worlds after Delving

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, barren rock flats, salt plains, limited plant life

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: Four continents, no national 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 began directing the populace to retreat underground into vast chambers the ancient humans had prepared for their project.  The citizens of Lordarine took shelter in these chambers during the worst of the storms above.

Given the planet’s concentration of archaeotech and unique circumstances, it was inevitable that the Mechanicus would want somebody of ambition and experience taking command.  Thus, Cognomen tasked Magos Gabris with direct supervision of the planet’s populace, to maek sure they were both uncorrupted by the Warp and not damaging the ancient machines.

Gabris proved skillful enough.  The laboratories in the ancient complexes were damaged, some beyond repair, so he focused his energy instead on clearing out those chambers and shafts that were operable, and shielded from Warp and weather disturbances.

It was at this time that a problem began.  Gabris was not immune to the lure of ancient secrets.  Among the rubble of a long-abandoned laboratory, Gabris uncovered an archaeotechnological artifact, one he had never heard of before.  He saw within its cold circuits and slender probes a means of severing and rejoining the nerves in the human spinal column, by such a means that the body’s own healing processes could restore any damage done.

This prize had eluded human medical science for thousands of years.  Even the Imperium’s most advanced neural reconstruction technology involved clunky augmentations, brute-force gene therapies, and luck.  This, here, was a chance to reclaim the lost treasures of human science.  Gabris began studying it immediately.

He learned that the process was intrinisically delicate, and had to be completed in a certain timeframe, or the nerve restimulation could fail.  Gabris managed to get several of the machines online and operational, but the finer points of their manipulation and upgrade features eluded him.  Despite years of increasingly obsessive work, Gabris never managed to decipher their complex fuctions.

However, the Warp storms did not relent, and the lightning storms only grew worse as mining efforts depleted much of the world’s remaining resources.  Gabris stopped providing routine updates to Cognomen into his research as his obsession turned to a dark fixation.  As the storms grew worse and worse, the people of Lordarine demanded protection from the elements.  Despite his reluctance to allow the peasantry to get involved in his precious research, Gabris eventually gave in.  Gabris tested the neuro-disconnection equipment on two humans from the mining population, and despite having no brain for several minutes, both of them emerged unharmed.

When the next Warp Storm arrived, Gabris disconnected the neural systems of hundreds of miners, and all of them emerged from the incident unharmed.  Delighted with his success, Gabris began disconnecting the brains of the miners with each Warp Storm, and despite the incredible danger of Lordarine’s circumstances, things seemed to be finally becoming safer.

However, Gabris is unaware of two things.  First, though this is not his fault directly, the technology he is experimenting with has long been declared Heretek by Mars.  They have not stopped his experiments only because they do not know of it.  Second, his faith and zeal have not kept him as resistant to the effects of the Warp as he imagines.  While his subjects have not been corrupted, he has been.  Even as the storms grow fiercer and fiercer, Gabris’ grasp on sanity erodes.  He has already begun using other surgical machines, including some of stomach-churning invasiveness, on miners who protest his actions.  Miner families have seen shambling, misshapen monstrosities wearing the clothes of their missing relatives and friends out of the corners of their eyes in the depths of the mines: creations of Magos Gabris.

Gabris is still a Magos, despite his degeneration.  For now, he has the loyalty of the several hundred Skitarii and Techpriests who call Lordarine home.  Most are unaware of his excesses and his tyrannical treatment of the miners.  None are aware of the technical illegality of using the brain-detachment machines in the first place, nor of his Warp-madness.  He has not been tainted by Chaos, but the raw stuff of the Warp itself, which is harder to detect.

However, a few whispered pleas for help have reached the ears of freighter crews that came to Lordarine to collect materials for Terra’s Tithe, and traveled from there to the Arbites.  A tiny, covert force of Arbites and a Throne Agent leading them are even now travelling to Limemerdine, to find out what is happening, in the Emperor’s name.


System: Dranok

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Thimble Subsector

System Overlord: Lord Agrarian Alamantos Williamson

Planets: six, one habitable

Agri-World: Combine

Satelites: Two, uninhabitable moons

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 73%, Oxygen 25.5%, Argon .9%, Water .56%, Carbon dioxide .04%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Administratum

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Combine has planet-spanning temperate climate except at the poles

Geography: .92 times the size of Terra, with four large islands and one large ocean, notably strong magnetosphere

Gravity: .96 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Food, Soil, Water, Salt, Copper
Principle Imports: Agricultural Machines, Harvesting Servitors, Entertainments

Countries and Continents: Four continents, no national divisions

Military: Combine Condottieri (low quality PDF), Combine Swords (medium quality Guard)

Contact with Other Worlds: Infrequent

Tithe Grade: Exactis Tertia

Population: 1,473,900,000 (human), 89,023,000 (servitors)

Description:
Combine is a gift from the Emperor.  That is the only explanation that the resident farm-accountants and agricultural Tithe calculators can come up with for its astonishing bounty.  By square foot, Combine is over twice as productive as any other Agri-world for over four hundred light years in every direction, which includes most of Drumnos and Naxos.  Its soil seems to be blessed by the Emperor’s own will, because it never stops yielding abundant, healthy, perfectly edible fruit, legumes, vegetables, grains, nuts, and sugars.  Herds of grox and bovids grow fat on endless fields of high green grass.
The agricultural boons of Combine are colossal.  The world feeds over a dozen planets that cannot feed themselves unaided, or at least augments their food imports.  Thimble, Cognomen, Lordarine, Coriolis, Delving, Underbar, Limmerdine, and the Celestial Guard barracks of ten primitive worlds all import food from Combine.  The world itself does not import one grain of food, as its rich soil and diverse natural ecology allow for the creation of nearly any natural food, including those imported from ancient Terran Diaspora gene-vaults.  The world’s mountains support the growth of nearly all vine-type fruit plants the Imperium uses today.  Its deep, tropical agri-zones produce megatons of chocolate.  Its misty forests grow creeping berry bushes and vines that weave together in organic vineyards the size of cities.

Combine was discovered during the closing years of the Second Gold Rush, by an Administratum mapping team working under Rogue Trader Captain Sulla Grenfoe.  Grenfoe was impoverished, broken by years of failed investments.  He agreed to give up his claim to the world – its agricultural value was not yet clear – in exchange for the Administratum forgoing all of his debts to them.  They agreed, and though the Grenfoe line has long since died off, the Administratum has never forgotten the steal they got.

The world’s main settlement is a large city on the landbridge that connects the two smallest continents.  The city, named Bounty City, is a modern Imperial metropolis, with the same guildhalls, factories, apartments and homes, and Arbites courthouses that any other Imperial city of means would have.  The vast majority of the planet’s resources and arable land are either preserved for ecological reasons, or used in the sprawling farms that gave the world its name.

Unsurprisingly, a world with such great wealth and productivity plays host to several of the great Merchant Houses of the Cloudburst Sector.  The Herrera and Lunther houses maintain enormous Guildhalls here, and do good trade in shipping goods between Imperial worlds, but there is no question as to which of the Houses has the largest footprint.  The House Carvan holdings on Combine are the size of a township unto themselves.  Here, over one hunrdred thousand Carvan employees work.  They pack food, they arrange contracts with representatives of faraway worlds, they inspect produce, they mediate disputes between neighboring farms, they test new food products, they complete microbial examininations of processed foods, and they irradiate foods for the long, long journey to hungry bellies among the stars.  Although the great House Carvan is not headquartered on Combine, it may as well be, given how rematively small its holdings on Celeste are.  There, its holdings amount to a few sprawling mansions and warehouses; hardly the small city it has on Combine.

The Guild and Merchant House presences on Combine are not disproportionate to its value.  The world’s population is fairly small, and much of its population engages in work outside the city of Bounty.  The farming and fishing logistics of the world require oversight from the Mechanicus, as well, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the Houses or Guilds.

Combine has a soil of such hyperfertility that its native plants can easily grow out of control.  The lack of native herbivores, thanks to over-aggressive early efforts by the Imperium, means that plants that go unattended can spread so quickly that mass soil depletion and terrain overrun can occur in weeks.  The native herbivores are now making a limited comeback under careful Mechanicus supervision, but now, there are regions of Combine that are so overgrown that the Imperial Navy has taken to using zome of the growth zones for napalm boming run practice.

The farms themselves are a mixture of being localy-owned and Carvan-owned.  The harvests usually come about so quickly that the best option for transporting the produce is massive trains.  Elevated train lines crisscross the four continents.  The tracks require elevation, since putting them flush with the ground would engender significant blockage from plants.  Not all of its soil goes to growing food or local plants, of course.  Much of the world grows textiles and dyes for Thimble, and some grows feed for livestock.  Others grow medicinal plants, although other worlds in the sector focus on that more; Drimmerzole Secundus and Clegran Tertius chief among them.

Exactly why the soil on Combine is so productive, the Imperium does not know.  The Mechanicus and House Carvan have both examined the soil’s chemical composition, and its natural composition is not terribly different from that of Cassie’s World or Grendel.  However, the soil has proven to be ineffective on other worlds.  The soil does contain a surprising number of miniscule bundles of protein, no more than a few thousand molecules wide, that the Imperium has never before encountered.  Analysis has so far revealed no clue as to what they are.

One idea, posited by the Mechanicus, is that the world was once the breadbasket of an unknown alliance of humans and aliens.  The planet does feature one pre-Imperium artifact: a single, massive building.  The building, made of steel and a rust-proofed alloy of tungsten and a high-isotope metal of unknown elements, sits on a tiny island off the coast of the second-largest continent.  It is derelict, and though it contains vast machines of unknown function and origin, it is drawing no power.  The tower was once even larger, prior to a cataclysmic storm that sheared the top half off.  Before this, it may have been over half a mile tall.  It contains no paper records or other non-electronic data, and because its power system is defunct, the actual function of the tower is a mystery.  What is clear is that it had far stronger internal defenses than external, and that its builders were of variable height, from under two meters to at least four, and had human-like hands and digits.

The Combine Condottieri have no resemblance to their namesake.  They are a PDF force that is held as a joke by much of the Cloudburst military.  The Condottieri live down to the reputation of PDF among professional soldiers.  They aren’t lazy, exactly, but their drill and kit are lacking, they do not train as often as they should, and while there is a core of competent officers, flag command is awarded by seniority and connections, not merit.  The Combine Swords are more competent on the whole, and get the best of the Thimble and Cognomen-built arms and armor.  They have only fielded on rare occasions, generally to protect other Agri-worlds from the Glasians or pirates.  The Combine Swords use locally-produced equipment most of the time, except for uniforms, which they get in trade with Thimble.

Naturally, a world that feeds more people than any other world in three Sectors does is a prize that deserves defenses of immense power.  Orbital and surface-to-space guns more than compensate its lacking PDF, including a Xerxes III Naval anchorage and three Defense Lasers, as well as six cruise missile silos disguised as vox relay transformers.  Because of its three kilometer Naval anchorage, the station can host vessels of up to light cruiser weight, and house tens of thousands of passengers.  When Carvan ships come to collect megatons of food, or tithe barges come to take Terra’s Due, the system positively bristles with defenses.  After all, pirates have to eat, too, and more than one tithe shipment has been menaced by raiders in the past in the Dranok system.


System: ABS00273

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: Eight, one habitable

Feral World: ABS00273

Satelites: Two uninhabitable moons

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water .99%, Carbon gasses .01%

Religion: Unknown

Government Type: Primitive

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum

Climate: Widely varying by landmass, with great diversity of weather and seasons

Geography: 1.04 times the size of Terra, large inland seas and polar ice caps, with some volcanism

Gravity: 1.16 Terra gravity

Economy: None

Principle Exports: None
Principle Imports: None

Countries and Continents: Thousands of tribes spread out over fourteen continents

Military: None

Contact with Other Worlds: None

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: 943,900

Description:
ABS000273 is the most recently discovered human world within the bounds of the Cloudburst Sector.  Its discovery was an accident.  A tithe ship carrying its wares to the nearest Sector Fortress for distribution dropped out of the Warp to fix some onboard equipment when the planet happened to be passing between the ship and the nearest star.  The ship’s helmsman dutifully recorded the anomaly for further investigation, and two years later, an Explorator vessel catalogued the planet for exploration.  However, the year was M41.499, and the Cloudburst Sector had far larger concerns.

It was only in the aftermath of the Third Glasian Migration that the Imperium had the resources and time to observe the planet.  The first thing they noticed was that the native human population had long since collapsed.  Most of the archaeotech of the world ha eroded away thousands of years before, and the native population had scattered to the winds.  However, the Imperium has not yet begun attempting to civilize the planet, nor has it introduced the Imperial Cult.  The Imperial observers have noticed that the humans of the planet below seem to be connected in some way.  When individuals in one family group suffer injury, others in the group that could not possibly see the incident occur begin reacting in pain, and immediately dispatch aid to the injured individual.  How this could be, the Imperium does not know, but no colony ventures shall occur until the Imperium has established how this can be.  A small team of Administratum historians and observers are presently orbiting the planet, making observations in anticipation of a later report.

However, the Administratum is unaware of one development on the planet.  A team of Mechanicus Explorators, there to check up on the system and scan the rest of its planets for usable resources, detected an archaeotech cache on the planet of which the Administratum has not been informed.  In M41,948, these Explorators found an underground chamber at the planet’s volcanically-active south pole.  Over the chamber, there is an energy shield, one of unequalled power, more than enough to block Nova Cannon fire.  A Dark Age wonder of power generation fuels the shield, drawing power from local volcanism, solar energy, and wind, and whomever built it was wise enough to hide the generators under the shield.  How the Administratum observers in orbit have not yet seen the huge shield, the Explorators have no idea.
The Mechanicus of Cognomen plan to covertly research and possibly slip under the shield to find the chamber below.  Preliminary scans indicate that the chamber contains a large metal object, asymmetric and flat.  The Mechanicus’ best guess is that it is a shipwreck of some kind, but almost seventeen thousand years old.


System: GHE656

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Undefined Region

System Overlord: None

Planets: 6 confirmed

Unknown World: Glamour
Description:
The galaxy is old, ugly, and full of tombs.  Imperial leaders and Rogue Traders discover strange and ancient wonders amidst dead worlds and lost civilizations every month.  One thing that the Imperium has rarely encountered, however, is a world that makes as little sense as Glamour.
Magos Explorator Scott Chamberlain discovered this world in M41.998, at the very spinward edge of the Cloudburst Sector and the Oldlight Exo-zone.  The region has served little purpose to the Imperium.  Borders on maps mean little here.  No Glasian or Ork vessels have ever entered the system, and indeed the Imperium has entered it only twice.  When Chamberlain’s fleet charted the planet, they observed a world of massive material wealth, and earmarked it for colonization or mining as soon as deeper surveys could follow up on his.  However, when Rogue Trader Marcus Rowsdower entered the system eight months later, he recorded the surface appearance of the planet as being wholly different from what Chamberlain had recorded.  When he returned to Cognomen to share his findings, he and Chamberlain nearly came to blows before resolving to settle the dispute with the long-range telescopic feeds of Watch Point Octa.  When they compared their sensor feeds to the ones from that old sensor array, both men came away shocked.  The data maps of Octa’s telescopes did not only fail to match either man’s recordings, but the Octa recordings of the system were all different.
Each time the sensors of Mankind view the system, the planet labelled Glamour has a different appearance.  Size, color, surface composition, habitability, ice cap presence, atmospheric density, each is different.  Chamberlain and Rowsdower are now both hiring for an expedition to the world, ostensibly in alliance, but either man could turn on the other if there were enough on the line.


Deep Wells Void Platform: Clog
Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector

Not all Cloudburst military stations are as prestigious as Thunderhead or important as the Gargantuan.  The station now known as Clog used to be known as Cloudburst Void Point Bulwark, a normal defensive Naval logistics station.  Here, ships could recharge their batteries if needed, collect supplies, or drop off equipment for the station’s own crew.  It had some defenses, but not as much as a Xerxes; it had some counter-boarding troops, but only enough to see off boarders.
Life changed quickly for the workers on the station in M41.874.  The station came under abrupt attack from a pirate frigate named Wealthy Lads, under the command of a gang of freebooting Navy defectors.  Bulwark managed to give as good as it got, and destroyed the ship’s main guns, but the pirates elected to ram and destroy Bulwark instead of allowing themselves to be captured.  The frigate slammed into the station, and crumpled one half of the station around itself like paper around a rock.

Eighty percent of the Navy and all of the pirates fighting in the battle died instantly.  The last few Navy survivors included no Astropaths.  By the time Navy supply ships arrived for routine deposits of fresh food from Combine, Bulwark had only four percent of its personnel left alive.

There was no real way to salvage the station without immense loss of wealth for the Navy.  According to the Navy’s logistical calculations, the cost of disassembling the damaged portions of the station and the pirate ship, reassembling the station with better components, and re-staffing it, it would have been more expensive than just building a new one.  However, leaving it there to be looted by more pirates was hardly a better option.

Enter the Rogue Traders.  While the Navy was too strapped for resources to repair Bulwark, the Rogue Traders of the Circuit and Exo-zone suffered no such restriction.  A collective of Rogue Traders from the houses Vermouthe, Arpel, Marcus, and Victoire purchased the station from the Navy, and begn refurbishing it for their own use.
For its part, the Navy is less than thrilled about the whole arrangement, but the money from the sale of the station will help prepare the Sector for the coming of the Migrations, and so long as the Rogue Traders are hardening the region’s defenses and generally getting in each other’s way, they’re not causing problems for the Imperium.  The four Houses have since settled into a fairly stable truce on the station, and are looking to their pocketbooks.

Aboard the station now, the internal systems are finally beginning to return to normal.  As small groups of Trader-patronized tech-Adepts and Priests labor on the damaged systems, individual corridors gain back their gravity, their atmosphere, and their function.  The great reactor at the heart of the station was running at only four percent capacity after the collision of the Wealthy Lads, but now, a team of Victoire Techpriests have brought it up to eighty seven, and that number improves every year.

As the station’s habitability zone increases, so does its economic capability.  So far, several of the enormous cold storage bays for Naval rations have been cleared of debris and stripped of their refrigeration equipment.  The empty bays now house great markets, where members of the four houses and their allies can come to trade more or less anything.  Books, ammo, alien trinkets, icons of the Throne, cash, gemstones, exploratory gear, bombs, food, slaves, and ship parts flow freely through markets.  Whenever the restoration teams manage to restore a bay, the place floods with marketeers and prospectors, who stake claims in the great chamber and begin constructing as soon as they can.  The first bay brought back online resembles a termite mound, thanks to the unregulated building carried out by the marketeers.  When floor space ran out, merchants built up.  Stalls no more than fifteen feet wide now tower over six hundred feet up; disassembled storage racks now serve as superstructures for great vertical shops.  Finer venues use grav-lifts and elevators to carry customers from one floor to the next in the stalls, while cheaper ones use stairs or even ladders.  Each floor of these tiny stalls might specialize in a good or service, or perhaps they may all sell variants on the same thing.

If it can be bought or sold in the Imperium, it exists on Clog.  The consortium of Rogue Traders that purchased it began expanding it before they had even completed a third of its repairs.  Pre-fabricated modules sprout from the sides like fungus on a tree trunk.  Some are chapels, for those who find the utilitarian chapel of the station too demure for their liking, and enjoy some finery in their piety.  Some are storage bays for the markets, while others are defenses for the station, with their own internal power supply.  Those decks that served a martial purpose for the Navy and no purpose for the Rogue Traders may become permanent residences for the crews they leave behind to run their stores.
Those parts of the station that were completely destroyed by the impact of the pirate ship are gradually returning, thanks to the efforts of Techpriests and private contractors paid by the Traders.  When those decks are restored, Trader staff are often forced to step in to prevent land grabs of the sort that claim the cargo bays.  The decks that were destroyed often include crucial defenses or cogitators that the station needs to operate.  As such, some of the Rogie Trader staff left on the station find themselves in the unfamiliar position of having to run the largely dolorious and mundane processes needed to keep a station afloat, far from the intrigue and treasure of exploring at a Trader’s side.

In other decks that served the Navy, commerce of other sorts has taken over.  Inside abandoned bunkrooms and training rooms, gambling halls and taverns have popped up.  Some of the training rooms have been left intact to serve as fighting arenas, where travelers can beat the hell out of each other for the adulation of cheering spectators.  For other pursuits, the station has several brothels and casinos.  As wings of the logistics hub come back online, the range of services offered to visitors widens.  The Inquisition is understandably displeased by this, but so far, the Traders have managed to keep any truly dangerous temptations from the people of Clog.

The problem that the Inquisition would most like resolved is the remains of the Wealthy Lads.  The vessel lodged itself in the heart of the station.  The ship itself fared the worse; every vacuum-tight compartment ruptured.  Even one hundred years after the impact, there are vacuum-cracked bodies floating through the empty ship.  A Navy shipbreaker team would have had the ship disassembled decades ago, but Rogue Traders have fewer assets, and making money is a higher priority than being safe.  So far, Rogue Trader scrap scavengers have managed to haul several thousand tons of salvage material out of the wreck, and have either salvaged it for their masters’ ships or sold it.  The Inquisition’s concern is that at some point, the Rogue Traders, in their haste to gain wealth, will damage or loot cogitators or logs that could show where the ship came from.  All the Inquisition and Arbites have managed to learn about the ship is that it was stolen from a Drumnos Navy depot by disgruntled Imperial ex-military.  As yet, the Imperium does not know if there are more pirates in this gang, or how they managed to steal the ship.

The station itself is developing its own, unique culture.  Because the station is technically no longer part of the Imperial government, the Arbites presence amounts to one Judge, who never leaves the command office of the station.  Law enforcement for the station comes from the dozens of groups of Rogue Trader ship armsmen who travel about the station looking for anything that might disrupt the flow of money.  Wealthier travelers and shoppers are afforded more fair treatment, while beggars and scavengers receive the cold treatment at best.  The larger merchant groups are gradually shifting away from their roots in the service of Rogue Traders.  Some have begun offering purchases of items they have traded for outside of the purview of their ostensible employers.  There is even talk of collectivizing, though this has gone nowhere so far.  The joygirls and joyboys of several brothels have formed a guild, to the annoyance of the owners.

Beyond such shoppings and carnal diversions, there are the other functions of society that pop up anywhere there is money and there are people.  Some of the restored corridors and chambers have become theaters, chapels, luxury apartments and hotel rooms, auction houses, or even crafting areas.  Some of the larger restored chambers belong exclusively to one of the Rogue Traders, and are used for forging goods from the scrap pulled from the remains of the pirate ship.  Eventually, the remains of the pirate vessel will be gone, of course.  When that happens, the outcome of the event on the survival and future of the station is unclear.

The station’s defenses are not yet back to full power.  The void shields of the station are at eighty percent capacity, since several of the damaged or destroyed wings of the station contained void shield relays or prejectors.  Clog’s guns consist of several macrocannon batteries and several turbolasers, but only half are online.  The four Rogue Traders have welded modular weapon turrets onto the outside of the station, with their own power supplies, but this is inefficient, since they require recharging so far from any star that could fuel solar panels.  The Rogue Traders make use of shuttles outfitted with Cognomen capacitors to recharge the guns after testing or use.

No enemies of the Imperium have attacked Clog since its sale.  Now that it no longer carries food for the Navy, its main prize for raiders is gone, and since Rogue Trader crews and customers traditionally carry guns at all times, boarding the station now would be a daunting prospect.  However, Gorkypark is not so terribly far away, and the Imperium knows of several Orkholds in or near the Cloudburst Circuit.  The possibility of Ork raiders assaulting the station sometimes keeps Clog’s armsmasters up at night.

Given its lack of hydroponics, the station is wholly dependent on shipping for its food.  Restoring the station’s protein recyclers and water purifiers was priority one for the Traders, and priority two was establishing supply imports from nearby worlds.  Now, freighters from Foraldshold and Forender regularly drop off provisions for the permanent residents, while ships from Cassie’s World and Combine bring in luxuries.  Clog also benefits in this regard from the fact that its co-owners are Rogue Traders, and there are no extents to which Rogue Traders will not go to find their favorite treats.


Unclassified Deep Void Platform: Grand Anchor Scrapyard
Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Maskos Subsector

Building a starship from raw materials alone requires years of work, even in the Imperium of Man.  There are ores to smelt, circuits to fabricate, Warp drive cores to consecrate, and cogitators to program, plus all the actual assembly.  Sometimes, Captains don’t have time to wait for components to be built to their specifications, or the money to buy new ones.
When that is the case, they come to Grand Anchor.  From a distance, the entire affair looks like a miniature solar system.  At its heart, travelers can see a gigantic metal frame.  Here and there, orbiting the frame, travelers see spherical void platforms, studded with docking clamps and tubes, airlocks and antennae.
Farther out, forming an impromptu asteroid belt, there hangs over one hundred satellites, some cargo-carrying, others loaded with weapons.  Beyond that, over eight hundred kilometers from the frame, patrol boats guard derelict starships, over a dozen shipwrecks altogether.  Hundreds of kilometers beyond that, faint couds of paint chips and small debris drift and waft, a hazard only for their number.

If paying Mechanus rates or Navy surcharges is not to the liking of a Rogue Trader, Free Captain, or career Navy Captain, Grand Anchor has their backs.  The combination shipyard, breaking yard, scrap heap, and metallurgic recycling plant services any ship, any flotilla, any convoy that comes their way, for a price.

Founded over two thousand years ago in the final days of M39, the Grand Anchor began life as a production facility for the cluster of ceramite- and adamatium-rich asteroids that the Mechanicus had found drifting through the void of space on the edges of the Maskos Subsector.  The asteroids yielded kilotons of the precious ores, and when the work was done, the cluster was abandoned.  Within weeks, a gang of Imperial privateers looking for work had taken up residence in the network of hollow rocks.  Contracts from the early Cloudburst government were nonexistent, so the privateers turned to simple piracy against non-Imperial primitive worlds to sustain themselves.  On one such raid, the privateers stumbled across the partially-intact wreck of an Imperial Endeavour light cruiser, and managed to get its Warp drive operational.  They hauled the wreck back to their base asteroid and scrapped it to sustain their ships, but were left with megatons of leftover parts.  They sold them to a passing Rogue Trader, and made more money with that one sale than they had in fourteen years of scavenging and raiding.

A business was born.  Slowly but surely, the gang expanded, as shipbuilders, cartographers, retired Navy personnel, broke Free Captains, and non-Mechanicus shipwrights flocked to the scrap business.  Scavengers and privateers with ships to sell started taking their vessels to the newly-named Grand Anchor, and what began as a hideout for desperate privateers became the largest ship sales yard in Cloudburst outside the Mechanicus.  By the end of M41, Grand Anchor has grown from a pocket of asteroids to a complex of heavily-guarded ship components and yards over twenty six hundred kilometers across.

The Cube
The core of the yard is a massive metal frame made of building materials, mostly I-beams and cast metal, in the shape of a rough cube.  Within the cube, held in place by thousands of tiny void shield relays that project a one-way screen between the segments of the frame, are millions of pieces of metal.  They range from intact ship components to random alloy ingots, from obsolete cogitator parts to decommissioned land mines; anything too small or delicate to be left to drift in the outer shell.  When a customer orders a part, the Grand Anchor staff dispatch a tiny servitor drone to collect the part, which is usually done with minutes.  The items inside the cube aren’t free-drifting from the zero-gravity void, but are instead clamped in place on a wireframe of tiny iron bars, which spread out from the massive frame like a fractal.  So far, the tiny spindles of containment bars only fill one tenth of the available space, but the Grand Anchor chiefs are nothing if not ambitious.  More bars go in daily, ready to be filled with every metallic component mankind has ever built.  The command structure of the entire Grand Anchor juts from one corner of the cube, in a space platform made of dozens of hollow asteroids linked together with impermeable tubes of plasteel.  These are the original asteroids from which the scrapyard originally grew, abandoned by the Mechanicus thousands of years before.  The tubes and asteroids form a tiny echo of the world-shrouding maze of asteroids and trains that surround Fabique.  Some asteroids have sleeping chambers, others have controls for the retrieval drones, and others are mess halls and galleys for the crews.

The Assemblers
Seventeen small void platforms orbit the cube.  They are roughly spherical and approximately half a kilometer in width, each.  Some are slightly larger, and partially hollow.  Each has its own life support system, its own power supply, and a copy of the datacore that keep strack of each of the hundreds of millions of components, wrecks, and parts that fill the Grand Anchor Scrapyards.  Clients who pass the background check may stay on these stations in remarkable comfort for as long as they wish, while the Grand Anchor crew labor to assemble or locate obscure parts and machines.  The stations serve as assembly points for clientele, and each can work independently of the others, or they can pool their resources.  Each station holds an array of long-range communication antennae, capable of broad- and precision-casting electronic signals across the whole Scrapyard.  From here, the Grand Anchor crews command the thousands of drones and servitors that search the stockpiles for parts, and command the labor-serfs that work in the larger spheres to assemble custom orders.  Each station has some defenses, but these are not battle stations, they are commerce platforms.

The Satellites
The primary defenses of the Grand Anchor actually sit well within its perimeter.  Orbiting the cube at a distance of over four hundred kilometers are well in excess of one hundred armed satellites.  Some are no larger than a normal planetary traffic buoy, but some are nearly as large as the assembly spheres.  Each has its own cogitator-controlled weapons array, powered by tiny plasma cells and batteries in their black hulls.  No one satellite would be enough to hold back a pirate fleet, and each is far enough from its neighbor to be unable to provide overlapping fields of fire, but their mere presence allows for the defenses of the scrapyard to slow anything smaller than a cruiser.  Their primary function is to feed sensor data to the command platform built into the cube, and light up any passing uninvited guests.  Of course, since the Grand Anchor does not orbit a star, the defense perimeter must be a sphere instead of a flat disc, so the satellites are far enough apart that their primary contribution to a firefight would be to act as a speedbump.

The Derelicts
Beyond even the satellites, over two dozen ships hang dead in space.  These are the true money makers of the Grand Anchor, and constitute the largest non-Imperial concentration of starships in Cloudburst (possibly, if discounting Gorkypark when an Ork fleet passes through).  Each starship floats in a pre-determined orbit slot, protected by more satellites and at least one patrol boat.  The ships range from junked Imperial freighters to a nearly intact Ork Killykrooza, and include four Imperial Navy ships damaged beyond repair and sold to the Grand Anchor.  Just under half of the ships are technically not shipwrecks, but are instead hulks, vessels prized from a Space Hulk or found abandoned in space and stripped for parts.  These tend to be more reparable, and the Anchor is willing to fix these ships up and sell them for the right price.
These derelicts sometimes change hands.  More than once in the past, the Mechanicus has brought the remains of a dead ship they found while exploring the Circuit to the Grand Anchor to buy parts to fix it, despite their general preference for fixing ships up themselves.  However, by far the largest customer by volume of these dead ships is the Chartist Captain Fleet, which moves cargo and tithes between worlds on behalf of the Senate of the High Lords and the Overlords Sector.  Hundreds of Chartist Captains have bought either ships or pieces of ships here, to repair damage to their own vessels or replace them.
Rogue Traders looking to offload salvage patronize the Grand Anchor constantly.  Fully one third of the unique items inside the cube came from Rogue Traders offloading archaeotechnological parts after missions to the Circuit or Exo-zone.  However, the Grand Anchor council must take care when dealing with Rogue Traders.  Unlike Rogue Traders, whose Warrants of Trade allow them to partake of xeno-trade and the looting of ancient human sites outside the range of the Astronimican, the Grand Anchor has no such license.  If the Inquisition were to find active xenotech inside the Grand Anchor perimeter, the punishment would no doubt be swift and horrible.

Of course, that does not extend to the materials of xenotech.  Not all xenotechnology is crafted of unidentifiable materials.  Most races of the galaxy use the same ten dozen basic elements as humanity when it comes time to build things.  Scrapping xenotech, including the Ork Kroozer dragged to the site by Lord Captain Crado Zutash in M41.998, is well within their legal purview, if the result is recognizable material.  Grand Anchor has disassembled eight alien ships for scrap over the millennia, and is currently doing the same to the Ork ship.  The resultant alloys are no different from any other, and can be cast into whatever parts their clients want.

Grand Anchor has the capacity to build ships, but elects not to.  So far, all of their berths are  busy with normal work.  Some of the larger assembly spheres could theoretically construct vessels of under one half kilometer in length, but avoid doing so to prevent fraying ties with the Navy or Mechanicus.  However, the great Merchant House Zhong has bought partially-assembled vessels from Grand Anchor to short-lift backlogged construction schedules in the past.

All Grand Anchor Scrapyard items, from individual rivets to half-built ships, come with varying warrantees of longevity and reliability on their sales.  The Grand Anchor takes pride in their capabilities, and any problems their merchandise caused for clients would inevitably feed back on their reputation.  They are able to avoid being pushed out of business by Merchant Houses or the Mechanicus because of their refusal to horn in on the larger establishments’ turf, and their willingness to deal with even the shadiest Rogue Traders.


System: Jodhclan

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Oglith Subsector

System Overlord: Cardinal Lamarr

Planets: Eight, two habitable

Cardinal/Shrine World: Jodhclan’s Paradise
Satelites: One inhabited moon, Jodhclan’s Landing

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 75.5%, Oxygen 23%, Argon 1%, Water .4%, Carbon dioxide .04%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Ecclesiarchy

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

Climate: Jodhclan’s Paradise is a temperate world, save for the equator, which has an uninhabitable desert

Geography: 1.08 times the size of Terra, barren polar ice caps

Gravity: 1.04 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Missionaries, Books, Textiles, Iron, Seeds
Principle Imports: Agricultural Machines, Mercenaries, Clothing

Countries and Continents: Nine continents, no national divisions

Military: Jodhclan’s Shields (high quality PDF), Order of the Sacred Rose (Adepta Sororitas), Holy Arms (mercenaries)

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: 3,012,00,000 (human), 903,300 (servitors)

Description:
Jodhclan’s Paradise hosts the second of the two Cardinal Diocese of the Cloudburst Sector.  Unlike most Cardinal Words in the galaxy, which played host to a massive Crusade’s end or the life of a Saint, Jodhclan’s Paradise was claimed by the Ecclesiarchy just for the sake of having a Carindal World in the Sector, which the Administratum has never approved of.  Every year for the past seventeen centuries, the token Administratum representative on Jodhclan’s Paradise has pleaded with the Ecclesiarchy and Lord Sector Cloudburst to revoke the system’s tithe exemption.  Perhaps the Cardinal World itself could be exempt, but Jodhclan’s Shield and Jodhclan’s Wake could do their fair share, at least!  Alas, the petitions are consistently shot down, year after year, and the pattern never changes.  The three Jodhclan worlds were always fiefdoms of the Ecclesiarchy.

The world of Jodhclan’s paradise resembles old Terra in many ways, from its great biodiversity of its forests and plains to the size of its tides.  The planet’s cities resemble models from space, with tightly-planned layouts and neat, efficient design.  Ecclesiarchal leaders and preachers dictate nearly every tenet of public life, from education to commerce.  As a result, the world operates at a far lower threshold of production of resources than most other worlds of equivalent population.  The world imports as little as possible, however, and the Ecclesiarchal leadership insists on minimal depletion of the world’s resources.  As a result, much of the planet’s population lives in conditions an outsider would mistake for poverty.  Billions of residents of the planet live in small homes or larger apartment complexes, dwell in the abbeys and cloisters of the many, many shrines of the world, or live on the orbitals with little to their names but faith.  By contrast, the larger shrines and the great Cathedrals of the Emperor are skyscrapers, coated in expensive facades and artwork, and staffed by Adepta Sororitas.
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.
However, not all life on Jodhclan’s Paradise is martial or religious.  The world has a population in the billions, and that means agriculture and mining are needed.  The world has as much industry as most other worlds, despite the asceticism of its lay folk and citizens.  The industrial and agricultural hubs of the world sit far from the great cathedrals, out of sight and out of mind.  In those places, workers and servitors toil to make millions of devotional items, meals, and books.  Since the world’s population is largely transitory, as those Cloudburst citizens who can afford it travel to complete pilgrimages to the great cathedrals, the world maintains a roaring trade in religious trinkets and iconography.
However, its primary industry is books.  The world has timber farms of millions of acres, and routinely harvests them for pulp to make books.  While most are religious in nature, the world also makes a variety of faith-friendly literature, and collections of quotations from the saints.

The planet itself is a magnificent paradise.  It has thousands of miles of beaches and hundreds of magnificent mountains; its oceans are clean and blue, its rivers wend their way down tranquil farmlands and across ancient ruins.  The world was clearly inhabited by at least some humans long ago, but their colony seems to have died out almost immediately.  The remains have long since been picked clean of anything valuable.

For those less inclined to scale the bones of history, hundreds of picturesque islands dot the coasts and oceans and seas.  Many have private retreats for major members of the Ecclesiarchy.  This includes some for members of the Naxos and Drumnos Sector Ecclesiarchy, and the contrast between their relatively constrained architecture and the abundant wealth of the Cloudburst one is impossible to miss.

While pilgrims pass through the cities and cathedrals, marveling at the devotional lifestyle of Jodhclan, the natives train.  Each year, Jodhclan’s Paradise produces hundreds of thosuands of clergy.  Most go to Thimble or other Hive Worlds of the Segmentum, and most of the rest go to worlds that the Imperium is laboring to drag into the Emperor’s light.  Some accompany Rogue Traders into the darkness of the Circuit or Exo-zone.  Others join the retinue of Imperial Commanders and Governors or Overlords, to serve as their personal Confessors.
However, the great Cathedrals of Jodhclan’s Paradise also train the War Clerics of Cloudburst.  War Clerics often accompany the Emergency Command Asset Forces, or ECAFs, that react to signs of alien incursion that strike at the isolated worlds of the Cloudburst Sector and Circuit.  Most regimental-strength military forces and all warships in the Cloudburst Sector also have at least one Chaplain, and some worlds like Obelisk 2 deploy as many as seven per regiment.  Just like the Ecclesiarchal forces of Celeste, Jodhclan’s Paradise Chaplains and Battle Sisters suffer logistical shortfalls in their stockpile of advanced weapons.

The mercenary forces of the system are varyingly aware of the potentially illegal nature of their employment by the Cardinal.  Most, however, don’t know or don’t care.  The Cardinal has taken care to break up any troublesome forces and spread them over multiple formations, and has even given several of them custom uniforms and weapons to use.  This just increases the suspicions of the Ordo Hereticus.  Barrack structures built well outside major population centers house the mercenaries, save the core of elite bodyguards and counter-assassins Lamarr has hired for his own defense.  The funding for such massive mercenary hirings comes from the tithes paid to the world, but given the immense ostentation of the world’s religious institutions, the amount needed to hire the mercenaries represents a relatively small percentage of its income.

The world is not completely opposed to the idea of export.  Jodhclan’s Paradise exports books and teaching contracts to planets across the Cloudburst Sector.  Schools as far apart as Oglith and Hapster employ Jodhclan faculty for religious institutions.  As is so often the case in backwater sectors, some worlds simply do not have the infreastructure to train their own educators, and Jodhclan’s Paradise clergy are happy to provide teachers when asked by any loyal Imperial world.
Not all of the teachers are civilians.  Many of the Drill Abbots that run the Schola Progenia across Cloudburst train in the great cathedrals of Jodhclan’s Paradise.  The worlds that have their own adequate clergy may employ them instead, like Cloudburst or Septiim Primus, but worlds that do not have a strong history of Ecclesiarchal presence, like Drimmerzole Secundus, generally recruit their Abbots on Jodhclan.  Furthermore, several pious Rogue Traders have trained on Jodhclan’s Paradise to prepare themselves for the burden of traveling beyond the Emperor’s light and bringing heathens to the Throne.

The planet has over six hundred orbitals of greater than forty meters in width, which host everything from a Black Ships depot to a triple-linked Heavy Defense Laser.  The largest hosts two full wings of space fighters, a gross of ships, to defend the pilgrim barges from pirates looking to take slaves.

Beyond their questionably legal mercenary buildups, the military of Johdclan’s Paradise does fulfil other normal duties.  The world’s PDF trains alongside the mercenaries, as well as under the Battle Sisters of the Sacred Rose, and are thus both far higher in quality than most PDF and friendlier with the mercenaries than the Sisters are.  The Sisters loathe and detest the mercenaries, who they see as being little more than glorified thugs and hitmen, demanding money for something they should be doing for free.  For their part, the mercenaries largely ignore the Sisters’ scorn, since the Sisters are both far inferior in number and highly unlikely to actually field against them.  Carindal Lamarr’s building paranoia about the Eldar has led him to force the Sisters and mercenaries to get along, for now, with the PDF stuck in an uncomfortable middle ground.
The PDF train on the moon that gave them their name, Jodhclan’s Shield, and their work there is complex.  As they are tasked with protecting two planets and a moon with very little in the way of ships available to transport them about, the Shields train in rapid deployment techniques every week.  The moon’s gravity is far too low to train outdoors, and thus the Shields practice their combat techniques in gravity-controlled chambers.  The atmosphere of Shield is actually human-breathable, but the pressure is far too low for the kind of exertion that combat training causes.  Therefore, the chambers are air-sealed, generally built into hillsides.  The Jodhclan Shields practice with the full array of basic Imperial Guard equipment and vehicles, but do not train for air support – the SDF of the system is too small to spare much airpower.  This is the crucial vulnerability of the SDF in Jodhclan, and Lamarr knows it.  He has covertly opened lines of communication with Magos on Cognomen to buy fleets of fighters and bombers for his SDF, or so he imagines.  In practice, his line of communication is with the Ordo Mechanicus, which is preparing a preliminary investigation into Lamarr’s conduct.

The Sisters of the Sacred Rose, however, remain blissfully ignorant of the conduct of their master.  Their devotion to the Emperor is both beyond reproach and amply demonstrated.  The Order Famulous sisters of the Rose travel the breadth of the sector, advising on arranged marriages and laws on dozens of worlds, alongside their sisters from Maskos and Celeste.  The Ordo Hospitaller of Jodhclan’s Paradise is the largest for hundreds of light years, and accompanies Imperial Guard forces and Templar Militia in the service of Rogue Traders as far away as the Gothic Sector.  Their Battle Sisters practice most of the same traditions and battle cants as the majority of their sisters in the galaxy-spanning Sacred Rose, but do have one quirk.  When in battle, the Sisters of the Seraphim and Retributor battle units make no audible sound.  Their armor is polished and oiled to the highest standards possible, and their helmets are vacuum-sealed.  This does not confer any additional protection from enemy fire, but it does render their movement silent until they shoot, which is generally not a concern for Battle Sisters, who rely on intimidating the enemy with noise and fury more often than not.  In combat, the Sisters of these two orders may use their helmet radios, but only turn on their helmet speaker grilles after the fighting is over.  Heretics used to fighting the bellowing forces of Templar Militia and most other Battle Sisters may find this contrast eerily unnerving.
The Sisters also serve another role on Jodhclan’s Paradise and Jodhclan’s Shield.  The many chapels and churches of the system can’t all have a Sister present, unfortunately, but there are enough around to ensure that many Imperial Commanders and other worthy sorts have a non-combat Sister at their side on mission into other Sectors, or to the sites of new colonies.  Cloudburst is a backwater, despite its military triumphs, and many Imperial officers and nobles would kill for the chance to be seen in the company of such an impressive figure as a Sororitas.  Some Sisters would turn up their nsoes at being as such a status symbol, but most choose instead to see it as a measure of their responsibilities, since they would also advise such an individual on proper marriages, the correct course of spiritual purity, and adherence to the Imperial Creed.  More importantly, it would also ensure that a person with the most morally proper worldview would lead any newly established colonies of Mankind with leaders drawn from Cloudburst.  Inquisitors often find promising recruits or even replacements from the Sacred Rose sisters dispatched in such a way.



Agri-World: Jodhclan’s Repast

Satelites: Seven uninhabitable moons

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water .9%, Carbon dioxide .01%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Administratum

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Extensive polar freeze, with some habitable zones between the tropics, frequent floods

Geography: .85 times the size of Terra, with shallow oceans

Gravity: .8 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Food, Water, Coal, Salt,
Principle Imports: Agricultural Machines, Fertilizers, Clothing

Countries and Continents: Four continents, no national divisions

Military: Cassie’s Shield, Cassie’s Rangers (low quality PDF, high quality Guard)

Contact with Other Worlds: Daily

Tithe Grade: Solutio Extremis

Population: 107,171,900 (human), 2,000,000 (servitors)

Description:
While Jodhclan’s Paradise and Jodhclan’s Shield deal with matters of faith and war, Repast lives up to its name.  The world is not the agricultural breadbasket of Grendel, Combine, or Forender, but it does supply the rest of the system and all the many millions of pilgrims with megatons of food.  The planet is only barely habitable by humans, and only then because of persistent terraforming efforts.  Over two thirds of the planet is either polar ice cap or frozen tundra, with permafrost and heavy glacial migration that render permanent agriculture exceptionally difficult.
However, the planet does have one feature that makes it more appealing for agriculture: the equatorial soils.  The soil of the planet at the equator is highly diverse in chemical and bacterial load, which allows it to grow plants of great variability and evolutionary history, not just the ones from the Terran Diaspora.  It’s not as fertile as the soil of Combine, but it is fertile enough to allow for sufficient food growth to meet all of the planet’s needs, with enough left over to export to other worlds.

Life on Jodhclan’s Repast is stultifying, even compared to life on the other two worlds of the system.  The government is that of the Administratum, not Ecclesiarchy, and therefore allows for a greater variety of entertainments than on Jodhclan’s Paradise, but there is still only so much to do on a world of farms and glaciers.  Some of the cities grow large enough for a moneyed middle class to develop, and Jodhclan’s Repast does host one of the best secular universities in the subsector.  It also tithes up significant percentages of its PDF to the Guard as a matter of course.  Its orbitals are defensive in nature, and include several dozen sensory satellites, to detect pirates or raiders that have come to steal its precious food.


System: Azure

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 4

Dead World: Brotherhood

Satelites: One uninhabitable moon

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: N/A

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

Adept Presence: N/A

Climate: N/A

Geography: .93 times the size of Terra

Gravity: .9 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: Unknown

Description:
Once, there was no Brotherhood.  This planet was once known as Azure, and was an Ocean World under Imperial control.  The times before the current desolation of the world were at least relatively peaceful.  The Sector Overlord even priefy considered Azure as a candidate for Subsector Capital, before settling on Nauphry.  Azure was not like Obelisk 2, however: it did have large amounts of dry land.
Azure was among the dozens of planets discovered during the Gold Rush Two, and promptly became a major Imperial colony.  The world’s history was unclear to colonists, but there were signs of former human habitation on some of the larger island chains, mostly in the form of oxidized metals and the outlines of building foundations.  Whatever colony had once been here, though, was clearly long gone.  Azure’s neat, orderly land cities and mines, and its oceanic floating cities, proved to be quite profitable for the Imperium.  Its tithe payments were larger than its imports, and it had enough left over to export some material to Cognomen and Thimble.
Hundreds of years of relative peace and quiet passed by, before tragedy struck Azure.  There were few initial signs, at least to offworld observers.  The world had always been a heavily religious one, so when the planet filed a petition to formally change its name from Azure to Brotherhood, the immediate reaction was one of weary resignation among the Administratum.  Another system, lost to unproductive over-zeal, embracing piety over usefulness.

Life went on for the Imperium.  Then, one day several weeks after this shift in planetary title, an Inquisitorial ship out of Maskos set in above Brotherhood for supplies.  The Inquisitor, Iacob Harnier of the Ordo Malleus, prepared to travel down to the planet below.  He had barely stepped into his shuttle when his frigate came under sudden attack.  The Inquisitor raced to the bridge of his ship.  As soon as he arrived, the exterior doors of his ship gave way, and his vessel filled with thousands of bellowing invaders.
Harnier gave a message to his Astropath and ran off to confront his attackers.  The Inquisitorial habit of chaining indentured prisoners to their workstations on the ship meant two things: very few crew wanted to come to his defense, and the boarders were able to recruit from the front.  In hours, the loyal crew were dead, the invaders had been bolstered by liberated criminal crew, and Harnier was dead.  The ship’s Astropath had barely managed to call for help before the boarders had slaughtered him.
When the Ordo Hereticus arrived to investigate four months later, they found the world reinforcing their defenses, far beyond anything normal for an Ocean World.  Careful observation of communications between the few living loyalists on the planet below revealed that the population had arisen against the Imperium.  Harnier’s ship was gone.  The few loyalist holdouts below were bracing for an attack by screaming hordes of cultists.
The Ordo contacted several of these holdouts – Arbites Courthouses, PDF bases, a Black Ships depot – and informed them that help was one the way, but also demanded an explanation of the cult’s motives.  To their disgust, each holdout reported the same thing: there was no cult of opposition to the Emperor.  Rather, a mad Astropath had turned vast numbers of the people of Azure against the Imperium’s bloated, inefficient government.  The Astropath, named David Recolomar, had fallen into deep narcissism, and anointed himself leader of the True Brotherhood.  He proclaimed that the Emperor had given him the gift of bestowment, and could grant psychic powers on his most devout followers.

Given the similarities between this uprising and the action of the heretical Archbishop Haggar, the Inquisition decided to take no chances.  The Ordo Hereticus ships summoned every Battle Sister in the Cloudburst Sector and Circuit to a Mechanicus refueling station on the outer edge of the system.  By the time they were assembled, all but a tiny few holdouts had fallen to the maddened cultists.  The Sisters descended on the planet, with an extra four thousand Templar Militia and twelve thousand Celestial Guard in tow.
The combined forces of the Ordo Hereticus began their attack on the enemy from the Arbites precinct-courthouse in the remains of the world’s larget land-based city.  The initial landings went well, with the military forces attacking from air and space, while the Arbites fought out from their embattled Prectinct Fortress to meet up with them.  The maddened Imperial citizens came from every walk of life, and few had any martial skill or equipment, but they fought with psychotic fervor.

The landed Inquisitorial troops quickly took stock of the situation, but before they could regroup, a force of nearly two million citizen cultists, led by four psykers apparently under the control of Recolomar himself, assaulted their position, by ramming boats and ships into the islands and disembarking.  The Inquisitorial force was too large to shelter in the precinct, so they were forced to dig in and defend their landing zone.  Nearly two weeks of grinding combat followed.  While the Battle Sisters and Arbites managed to weather battles with the untrained and barely-armed cult without too much trouble, the less equipped Imperial Guard and Templar Militia did not fare as well.  After several weeks of grinding combat, the Inquisition had had enough.  The ships in orbit cut loose with their heavy weapons, instantly reducing several floating cities to scrap.

In retalitation, the cult’s new clutch of psychics unleashed their own powers.  The tide of ground combat shifted decisively in the cult’s favor as newly-awakened psychics in the horde of cultists unleashed waves of lightning and ice shards against the Sisters and their support.  The territory under their control shrank from seventeen square miles to two in under four days.

When the Inquisition received word that the other Imperial holdouts on the planet had failed or fled off world, the strategic situation seemed finished.  The surviving Inquisitors begrudgingly gave the order to withdraw.  The Sisters and Templars wanted to stay and fight to the bitter end, but the order of the Inquisition is final, even over the objections of their Chamber Militant.

All of the surviving Imperial Loyalists retreated from the surface of the world.  As the last shuttles lifted, and the madmen below celebrated, an Inquisitorial Longstrike heavy cruiser opened a torpedo tube it had never used before, and ignited the planet.

The surviving Loyalists disseminated over the Celeste and Jodhclan military contingents, while the Arbites restationed their own survivors in Maskos and Nauphry.  The Inquisition’s use of a Catastrophe-class Atmospheric Exterminatus weapon came under scrutiny from the Palace on Maskos, since the potential to reclaim the world may yet have existed, but Astropaths from the Inquisitorial reprisal force testified to the Ordo Hereticus’ defense.  They had sensed the psychic scarring on the world’s population, and when the orbital bombardments had not only made the scarring worse, but also failed to kill Recolomar, the use of Exterminatus weapons had become justified.

Brotherhood itself was left a cooling ember.  Tugs came to retrieve the few remaining orbitals and Mechanicus fuel platforms worth keeping.  Satellites not worth preserving de-orbited in time.  The world’s surface was still red-hot, even decades later.

However, in M41.939, a new and confusing chapter of the history of Azure/Brotherhood began.  To the unease of Inquisitorial spies, several combating cults of Chaos in the adjacent Drumnos Sector abruptly abandoned their conduct and made their way to the nearest means of transportation.  Thousands and thousands of Chaos-worshippers abandoned their homes, their cover identities, their schemes, and either bought or hijacked transport to Brotherhood.
Naturally, the Inquisition took immediate interest.  Stormtrooper and Throne Agent personnel seized ships known to contain some of these agitators.  Other Chaotic cultists resorted to simply robbing ships and flying them themselves, most of which promptly vanished into the Warp.
Of the roughly seventeen thousand Chaos Cultists from Drumnos to attempt to travel to Brotherhood, only four thousand made it.  They mostly accomplished this by sticking together and attacking Imperial passenger ships in such numbers that a few Inquisitorial troops backing up the ship security contingent simply were not enough to hold them back.
Over the next few weeks, dozens of ships arrived in orbit over Brotherhood.  Some cultists crashed their ships to the surface, killing most of the people aboard.  Others took shuttles, and some sabotaged the ships that had carried them before doing so.
Once planetside, the Chaos worshippers promptly turned on each other.  The many cults that had sent members to fight distilled into two factions: Tzeentchian and Slaaneshi.  The two factions clad theselves in vac suits and power armor stolen from their homes and transports, to survive Brotherhood’s inhospitable atmosphere.

More ships arrived, and within another Terran month, the number of cultists on the surface had swollen to well over four thousand.  They battled and slaughtered each other, with no clear goal in sight.  The Inquisition watched in bafflement as the casualties of the intercine Chaos warfare rose higher and higher, even above the body count of some Inquisitorial purges of Chaos cults on Hive Worlds.
The ships the Great Enemy had taken to transport their men hung in orbit, empty, or exploded from sabotage, or even tried to limp away as the original crew reasserted order.  The Inquisition impounded them all, and interrogated what living people they could find aboard.  The only clues the people on those ships had to offer about the war below before the Inquisition executed them all for contamination were that the leaders of the cults had been convinced beyond any reason or doubt that an artifact of unmatchable power existed somewhere on Brotherhood.

The Inquisition is convinced that no such artifact exists.  When the ships stopped trickling in and the vac-suited fighters below finally killed each other off, the Inquisition took careful psychic readings of the world, employing over two dozen Sanctionites.  Between the Chaos taint below and the psychic scars of the rogue Astropath centuries before, the Inquisition found nothing.  There was no pattern they could gleam in the movements of the cultists below before their deaths.  Scans for active power consumption below produced nothing.  There were no non-natural radiation spots the Inquisition could detect.

Still, the cults were clearly there for something.  The amount of hard work the Chaos worhsippers and their Gods had undertaken to insinuate nearly twenty thousand cultists in the populations of two sectors boggles the mind, but they had thrown it all away in months.  The Inquisiton keeps a vigil of the world using a long-range telescopic satellite in the outer system, just in case more ships come to visit.  In the interim, the Inquisition has sent what ships could be salvaged back to their homes, after purging Chaos influence from them.  Only time may tell what the forces of Chaos want on the dead rock of Brotherhood.


System: AHG2452

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Uncategorized

System Overlord: None

Planets: Five, one inhabitable

Xeno World: Tendrils

Satelites: none

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 81%, Oxygen 19%, Argon .2%, Water 1.6%, Unknown 0.1%

Religion: Unknown

Government Type: Unknown

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: N/A

Climate: Frequent heavy rain, wide tropical storms, acute hailstorms at poles

Geography: .99 times the size of Terra, nixtures of polar and sandy deserts, with bands of heavy vegetation and lengthy, frequent earthquakes

Gravity: 1.04 Terran Gravity

Economy: Unknown

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

Countries and Continents: Unknown political arrangements over five continents

Military: Substantial

Contact with Other Worlds: Never

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: Unknown alien race(s)

Description:
Opportunity knocks early and loudly in the Cloudburst Circuit.  Although many Rogue Traders have returned from the Circuit broken or defeated, many have come back fabulously wealthy, or armed with vast historical and technological secrets.  The Rogue Trader who takes Tendrils for the Imperium will be wealthy beyond the mad dreams of avarice in the hearts of the most miserly Lord Sector or Lord Trader Dynastic.

Tendrils is an alien world.  It is theoretically habitable by humans, although the atmosphere would be difficult to breathe, at the very least.  The native race of aliens is unknown to human science.  They have not yet achieved the technological advances required for sustained space flight.  The population seems highly variable when counted from orbit.  The Ordo Xenos suspects that this means the race either have an improbably short reproductive cycle, or at least some of the population lives underground.

The Imperium first became aware of the planet thanks to the efforts of Mechanicus Explorator ships under the command of Magos Explorator Lethicos, only a few weeks after the Sixth Glasian Migration.  The Explorator detected artificial radio signals using an unknown encryption as soon as he entered the system, and flew his vessels to the world from which they originated.  However, as soon as he arrived, his vessel came under fire from primitive cruise missiles.
Lethicos withdrew to beyond the missles’ range and scanned the planet.  He immediately detected that the race below were not human.  Lethicos began earmarking the planet for destruction when the spectroscopic analysis of the world’s crustal composition completed.  To his shock, the planet registered has having one of the highest concentrations of adamantium ore ever detected, higher than even that of Night Lords Primarch Konrad Curze’s homeworld of Nostramo.  The planet, which he named Tendrils for its strange, ugly plant growth, was too valuable to risk losing to cyclonic torpedo, or even atmospheric destruction.

The problem of the aliens remained.  If they had surface-to-space weapons, they presumably had ground-side defenses as well.  Further, they did not attempt to communicate with Explorator Lethicos, and targeted his ship the instant they saw it.
Lethicos concluded that they must have had hostile encounters with dangerous aliens before, or even humans.  As he turned his ships to return to Cognomen and report his discovery, he began detailed scans of the worlds elsewhere in the system.  He did not detect life on any of them; however, spectroscopic scans of two rocky planets near the star revelealed traces of manganese, iron, copper, nickel, and artificial polymers, in quantities too vast to have come from Tendrils.  He scanned the worlds further, and found the wreck of an Imperial freighter scattered across both of them, bearing damaged hull markings that named it the Last Tide.

When Lethicos returned to Cognomen, he cross-referenced that name with the world’s ship registry, and found that the only ship with that name anywhere near Cloudburst was a freighter of the House Hererra, which had loaded up with raw textiles from Septiim Secundus and flown off to Thimble, eighty years before.  Lethicos did not have an explanation for why the ship would have approached Tendrils, or how they had come to blows with the people of that world.  When he reported all of his findings to the Council of Magos, the Council lauded his decision not to destroy the planet.

Enough time has passed since then that a significant force of Imperial assets has assembled to conquer it, but the effort has been plagued with setbacks from the start.  The arrival of the force of Orks on Oglith threatens to paralyze the sector’s defensive efforts in the face of the Seventh Glasian Migration.  With the paranoia of Cardinal Lamarr drawing much of the freelance military power towards Jodhclan, and the urgent need for Stormtroopers or Throne Agents to secure the wreck of the Predator, the Tendrils Conquest Crusade has simply not been able to muster sufficient firepower to overcome Tendrils’ defenses.  The added problem of many of the veteran regiments of the Imperial Guard in the Cloudburst Sector being tied up defending Foraldshold simply makes things worse.  The Imperium has had at least one ship on standby in the outer reaches of AHG2452 for the past seventy years, and has observed the technology of Tendrils’ residents advancing at a horrifying rate.  While the Imperium can still muster far greater forces to assault the world, the multiple pulls on its resources will prevent any immediate invasion attempts, for the time being.
Frustrating efforts is the fact that the Senate of the High Lords has taken an interest in the world.  A chance to kill off a potentially annoying alien race and expand the Imperium’s supply of precious adamantium is one the High Lords would very much like to take.  The lack of free resources in Cloudburst to address this problem is a concern the High Lords do not have, and have threatened Cognomen and Coudburst to take care of the issue before they send somebody to do it for them.





Later Worlds
Forge Satrap World: Foraldshold – a single huge city under Mechanicus control on an otherwise uninhabited world, constantly under attack by orks – cognomen subsector
Proto-Knight World: ABX202020 – Cognomen subsector
Feral World-Feudal World: Triune – three continents – cavemen, Byzantines, pre-european Ethiopia, Celeste Subsector
Warp Storm: Vasari’s Cruelty – Cognomen Subsector
Feral World: Dawn-break – Celeste subsector – barely defended by Navy in seventh wave
Feudal World: Gorum’s Folly – bogged down during seventh wave, Maskos subsector
Civilized World: Hapster – history of corrupt Arbites; Hapster Subsector
War World: Oglith – massive Ork fleet trapped here after getting sucked out of the Warp by mass shadow of passing Void Whale, hooked up with Feral Orks that lived here already; live in subterranean caverns and gradually becoming less Feral; sector command fears that they could become the nexus of a true Waaagh and annex Gorkypark; hundreds of different regiments fighting here to contain them while the Daggers are busy preparing to fight the Glasians and can’t help out much, oglith subsector
Agri World: Forender – cognomen subsector
Pirate Colony: Zlodziei
Oromet – site where the huge Space Hulk Forlorn Sight was first sited; worst single heresy in sector history, thimble subsector
Frontier World: Hangonne – quiet frontier world, survived a Glasian attack by total luck and very aware of it, border world between Drumnos and Cloudburst, deliberately not advancing technologically, Oglith Subsector
Death World: Limmerdine – former Paradise World, assaulted by Nurgle, Hapster Subsector
Frontier World – Lorelei – interdicted by the Inquisition until alien pathogen wears off, Mechanicus searching for cure with Administratum help – The problem the locals have with the Deathwatch isn’t the defenses per se, since they are clearly static and useless for impressing Deathwatch edicts on the populace.  The problem in the minds of the Loreleians is that the mere presence of these defenses may serve as provocation to the Glasians.  The stubborn mindset of the local colonists does not allow for the idea that the Glasians might just attack them anyway, which the Deathwatch has patiently explained again and again.
The Planetary Governor has made similar declarations of the blindingly obvious, to no avail.  The possibility that he may be voted out of office by the Loreleians for daring to side with the Deathwatch over the will of the people hangs heavy over the Governor’s head.  He has pleaded , Maskos Subsector

Oglith	4
Celeste	5
Hapster	5
Cognomen	8
Delving	5
Maskos	5
Thimble	5
Nauphry	7



Departmento Cartographicae Planetary Database: Cloudburst Circuit
Crispin – toxic death world – produces beastmen auxilia

Noble and Merchant houses
House Herrera, Septiim – shipping
House O’Neill, Thimble – manufacturing
House Zhong, Thimble – shipbuilding
House Carvan, Celeste – agriculture
House Albert, Celeste – law
House Joun-Lee, Celeste – mercenaries
House Senai, Coriolis – artwork
House Lunther, Hapster – logistics
House Ritria, Oglith – metalworking, masonry

Rogue Trader Dynastic House Rondlee
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Atongwë
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Vermouthe
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Arins
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Arpel
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Zutash
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Rowsdower
Rogue Trader House Marcus
Rogue Trader House Demmelwaithe
Rogue Trader House Victoire
Rogue Trader House Brasmel
Rogue Trader House Crusher
Rogue Trader House Howe



Notable Persons
Lord Sector Cloudburst, Rhemortho Quintus
Emilie Rastimos, Chief Inquisitorial Astropath and Adept Choirmaster
The whispered secrets of the Inquisition are entrusted to as few people outside the holy Ordos as possible.  Lightspeed is a cruel mistress, however, and the Inquisition needs to send messages as much as the next branch of the Imperium.  When a message needs to be sent from the Maskos Inquisitorial Palace, it is Chief Inquisitorial Astropath Emilie Rastimos who orders her seven subordinates to do it, if she doesn’t do it herself.
Lady Inquisitrix Cloudburst, Ordo Xenos High Inquisitor Cassandra Lerica
Lord Inquisitor Oscar Havermann, Ordo Hereticus
Lady Inquisitor Mizuki Kimihira, Ordo Malleus
Lord Inquisitor Xi Gian Heung, Ordo Xenos
Lord Inquisitor Eric Stoldst, Ordo Sicarius (presumed Xenos)
Inquisitor Jerome Paltmitier, Ordo Hereticus, Chief of Witch Hunters
Inquisitor-Captain Lord Gwiddon Thomas Walsh, Rogue Trader and Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus
Inquisitor Herman Rothschilde, Ordo Malleus – isstvanian in denial
Rogue Trader Lord Crado Zutash
Archbishop Haggar of Oromet – Captured and executed
Lord Commissar Beleph Dour – Master of the Night Slaughter
Admiral Langdon Reith, leader of the FCC
Monica Lanbrie, Canoness Superior of Celeste
Cardinal Drake, leader of the Arch-Diocese Cloudburst
Cardinal Lamarr, leader of the Jodhclan Diocese
Ortam Lesarien, Eldar Corsair commander of the FCC
Watch Commander Domack of the Imperial Fists
Watch Captain Paris of the Blue Daggers
Watch Captain Roganuharu of the Celestial Knights (nepali for germs) [cataphractii armor terminator honors]
Lord Admiral Maynard – supreme admiral of cloudburst
Professor Merrick Unarvu – leader of Slaanesh cult on Coriolis
Magos Gabris – brain surgeon
Magos Lethicos – discoverer of Tendril