give themselves over to its control.
A long history of backroom dealing, however, does not prepare a family for the worries of public rulership.  Now, there is no time for negotiating and quibbling, but vigorous action.  The family did not expect to ascend to the leadership of the Sector, nor did they expect the Colliard family, which ruled before, to collapse so utterly and completely.  As a result, the Quintus family had received extensive complaints from the civil services, Adepts, and menial public of the Sector for their perceived lack of action in the face of the Glasians, the Orkish migrations, and the rising threat of the FCC.

However, the Quintus family has not failed in their task yet.  Lord Sector Cloudburst Quintus is desperately extending contact to the leaders of as many other institutions of the Sector as he can, and has been doing so since his father died, eight years after being made Lord Sector.  Rhemortho Quintus is in his eightieth year of Overlordship, and has still not managed to fully consolidate his rule.  However, the Sector has managed to withstand those challenges that have arisen during his tenure, and so time may yet tell if the Quintus family rises to greatness, or collapses into the dust.

Noble Clan Ahad, Spindle
The wealthiest Noble Clan in the Cloudburst Sector.  Although its power and wealth dim next to the staggering power of the Drumnos Merchant Guilds and Naxos Ruling Lords, the Clan Ahad leadership dwarfs all other players in Cloudburst politics through sheer wealth.  Even the Overlord family, House Quintus, can’t muster as much direct wealth as the Ahan Clan.
Clan Ahad rose to prominence over the other Clans of Thimble by balancing well the demands of the new Imperial government and the needs of the people of the Spindle system.  They played politics, used hoarded resources, and quietly snuffed their rivals; whatever it took to be both beloved and respected by the parties of influence in the annexation of Levitna into the Imperium.
When Levitna became Thimble, Clan Ahad maneuvered their way into leadership of the system, and eventually Subsector.  The Clan has ruled unopposed since then, as far as the public knows.
In practice, there have been quiet challenges to Clan Ahad from the other wealthy houses of the Sector, usually from Clan Vorbach or House Carvan.  These bodies do not appreciate that Clan Ahad behaves at times as though it were the only power in the system.  To the surprise of the Clan Ahad leadership, these challenges often resolve in their rivals’ favor, especially when brought before the Adeptus Arbites.  The Arbites have no reason to favor Clan Ahad over its rivals, and the Clan periodically forgets that.

The Clan is noteworthy for not being a true Clan in the Thimblan sense of the word any more.  The Clan was originally a network of interrelated Houses made of up ruling families, but that ended long ago.  Now, all of the Houses and families have merged into the Clan, and thus Clan Ahad is more like an enormous House than a real Clan.

The Clan does maintain significant economic investments, but they are broader than those of the smaller Clans and Houses of Thimble.  Many of Clan Ahad’s most successful investments stem from places other than Thimble itself, such as Clan Ahad-branded refueling depots and entertainment space stations in orbit over the planet, instead of competing for the rusted world’s few unclaimed resources.  Of course, the Clan’s rulership over the Subsector puts it in a prime position to exploit its position of supremacy for profit.  So long as Thimble grows in wealth year after year, the Adeptus Administratum doesn’t care, but if Clan Ahad’s avarice begins to impact tithe payments – or if Harek abn Alnasr, the Clan’s leader, continues his illegal cloning experiments – that may come to an end quickly.

Noble Clan Vorbach, Thimble
The Clan Vorbach is a Clan on paper, but in practice, only three Houses remain within it.  These are the Houses Zhong, O’Neill, and Colver.  House Colver is a tiny political House with only one family, and holds leadership so that no other one of the two Houses in the Clan may dominate it unfairly.
House O’Neill and House Zhong are mercantile titans.  So great is their wealth and influence, only the ruling Clan, Ahad, can wield more power in the Spindle Subector.  Clan Vorbach can put over two million troops on the ground in a war on Thimble with only a month to prepare, and that is in addition to the world’s nominal PDF, the Argent Shields.  To keep the Houses from exerting too much control over he planetary defense, the Officio Munitorum has maintained a sterm watch over them, and often exercises its manpower tithe authority to pluck whole gangs in the Clan’s employ off to serve as Argent Swords on other worlds, just to keep them in check.
The power of the ruling Clans and Houses of Thimble is great enough that the lesser Mercantile and Ganger Houses can’t challenge them openly, in law or battle.  They must content themselves with nibbling around the leavings of the greater establishments for wealth and money.  Clan Vorbach, especially, lives grandly, with massive spired mansions at the peaks of Thimble’s distinctive silvered hives, which does not endear them to the laboring classes.


The Coriolis Line
As befits the great defense fortress of the Cloudburst Sector, Coriolis is a maze of fortifications.  The enormous cities themselves, of course, bristle with defenses.  Many larger buildings are crowned with anti-aircraft weapons, and the enormous train stations that stud the long lines between fortress-cities are themselves military bases, with artillery and power generators that render them independent of the protections provided by the bigger population centers.
This is more than mere show defense.  The industry of Cloudburst is highly dependent on the protections Coriolis extends to local shipping, and if ever Coriolis itself were to come under siege by the forces of the Emperor’s enemies, its disruption would cripple whole Subsectors.  Imperial Guardsmen train at these stations, doing drills and marching alongside roads that teem with farmers and miners delivering wares to the stations to be sent to the factory or market.  More and more of Coriolis’s agricultural land is hitting its production capacity as the hungry defenders of the Sector multiply in anticipation of the long wars against the coming Glasians.
The Coriolis Line is the term applied to the strands of fortified train lines and the stations that dot them.  Supreme Marshal Roscoe has placed great emphasis on their fortification, and has spent considerable sums of money on the Adeptus Mechanicus’s construction of new facilities along them.  Some of his commanders – quietly – murmur that perhaps it is not the wisest expenditure of those funds, but Roscoe believes that the world will come under direct attack by the Glasians once more, and not for the first time.

The Fortress-Cities
Upon the ancient colonies of the Navigators, great palaces arose.  Built by ancient human science, and staffed by legions of indentured Terran workers who had fled the rot of the homeworld, the Navigators traveled to Coriolis – previously a pitiful agricultural outpost of no great value.
When the Navigators arrived, they did so in ships flush with the wealth of their ancient families on Terra.  The Navigators used their resources and the bulk of their ships to create dozens of huge fortresses on the planet’s surface, and the power plants of their vessels to generate the electricity each needed.  The cities used the materials brought with them from the Sol system to perform what terraforming was needed on the tundras and forests of Coriolis to make them agriculture-capable.  Eventually, the great fortresses, with their palaces at their centers, were done, and the Navigators lived in relative comfort of exile.
At the heights of the Age of Strife, however, when all of mankind was plunged into Old Night, Coriolis was not spared.  The world’s psychic leaders were much better able than most to weather the storm, thanks to their Warp Eyes uniquely preparing them for the coming of Chaos, but the planet was still ravaged by Warp phenomena, starvation, infrastructure failure, and uprisings against the Navigator covens.
When the Emperor came to the planet to recruit Houses True, Gheniso, Adell, and Rosamund to the new Navis Nobilite, they couldn’t leave the world fast enough.  The Emperor, by whatever secret conveyances he had employed, contrived to bring the people of the world with him.  Exactly what happened to those people is not unambiguously recorded, although ancient Inquisitorial records indicate that people wearing the Household emblem of House Rosamund joined the crew of Proxima Station around this time.

Today, the fortresses have gone from cocoons of leisure around which military fortifications have been erected to genuine bastions of Imperial defense.  The oldest fortresses, the ones made of the priceless Dark Age technology of the ancient Terrans, are wonders of fortification.  A laser weapon that could burn through fifteen meters of reinforced plasticrete could not pierce the inches-thick walls of the metal bunkers that ring the central towers of the fortresses.  Some of the fortresses have hundreds of these bunkers, and some of them are large enough to house an entire Imperial Knight.  Most are pillboxes, with great heavy stubber or multilaser emplacements to scythe down attackers.
Above them loom the great walls.  Many of the fortress-cities have extensive Imperial sprawl outside them, or large farming facilities, but the most persistently-militant fortress-cities do not, and all of them have a great wall somewhere.  In some cities, those walls loom over all beyond, with unobstructed lines of fire that stretch out to the very horizon.  In most, however, they are flanked on both sides by buildings, some taller than the walls themselves.  These walls may no longer be immediately-obvious physical obstructions to visibility, but they do retain their impassability except through the great gates.  In many cities, the gates in the walls stay open by default, to allow the endless traffic of Imperial commerce to come and go, but they can still close, and do so to test their mechanisms, to the annoyance of the merchant classes who must wait to sell their goods.

Each fortress has its own dedicated internal power plant, usually built into the central keep.  Each keep has its power plant completely disconnected from the nearby cities by default, although they can be connected in emergencies by the Adeptus Mechanicus priests that maintain them.
A common feature of the planet’s fortresses is the Defense Laser.  Like many Hive and Forge worlds, the planet is protected by a network of Defense Laser structures, with several dozen located on the grounds of the Fortresses themselves.  However, these massive guns do not have their own Void Shield protections, to prevent retaliatory fire from their targets in space.  This is an increasing point of contention between the Marshal’s office and the Adeptus Mechanicus, who have high enough resource demands on their time that the installation of new shields is not likely soon.