cloudburst items

System: AZH2109 [Xenolabel: N’zark]

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Undefined Region

System Overlord: None

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

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

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


System: Aule Windows

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 13, 0 habitable

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

Satelites: Hundreds

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: Cult Mechanicus, Imperial Cult

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

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

Climate: N/A

Geography: Gas giants, rocky moons

Gravity: Varying

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: N/A

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


System: Coriolis

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Hapster Subsector

System Overlord: Supreme Marshal Emmitt Roscoe

Planets: Ten, one inhabitable

Fortress World: Coriolis
Satellite: Moon – Morole

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

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Military Hierarchy

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

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

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

Gravity: Drimmerzole has .92 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

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

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

Contact with Other Worlds: Constant

Tithe Grade: Exactus Prima

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


System: Lockehold

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 7, 1 habitable

Feudal World: Locke’s World

Satelites: 1 moon, uninhabitable

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

Religion: Holy Emperor Star Cult

Government Type: Feudal

Planetary Governor: No

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

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

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

Gravity: .89 Terra gravity

Economy: Local scrip

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

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

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

Contact with Other Worlds: Almost none

Tithe Grade: Solutio Tertius

Population: 18,120,000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


System: Delving

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: Lord Subsector Delving Miles laDremankine

Planets: 9, 2 habitable (1 uncolonized)

Mining World: Delving

Satelites: One moon, Delving b

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

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

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

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

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

Gravity: 1.1 Terra gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

Countries and Continents: No political divisions

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

Contact with Other Worlds: Daily

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


System: Maleard

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 3, 1 habitable

Mining World: Lordarine

Satelites: None

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

Religion: Cult Mechanicus

Government Type: Adeptus Mechanicus

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Arbites (covert)

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

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

Gravity: .91 Terra gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

Countries and Continents: No political divisions

Military: Skitarii

Contact with Other Worlds: Uncommon

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

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

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

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

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



Later Worlds
Mining World: Lordarine – brain world; disconnects brains to survive Warp Storms; Mechanicus torture machine turns flesh inside out, used by sadistic magos to control population, arbites actively investigating, heretek from old night – cognomen subsector
Agri World: Combine – hyperfertile soil, requires year-round harvesting or plants grow out of control, grows textile and cotton plants for Thimble
Feral World: ABS00273
Unknown World: Glamour – planet is different every time it is viewed from a distance
Deep Void Station: Clog – cognomen subsector
Deep Void Station: Grand Anchor Scrapyard – massive, skeletal cage with ship parts inside, held by magnets; a store for ship parts
Shrine World/Cardinal World: Jodhclan’s Paradise – paranoid cardinal thinks it’s a maiden world, petitions the sisters to move there, has a lot of mercenaries
Jodhclan’s Paradise, the only true Shrine World in the Sector thus far, houses an even more obvious deviance from the typical Ecclesiarchial 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 holding 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.

Dead World: Brotherhood – name changed post-rebellion, Chaotic uprising unsuccessful; Slaneesh and Tzeentch cults fight to this day in void suits and Inquisition has no idea why
Xeno World: Tendrils – massive adamantine deposit, alien bioweapon stockpiles, High lords petition to invade, forces not yet mustered
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
Warp Storm: Vasari’s Cruelty – Cognomen Subsector
Feral World: Dawn-break – cognomen subsector – barely defended by Navy in seventh wave
Feudal World: Gorum’s Folly – bogged down during seventh wave
Civilized World: Hapster – history of corrupt Arbites; subsector capital
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
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
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


Departmento Cartographicae Planetary Database: Cloudburst Circuit


Crispin – toxic death world – produces beastmen auxilia

Rogue Trader houses

Zutash
Rondlee
Rowsdower
Marcus
Demmelwaithe
Victoire
Atongwë
Brasmel
Crusher
Howe

Noble and Merchant houses

House Herrera, Septiim
House O’Neill, Thimble
House Zhong, Thimble


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
Rogue Trader Dynastic House Rondlee
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
Professor Merrick Unarvu


M41.700: The Fourth Glasian Migration – Again foretold by the Tarot, the Glasians strike Cloudburst Sector.  The expanding military forces of the Cloudburst Sector meet the aliens head-on, and although the Glasians came harrowingly close to destroying Nauphry VII, the Imperium again defeats them.
M41.704: The Rot Souls Rise Again – After thousands of years dying and reawakening in the pits of the Warp for the amusement and defense of Nurgle, the Rot Soul Brigade abruptly appears in the roiling Warp Storms at the extreme galactic north.  The Nurglites rampage unchecked until they arrive in the Cloudburst Circuit’s fringe, where they are detected by horrified Astropaths of the Rogue Trader House Rowsdower.  The Rogue Trader fleets of the region quickly marshal their forces and blunt the Nurglite assault, but four Rot Soul troopships escape the death of their escorts and escape into the Circuit proper.  The Basilikon Astra move a fleet of their own to intercept, but the ships instead abruptly shift course and discharge their diseased cargo onto the world of Combine, specifically to attack a Blue Daggers company there for a mission.  The Daggers rout and slaughter the Nurglites before they can contaminate the soil of the indispensable Agri-world.
M41.742: Macragge Stands – The Tyranids assault Macragge, the homeworld of the Blue Daggers’ progenitor Chapter, the Ultramarines.  Although casualties run into the millions of humans and hundreds of Marines, the Ultramarines eventually drive off and destroy most of Hive Fleet Behemoth.
M41.749: Overambition – Warships of the Battlefleet Drumnos report that one of the hundreds of lesser pirate fleets that operate in the Oldlight Exo-zone has vanished.  Local worlds on the Drumnos-Cloudburst border brace for the worst, and indeed the Frontier World of Hangonne is promptly invaded by the pirates, seeking plunder and recruits.  A force of Blue Daggers and Cloudburst Defenders intercept and destroy the pirate ships as they retreat, and manage to return some small amount of stolen goods to the grateful people of Hangonne.
M41.750: Hunger, Evil and Infinite – The news of the arrival of the Tyranid Hive Fleets, albeit in a sanitized form, reaches the ears of the Cloudburst Sector.  Civil unrest and upset damage productivity on some Cloudburst worlds before the Arbites restore order.
M41.760: Greater Need – A dozen Battle Brothers and two Techmarines of the Blue Daggers depart Septiim to join the Deathwatch, at the specific request of Watch Fortress Excalibris.  Only the Techmarines and two Marines return alive, fifty years later.
M41.788: The Scadial Campaigns – Fifteen Imperial Guard regiments, each raised from a different world in Cloudburst, dispatch to the Cloudburst Circuit, alongside fifteen Navy and Space Marine ships and twenty Daggers.  Their ultimate objective is far beyond, in the Exo-zone, where the Segmentum Ultima battlefleet is staging to attack the Ork empire of Bluddrunk Bonesquat.  Though most of the Daggers and starships of the fleet return, the Imperial Guard survivors are too few in number to become a reconstituted regiment, and they are left behind as a permanent garrison on Bluddrunk’s former homeworld to defend it against uprisings of Feral Orks.
M41.799: Heresy Stirs – Oromet’s Ecclesiarchial servants lose control of a dangerous heretic in their own number, the Deacon Woldenbar.  He has turned his soul completely to Chaos, and managed to convince a billion humans of the Oromet system and beyond of the true divinity of the Dark Gods.  The Inquisition captures him alive, and cryo-freezes him for torture and interrogation on Celeste.
M41.800: The Fifth Glasian Migration – Once more, the alien monsters in the thrall of Tzeentch enter into the realms of men and assault the Cloudburst Sector.  Although the Blue Daggers are able, with the aid of the sector’s millions of defenders, to kill the Glasians and sink their command ship before it has the chance to destroy any Imperial worlds, the civilian casualties in Septiim and Mendic rise into the millions.
M41.826: Fire and Death – The Imperial colony Letrione in the Mendic system falls to Chaos Undivded in mere weeks.  How and why Tzeentch allowed this is unknown, but whatever the cause, an entire system is lost to mankind.
M41.839: Green Waves – Though not numerous or directed enough to be considered a true Waaagh, the Orks of an unknown world in the Oldlight Exo-zone stage an invasion of the Cloudburst Circuit.  Hundreds of ships from human, Ork, and at least one unknown alien race race to strategic points in the hot gasses of the Circuit, and fight over the uninhabited worlds.  The Imperium manages to force an uneven peace by destroying enough Ork ships that the survivors can no longer mount sufficient force to both attack the other factions and defend their holdings, while the mysterious aliens disappear.
M41.848: An Unremarked Beginning – The future leader of the Free Corsair Coalition, Langdon Reith, graduates with honors from the Nauphry War College, and witnesses some of the ships he will someday command in the FCC attack the ship on which he first serves.  He barely escaped with his life in the fighting, and watches as the leaders of the pirate attackers are ripped to shreds by Navy retaliation forces.
M41.862: Rampancy – A Mechanicus research base on the border between the Hapster Subsector and the Naxos Sector, AGF322, drops out of contact.  Basilikon Astra ships sent to investigate are fired upon by cogitator-controlled lasers on the asteroid into which the lab is built.  The Basilikon destroys the asteroid.  No freshly-slain bodies are found in the remains, indicating that the Mechanicus personnel in the base were already long-dead.
M41.879: Full Strength – The Blue Daggers reach the nominal full strength of their Chapter.  This totals to just over 1300 Marines, not counting Dreadnoughts and Marines in the Deathwatch.  Although the Daggers have sufficient geneseed to continue expanding, they elect to at least try to adhere to the Codex, despite their Honor Guard far exceeding the number they are traditionally allowed.
M41.897: Necrons – Although contact between the human race and the Necrons had first occurred many hundreds of years before, the destruction of Sanctuary 101 by the Necrons is the first contact of which any video records survive of individual aliens.  News of their existence filters through the Mechanicus and the Adeptus Astartes, leading some Deathwatch Marines to question whether border facilities like Dascomb would be better deployed in places where they could protect the Imperium from the Necrons.
M41.900: The Sixth Glasian Migration – The fleets of the Glasians arrive in the Cloudburst Sector once again, and promptly lay siege to four star systems.  Overall, the full-strength Blue Daggers are able to repulse the Glasians, but the Mining World of Lordarine is nearly lost to the Imperium when the aliens overrun the capital.  Only a last-minute destruction of their Cylinder by a Terminator Squad from the Daggers prevents a repeat of the Chlorit disaster.
M41.904: Rebellion – Future Admiral Reith steals a ship from the Imperial Navy and defects, forming a pirate group.  His first successful capture is against an Imperial freight convoy, which mistook his ship for a legitimate defender.  He ambushes and loots the convoy before they even have a chance to confirm his identity.
M41.912: Foreseeing – The potent Pscryer of Oglith, a recognized Tarot-Reader and Sanctionite, detonates on the job.  Two minutes later, a ship carrying Ork Weirdboys crashes on the planet, guided by a psychic signal the Imperium can barely detect.  Oglith Jaegers hunt and kill the Weirdboys, but the Orks manage to locate the entrance to the underground Feral Ork communities before they die, and were minutes from contacting them before the Jaegers kill them.
M41.931: Ingrates – A rebellion sweeps Hive Walden on Thimble, and the Overlord mobilizes the Argent Shield and Sword to suppress it.  Four hundred thousand citizens and half a million rebel PDF and militia perish before order is retored, at the cost of forty percent productivity in the Hive’s factories.
M41.939: Unbreathing – Over four thousand daemon-worshippers of the allegiance of Slaanesh and Tzeentch either buy passage or hijack passage to the Dead World of Brotherhood, and begin fighting over the ruins of the Exterminatus-flattened world.  Inquisitorial observers, watching from stealthed ships in orbit, are baffled by their ferocious fighting in vac suits and enclosed armor.  Their objective remains unclear.
M41.942: Conscription – A brigade of Thimbln Argent Swords and four regiments of Septiim Guard deploy to the Pox Ring Containment, a special detachment of the Officio Munitorum raised to drive off the Nurglite armies rampaging through central Naxos.  They are joined by two squads of Blue Daggers, three Techmarines, and an Apothecary, to serve as advisors and emergency backup if needed.
M41.948: Shields – An archaeotechnological machine is discovered by Explorators on the Feral World ABS00273.  The machine appears to be a hybrid power plant, collecting geothermal, wind, solar, and thermoplasmic energy to fuel an enormous Void Shield of Dark Age origin.  The Void Shield appears to cover a previously undiscovered and subterranean storage chamber on the world of cavemen and tribals.  The Mechanicus begins restoring the advanced technology and probing the edges of the chamber, which seems inaccessible from the surface.  Initial surface-penetrating radar scans suggest it to have been cold storage for a shipwreck of some kind.  The Void Shield is over one hundred fifty percent the strength of a contemporary Mechanicus Void Shield of equivalent generator size, and unfathomably ancient, dating to even before the Rise of the Iron Men.
M41.949: Hidden Knowledge – The Space Hulk Dreadful Sight skids through the outer edges of the Triune system.  To prevent any contamination of the helpless primitives on the planet Triune itself, a combined force of Solstice, Cognomen, and Fabique Skitarii intercept and board the Hulk with help from ten Blue Daggers Terminators.  Aboard the Hulk, they find over two dozen Khorne daemons, fighting just as many Tzeentch daemons for control of the vessel.  Now that the Hulk has left the Warp, they are vulnerable to direct attack, and the Skitarii and Marines manage to purge them, with casualties.  The Hulk is still on a collision course with Triune, however, and so the Mechanicus reluctantly destroys it, though not before pilfering the datacores and ammunition of the ships in the Hulk.
M41.954: Tartaros – The Rogue Trader house Zutash sends a covert message to the Blue Daggers Chapter headquarters.  A Zutash ship has claimed to find over four hundred suits of Power Armor and nine Tartaros Terminator suits in the Oldlight Exo-zone.  However, in order to find reach them to trade to the Chapter, the ship will need to travel through a region of space in an Inquisitorial quarantine zone only Astartes or Inquisitors bay bypass legally.  Lord Ranult Arden is forced to make a choice.
M41.961: Beggars and Thieves – The nomadic fleets of vagrants and scavengers that eke out a living in the spinward edges of the Drumnos Sector come under sudden attack from unknown Eldar and Ork pirates.  The nomads flee towards the Cloudburst Sector, but only one third make it before the pirates capture the rest.
M41.977: The Rot Souls Drive On – A collection of Nurgle cultists on the border of the Naxos and Cloudburst Sectors abruptly go public and begin assaulting an Arbites Courthouse on their homeworld.  The arrival of Inquisitorial reinforcements from Cloudburst drives the cultists offworld.  They capture a freighter and fly off into the nebulae between Naxos and Cloudburst, where they successfully summon the Rot Souls.  The Rot Souls and their cultist backup fly towards the previously secured worlds of the Corumbino Nebula, and assault Imperial mining colonies there.  The overstretched defenders of Naxos barely hold on against the pustulent tide.
M41.984: Murmurs of Crime – The great Merchant House Herrera endures a great scandal as four of its mercantile offices on Septiim Primus are found to be smuggling illegal gene-mod technology.  Arbites and Ordo Hereticus investigations yield four executions and over five hundred arrests, and the impounding of two Herrera freighters.
M41.985: Darkness Rises – Fluctuations in the Astronomican and surges in genestealer activity in the northern Segmentum Ultima lead to unrest and civil disturbances on hundreds of worlds in the region.  Two outposts in the Circuit go dark.
M41.989: Betrayal – The Imperial Luna Cruiser Swift and its two escort Cobras abandon the Imperium for the growing power of the Free Corsair Coalition.
M41.990: Annexation – The FCC invades and instantly conquers Zlodziei.  The Imperium does not immediately respond.
M41.991: Monsters and Beasts – The Hive Fleets that followed Behemoth invade the Imperium.  Between containment measures, the aliens’ insatiable hunger, and the activity of Eldar using scorched earth tactics to prevent the Fleets from expanding, the Imperium loses hundreds of worlds in the span of nine years.
M41.992: The Battle of ANKH982 – The FCC captures the Imperial Light Cruiser Flame so quickly that its Astropath does not have time to call for help.
M41.993: Iconoclasm – A cabal of Heretical progressives on the world Forender corrupt the Bishop of the little agri-colony.  He preaches the inherent equality of all mankind for two years before the Ordo Hereticus notices and burns him at the stake.
M41.994: Surge – A blast of aetheric energy two light-years outside the Foraldshold system presages a thinning of the Materium boundaries, but to the surprise of observing Magos, nothing else happens.
M41.995: Preparation – Citing the increased demands on the sector’s resources from securing the borders from the FCC, the Cloudburst Sector Administratum increases tithe requirements from all worlds able to pay them.  Civil disobedience follows on some worlds.
M41.996: Recall – The Blue Daggers summon all of their brothers on deployments outside the Sector back to prepare for the arrival of the Glasians.
M41.997: Imperial Warnings – The Tarot foretells Glasian assaults in more systems than ever before.  Imperial Navy and Blue Dagger ships fly to the future invasion sites to begin preparing for the fighting.
M41.998: Oglith Burns – A force of well over two hundred sixty thousand Orks invade Oglith when a mistake in their fleet’s navigation directs them away from Gorkypark.  The Sector Administratum makes the tough call of diverting most of their Glasian defenses to Oglith to attempt to secure and protect the Subsector Capital.
M41.998: Reinforcements – A task force of over a full Battle Company of Celestial Knights arrive in Septiim to negotiate backup to reinforce the Cloudburst Sector.  After stocking up on ammunition on the Gargantuan, the task force under Irlain Ironhand departs to the Forender system, led by the Strike Cruiser Citadel of Stone.
M41.998: Infiltration – After a year of debate, the Inquisition determines that the Zlodziei invasion represents too clear a threat to the security of the Imperium to be allowed to fester into something worse.  However, most Sector assets are either bracing for the Glasian Migration, relieving Oglith, or aiding Rogue Traders in securing and looting the Cloudburst Circuit and Oldlight Exo-zone.  Thus, four specialist teams of Throne Agents, Interrogators, and Inquisitorial special operations Scions and Stormtroopers fly to Zlodziei undercover to infiltrate and kill the Admiral that has bound the Coalition together.  If needed, an emergency relief force of Clegran Hunters can dispatch to reinforce them.
M41.999: Anarchy – The Lord Primarch Roboute Guilliman, Lord of the Thirteenth and Master of Ultramar, awakens on the Throne of Corrections in the Fortress Hera on Macragge.  Cadia explodes when Abbadon the Despoiler crashes a Blackstone Fortress into it.  Machinations of the Custodes, Inquisition, and Dark Eldar result in some temporary repairs of the Golden Throne.  Khaine’s Gate in the Undercore of Commoragh shatters.  The ancient Eldar weapons that Asdrubael Vect stationed there to stop a daemon incursion are instantly overcome.  The 13th Black Crusade to split the Imperium begins and captures several worlds around Cadia.  Mordax falls to Orks.  The Hadex Anomaly and the Eye of Terror begin expanding.  Belisarius Cawl begins deploying Primaris Marines.
M42.000: The Seventh Glasian Migration – The Glasians attack the Cloudburst Sector, hitting six systems this time, including several worlds that lack the means to stop their invasions outright.  The Blue Daggers, the Imperial Guard, the Scions, the Mechanicus, the Imperial Navy, the Deathwatch, the Inquisition, and unnumbered millions of PDF and SDF prepare for the worst as the darkness closes in.