a few cloudbursts

System: Septiim

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: System Lord Neverember

Planets: Six, numbered Primus through Septimus

Garden Planet Septiim Primus
Satellites: One moon, Decani

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 72%, Oxygen 25.5%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide 0.05%.

Religion: The Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: Yes

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum (Delving Subsector representative), Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (Astropathic Choir on orbital platform Choral Reef), Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus

Climate: Climate is temperate, with small polar ice caps, and global forest

Geography: Small, shallow oceans, large polar ice caps.  The entirety of the land mass of the planet is covered in thick forests, with low-quality soil and rapid, thin rivers.  Its few oceans are highly saline.  There are large deposits of manganese, zinc, and iron in its crust, which are relatively easy to mine once the huge trees are cleared away.

Gravity: Primus has 1.08 Terran Gravity.

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Septiim Primus exports Timber, Zinc, Manganese, Petrochemicals, and Paper products, as well as being the primary source of Imperial military recruits in the Zone
Principle Imports: Copper, Diamond, Finished Goods, Adamantine, Ceramite Ores, Fish, Aircraft/hovercraft Parts

Countries and Continents: Primus has a large network of cities on its surface, each connected by surface and sub-surface tunnels and roadways to keep out the encroaching trees.  These cities are generally self-sufficient, save the smallest, and are surrounded by various farms, mines, and factories.  The major landmass is broken up by small, silty, saline oceans, making earthquakes a serious problem, but tidal waves a relatively small one.

Military: Septiim Defenders (high quality PDF).  Based largely at the cities, as well as the various smaller military bases scattered around the planet.

Contact with Other Worlds: Primus has extensive contact with the other worlds in the system, and serves as the focal point for military operations in the Economic Zone and beyond.  Most of the adjacent systems to the Zone are beneficiaries of Septiim’s economic output, and some contribute finished goods to its economy.

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular (theoretically, the planet could exempt itself from paying the tithe as an Astartes homeworld, but elects not to)

Population: 7,000,000

Description:
Septiim Primus is a world of trees and cities, with enormous forests of mighty, vertical plants dominating all land.  Here and there, fast rivers cut deep canyons and ravines through the clay-heavy soil, making their way to the saline, silt-filled seas.  The people of Septiim Primus are of a mixed, ancient Terran stock, with gradually homogenizing features.

The capital city of Anholme is tucked between two mountain ranges in the southern hemisphere, ensuring frequent rainfall.  The lack of mutational factors and the Terra-like air make the planet endure a low rate of abhuman and mutancy births, to the relief of the Arbites.  The vast cities on Primus tend to be both dense and heavily populated.  As a natural consequence, upswings in crime, disease, or major fires can have immediate and wide impact.  Some argue that it’s worth it for the view.  Anholme enjoys abundant geothermal and solar power, in addition to the usual plasmic reactor output of the Mechanicus’ power plants.  Deep zinc and manganese deposits nearby provide industrial trade, while Promethium and petrochemical wells across the globe allow for manufacturing of abundant fuels for the world, with enough left over for export.

Primus culture has been more affected by the Glasians than any other world’s, in the system or outside it.  The world has been attacked by Glasians in fully five invasions so far, and the scars of crashing Glasian ships (or Imperial ships) can be seen from space, as brown marring on the green of its forests.  Primus cities each had large train depots, long before the arrival of the Glasians, as they are the most efficient means of transporting goods and people between the distant cities, but now, they are built underground as a matter of course.  Cloudburst’s oxygen tunnels and Primus’ new habit of building whole transportation systems underground were the first major examples of subterranean construction in the sector.  The sector-wide love of tunnels can be fairly said to stem from those two worlds, though Maskos could also make that argument fairly.

Septiim Primus serves as the de facto system capital.  The System Overlord has a platform in orbit, which also contains the system’s Astropathic Choir, and also maintains an estate on the ground.  The Planetary Governor has their own estate in Anholme.  The local Ecclesiarchy is headquartered in Anholme as well, and practices largely the same system of exultation of the nobility of wealth, and vice versa, as Cloudburst, to a slightly lesser extent.  The local Ecclesiarchy, after all, must also deal with the fact that the Septiim system is routinely attacked by the Glasians.  In the run-up to the Migrations, preachers turn their sermons to raging against the alien, praising the brave defenders of the system, begging mercy and aid from the God-Emperor, and emphasizing the superiority of the human form over the xeno.
The Ecclesiarchy of the Septiim is generally not aware of the inherent Chaos taint of the Glasians, but its senior members are.  Often, the clerics of larger Septiim cities will raise Frateris Militia from retired PDF and Guard, but this is discouraged by both the Administratum and the Inquisition.  Instead, any residents of the three Septiim worlds who wish to volunteer temporarily for the defense of their worlds are encouraged to join Planetary Defense Volunteer outfits.

The economy of Primus is fueled by timber, ores, and the military.  Larger cities glow at night with the lights of industry, as lumber mills and military factories churn around the clock.  Septiim Primus provides nearly all the arms and simple vehicles of the local Guard, while the PDF is instead supplied by Solstice, and the Daggers by their own forges and Soltice’s more advanced manufactorae.  Primus does not have a surface navy, though its PDF has extensive riverine and arboreal training.  As the policy of the Septiim Economic Zone is to divert all military recruits through basic training on Secundus before being diverted to specific branches and specializations, Primus recruits and conscripts do not get any special training before leaving.
Commerce on a world of so few cities, but so many people, is not simple.  Although enormous starports, rail yards, and transit hubs for Primus’ subterranean constructions and subways are not so hard to find, the storage space needed for the goods of billions of people is.  Warehouse space is ever at a premium in the Primus markets.  Combined residence buildings are common throughout Primus, especially in larger cities.  These take the form of a store or other building on the ground floor, with a cargo elevator, stairwell, and passenger lift in the back.  Below, these conveyances lead down to the underground tunnel networks, while they lead to residences above, usually with a layer of soundproofing between the business and the residences.
The government of Primus doesn’t have a rule against cutting the trees of their world down, per se, but the trees are the primary source of food and air filtration for Primus.  Being as close to the system’s star as it is, the planet would most likely be uninhabitable if it were not for the water caching and atmospheric regulation effect of the trees.  As such, cutting one down when it is not needed is a highly socially objectionable thing to do.
The planet has extensive defenses.  Primus sports a huge orbital battle platform, nearly the size of a Xerxes IV anchorage.  Several dozen smaller satellites, a dedicated Navy orbital dock, four orbital watch bases with cogitator-controlled sensor packages and synchronized laser batteries, and nineteen civilian docks surround the world.  The civilian docks can be commandeered for military purposes if needed.  At closer range, the planet enjoys the protection of seven Defense Lasers, as well as forty defensive missile silos, firing a mixture of plasma and conventional warheads.  These missiles could be outfitted with other, more exotic payloads, should the need arise.

Relatively few of the great Mercantile and Noble houses of the Imperium have a presence in Septiim, but there are some.  The great Warp-traders and Chartered Captains house of Herrera are headquartered here, in fact, and have a vast manor outside the capital, complete with outbuildings and a small private militia garrison.  Their freighters often haul the goods of Septiim to other worlds in the Sector and beyond, and bring offworld trinkets and rare metals in for Septiim industry.  As the Septiim system is poor in Ceramite and Adamantium ores, they must be imported for military and civil construction, and are often brought in by Herrera freighters.

The Schola Progenia that dot the system divert all worthy psykers they can find to the Blue Daggers, for the Daggers are somewhat disadvantaged by the low psyker birthrates of the Cloudburst Sector.  Indeed, they have only the number of Librarians most would expect from a chapter two hundred eighty Marines smaller; the potential recruitment of a Librarian is too rare a chance to pass up.  The largest Scholam is on Primus itself, sequestered high in the mountains on the planet’s largest continent.  The mountain chain is one of the few places in the world that does not have total tree coverage.  The Mechanicus flattened several peaks for the purpose of the Scholam.  As this leaves the place a rather obvious target, the Scholam maintains its own small tunnels, leading deep into the heart of the nearby mountains.  In the buildings themselves, resembling nothing more than a military base with a few sports fields, thousands of orphans from the Adepta across the Zone train for their future use by the Imperium.  Here is the largest Scholam in the Subsector, and not conincidentally, a large Imperial Navy officer’s school.  The Tech-Priesthood of Solstice recruits from the most mechanically apt students of the Scholam as well, to the irritation of the Ecclesiarchy.

Decani is an airless rock, with little but a few solar power plants, a tiny long-range vox relay, and a metallurgic factory that exploits the high temperature and low gravity of the moon.  There is an emergency dry-dock there for ships of eight or fewer kilometers in length, but no other significant construction.  The Mechanicus plans to create sub-surface mines at some point in the future.


Garden Planet Septiim Secundus
Satellites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 74%, Oxygen 24%, Argon .5%, Water .8%, Carbon Dioxide 0.7%.

Religion: The Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica (Astropathic Choir on orbital platform Choral Reef), Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astartes, Adeptus Mechanicus

Climate: Climate is temperate, with many low lands split by rivers, equatorial mountain ranges, thick polar ice

Geography: Enormous oceans, fed by long rivers through the low lands of the continents.  Thick, wide polar ice caps and slow ocean currents.

Gravity: Secundus has .98 Terran Gravity.

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Septiim Secundus exports Blubber, Salt, Concrete mix, Gravel, Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Tin, Textiles
Principle Imports: Industrial slag, Food, Machine parts

Countries and Continents: Secundus has no country borders, and seven major continents

Military: Septiim Defenders (high quality PDF).  Based largely at the cities, as well as the various smaller military bases scattered around the planet.

Contact with Other Worlds: Septiim Secundus is a major military training area, and has routine and frequent contact with other worlds.  Most of the adjacent systems to the Zone are beneficiaries of Septiim’s economic output, and some contribute finished goods to its economy.

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular (theoretically, system could exempt itself from paying the tithe as an Astartes homeworld, but elects not to)

Population: 3,000,000

Description:
Secundus is a buzzing hive of industry, travel, and military expenditure.  Though possessing of a relatively small population for a modernized Garden World, Secundus is the primary military training ground for the system’s various surface fleets, riverine forces, and limited paratroop forces.  The planet also hosts the main Navy anchorage for the Zone, the large orbital platform called Waterscale.  The supreme commander of local SDF and Navy assets resides here as a matter of course.  Elsewhere in the planet’s orbit, Secundus also hosts the local Black Ship and Imperial Tithe infrastructure, though Secundus doesn’t pay the lion’s share of the Tithe.

The planet plays host to the only Adeptus Sororitas convent in the Zone, or indeed in the Subsector, and one of only four in the Sector.  A tiny convent, possessing of only 40 Battle Sisters and a few hundred Hospitallers and Famulous Sisters, this small offshoot of the Sacred Rose Majoris is the star and darling of the system Ecclesiarchy, who hold the convent up as an icon of the ideal lifestyle.  The Sisters there are objects of veneration for the people of the Septiim system.  Their relationship with the Blue Daggers is cordial to their faces and acrimonious behind their backs.  Economically, the planet is dependent on its textile production, which flies straight to Thimble.  It also collects massive amounts of scrap and slag from other industrial bodies in the system, to harvest for its precious materials, though Solstice surely is going to shut down that industry for itself eventually.

Cities on Secundus sit on plateaus that jut from the massive equatorial mountain range.  The Mechanicus, when tasked with building the planet’s infrastructure, elected to drop massive pre-fabricated cities from orbit, using the marges normally employed for tithe collection.  As a result, many of the buildings in these pre-built cities are identical to each other and those in other cities.  Not all homes and workplaces are pre-made, of course, and many are the product of organic growth on the continents farther from the equatorial mountains.
Solstice’s orbits hold dozens of satellites and platforms, like most Imperial Garden Worlds, and also serve as convenient anchorages for the system’s Navy.  Waterscale is large enough to handle all routine Navy traffic, but Solstice and Decani handle most general repairs.  The planet also enjoys an orbital spire.  The orbital spire anchors to Waterscale, which is built into a nickel-silicon asteroid, and houses roughly two thousand crew.  Expansion plans for Waterscale include an Aquila shuttle factory, a Defense Laser, and a Mechanicus sensor suite to detect incoming Glasian Cylinders, though that is far in the future.

Because of the constant threat of pirates and Glasians, the orbital defenses of Secundus have to be robust.  The world has fourteen small docks for governmental use, outfitted with some residence suites and cargo storage chambers.  They serve as a convenient place to relay psykers and tithe goods to wherever in the system those are being picked up.  They also serve as staging areas for government travels between worlds, a long and boring affair in Cloudburst.  A much larger cargo well, nearly four kilometers long, accumulates non-perishable goods in lots, and loads them into bulk freighters bound for Thimble directly, dutifully itemized by the Administratum.  Defensively, these platforms are of little value.  However, three massive laser platforms also orbit the world farther out, along with another, far larger one.  The larger one orbits opposite the Waterscale platform, and sports a cruiser-weight torpedo array and two Defense Lasers.  The Navy and SDF would both very much like more defenses, and jockeying for precedence has already begun.


Garden Planet Septiim Tertius
Satellites: 2, both inhabited

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 74.5%, Oxygen 24%, Argon .5%, Water .3%, Carbon Dioxide 0.07%.

Religion: The Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Climate is temperate, mostly with cold oceans and heavy annual winds

Geography: Cold, low saline oceans, thick polar ice, heavy rainfalls every standard month, deep polar crater, lengthy peninsular spurs into the main ocean with fine sand and thick salt buildups

Gravity: Tertius has .95 Terran Gravity.

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Septiim Tertius exports Fish, Ores, Seaweed, Sand, Herbs, Grains, Vegetables, Leather, Bedding, Aircraft, Small Spacecraft, Manpower
Principle Imports: Ammunition, Construction Equipment, Machine parts, Paper

Countries and Continents: Tertius has no country borders, and three major continents

Military: Septiim Defenders (high quality PDF).  Scattered evenly over major military installations and staged from multiple bases, plus orbital spire complex

Contact with Other Worlds: Constant, thanks to Economic Zone tithe payment center

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular (theoretically, system could exempt itself from paying the tithe as an Astartes homeworld, but elects not to)

Population: 4,200,000

Description:
The third of the three habitable worlds of the system, Tertius is a land of farms, cities, military bases, and warehouses.  The rocky world is a breadbasket and a bank, so they are heard to grumble.  The tithe of the Economic Zone is collected here and Secundus, and though the significant majority of the people of Septiim see paying the tithe as a holy and fair responsibility because that is what they are educated to think, the fact that it is a huge drain on Tertius’ economy has not gone unnoticed.  Tertius, however, is the world from which most of the Daggers’ recruits come, which is a point of pride for the people here.  The planet’s orbital defenses are extensive, as most are in Septiim, and the world’s two moons are critical to the sector’s anti-Glasian protection.
On the surface, magnificent fields of golden plants wave and shine in the wind, heavy with grains and vegetables for the markets and tithe-barques.  Roadside chapels are a common sight on the planet, which has far more loose and permissive marriage laws than the other Septiim worlds.  The possibility of a young couple eloping to Tertius, finding work on the farms doing honest labor in the great fieldss, and wedding at a roadside chapel is a common one in local fiction.
Enormous Defense Lasers protect several cities on the planet proper.  The Lasers are not just a sign of the Emperor’s favor, they are payment.  The Forge Moon of Solstice orbits Tertius, and often pays for its food and ore with defensive weapons or power plants.
Other payments, however, come in the form of buildings.  The planet, for instance, has most of the few surface factories in the system able to manufacture aircraft of Navy units.  The factories manufacture Sky Talons, Vendettas, and civilian aircraft.  Small Marauder Bomber units built on Solstice allow for defense through carpet bombing of anything that dares land on Tertius’ surface.  The factories are generally built underground or in depressions, to prevent shockwaves from accidental explosions from traveling across the surface and damaging local homes.
Tertius’ capital is a sprawling megapolis of over twenty million souls.  The city lies in the shadow of the cluster of tectonic mountains near the planet’s equator, similar to the ones on Secundus, but much taller.  Inside, the solid walls of Arbites Precincts loom over gambling and vice districts like weary chaperones.  Brothels, gambling halls, tourist traps, auction houses, artisan workshops, and other places of spending and making money leech out along the arterial roadways of the vast Tertius Loger City, the largest single city by population in the system.  Though the city has a relatively high crime rate, the imminence of the next Glasian Migration has put both a damper on the fun and an urgent edge to it.
The world has mining at its barren, rocky southern pole, but its north pole is a six-mile-thick of block of solid ice, resting in an asteroid crater.  Its oceans are cold and not very saline, making it excellent for fishing.  The warm equatorial latitudes serve as a paradise resort for Septiim’s wealthy, and there is a huge, formally sanctioned mausoleum in a secluded island chain there.  The Navy has a small shipyard in its orbit, but it pales in comparison to the Gargantuan.  The shipyard can only manufacture vessels of Viper class, or small freighters.
Above the planet, its defenses sit ready for Glasian assault.  Unlike the other Garden worlds of the system, Tertius employs a single, colossal defense platform, with fifty satellites orbiting it, no larger than Lightnings.  The platform is a rough cube of metal, four kilometers on a side, and mounts battlecruiser-level weapons on each side.  The satellites each sport four aspect-sseking missile launchers, and one larger anti-bomber missile tube, along with one point defense multi-laser.  They are too small to stop a Glasian ship by themselves, but that’s the point of having fifty.


Equinox is a chuck of iron and space rock, with no real material value, but its gravity is just high enough to support simple hab structures.  With a complement of solar panels augmenting its plasma reactors, this station serves as the hub of the system’s auspexes and sensoria nets.
There is an asteroid belt between Tertius and Tetranus.  The asteroids are manganese, stone, vaporous nitrogen, iron, nickel, zinc, and trace amounts of gold.  Gargantuan is here, the headquarters of the Blue Daggers and their Chapter Fortress.  It contains a small shipyard of its own, capable of manufacturing the Chapter’s vessels of sub-battlecruiser class.  Its enormous plasma reactor is more than capable of powering anything up to a Ramilies with ease, giving it extra power for its void shields and weapons.  Though the thick stone and metal ore of the asteroid serve as almost impenetrable armor, the true might of the station is its colossal Triple Nova cannon, which many times superior in power to that of an Ark Mechanicus’ main battery.  Its external size is less than that of a Ramilies, and its interior space is significantly less as well, but its serfs and servitors do not require the numbers needed to maintain a larger station.  Its dedicated Astropathic temple serves as the communication hub of all military assets in the system, including all local Mechanicus, Navy, SDF, and Astartes vessels.  A huge gallery of skilled tech-Adepts and Naval ratings maintain the cogitators that control the vox arrays and psy-hubs, while a dedicated team of Scholastica Psykana and Adeptus Astra Telepathica laborers carefully operates the psycrystal web that allows for Astropathic communications.  Arbites and other Imperial institutions use the Astropathic temple on Primus instead.

There are extensive mining and refining void platforms in the belt, but none even approaches the scale of the Gargantuan, which started life as a Mechanicus mining site.  Some small observation platforms, similar in design to those that defend Armageddon, keep watch for Glasian invaders.  They are vastly weaker than those huge structures, but are defended by small, belt-fed close-in weapons.  The Arbites anti-pirate taskforce maintains a zero gravity boarding training center here.
Beside it, the Blue Daggers maintain their memorial.  Once, the Daggers were headquartered in the Gleamlock Asteroid Mine, not the Gargantuan.  The Glasians destroyed Gleamlock during the second invasions, when the Daggers weer just Exigent Task Force Cloudburst.  Now, all that remains of their ad hoc command center is a hollow shell of melted rock and metal, and the tiny memorial plaque the Daggers guard with a volunteer, year-round.


Forge Moon: Solstice
Satellites: N/A

Tropospheric Composition: Argon 40%, Nitrogen 40%, Krypton 20%

Religion: Cult Mechanicus

Government Type: Adeptus Mechanicus

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

Climate: N/A

Geography: Dead, barren rock

Gravity: Solstice has .5 Terran Gravity on the surface, but artificial gravity plates make the gravity Terran standard within the warrens

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Machines, Astartes Wargear, Military Vehicles, Bombers, Prefabricated Houses
Principle Imports: Industrial Slag, Food, Water, Air, Convicts

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: Skitarii, Legio Cybernetica Solstice, Vigil-Keepers Marauder fleet

Contact with Other Worlds: Daily, thanks to its industrial importance

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non (all industrial output goes to adjacent worlds anyway)

Population: 2,908,000 (humans), 3,000,000 (servitors, estimated)

Description:
With the arrival of the Glasians, and the uniformly dire predictions of the Tarot, Septiim’s future looked grim.  After the Second Glasian Conclave, the power of Septiim decided that in order to prevent the vulnerable system from being overrun, new assets would be needed to fight off the xeno scum.  However, the Cognomen Forges were already straining at maximum production, and the Naxos industrial base was busy with its various problems.  Drumnos Sector Mechanicus representatives came up with a solution: a miniature Forge World.  The large and resource-rich moon Solstice was the natural choice for this ambitious project.  The Forge World of Syracuse in Drumnos, Fabique in Naxos, and Cognomen in Cloudburst would share responsibility for getting the project off the ground, rather than any one bearing the cost unfairly.Raw labor was not hard to come by in the expanding Cloudburst.  Armies of laborers, mostly Servitors, convicts, and those displaced by the Glasians descended on Solstice, clad in void suits and armed with electric diggers and shovels.  Cognomen provided the great mining machines and tunnelers that would take over once the foundations were dug.  Fabique provided the orbiting logistical assets and defenses.  Syracuse provided its deadly Robots to guard the site, round the clock.  Manual labor gave way to tunnelers as Cognomen’s gifts arrived.  As the snake-like tunneling units dug deep down below, Techpriests and Adepts erected oxygen shields and pressure walls over the huge hole that would someday lead to their future.  Artificial gravity plates came next, and oxygen separators.  Carbon filters and power plants popped up on tunnel walls like fungi as a whole world appeared inside the rocky moon.
For four hundred years, the machines and people of Solstice labored, building habs, factories, temples, great hydroponic and protein recycling chambers, power sources, and places of strictly regulated leisure and retirement.  As the underground world grew and grew, far faster than Drimmerzole or even Maskos’ subterranean networks ever had, the Legio Cybernetica robots from Syracuse settled into their charging and maintenance cradles, to await their defense of the world.
The armies of Solstice are a force of shifting power in the Septiim system.  Armed with the same collection of eclectic and potent technoarcana as any other force of the Cult Mechanicus, Solstice’s forces are as capable as most Mechanicus forces when it comes to combat.  The issue they face is size.  Solstice is but a Forge Moon, not a Forge World, and therefore has serious scale problems compared to mighty Cognomen or ancient Mars.  Solstice Skitarii are fiercely loyal to Mars, not Solstice, though of course the armies of Solstice would be foolish not to treat their allies well.  Solstice is far too small to support a Titan legion, though they would dearly like one.  Given the logistical demands of the Blue Daggers and the local Arbites and Sororitas, Solstice can divert little of its resources to equipping its own, native forces.  These forces mostly take the form of Cult Mechanicus armies, and a small Legio Cybernetica force.  It is the Cybernetica in which Solstice takes the most pride, as even Cognomen does not field Robots.  Solstice also plays home to large Marauder Bomber factories, well below the surface, and can stage a fleet of these craft in defense of the system if needed.

The world has a few small Lagrange stations between itself and Equinox, and between itself and Tertius.  They consist of various asteroid redirection facilities, which can collect space rocks and debris, which is then either melted on site or redirected to Solstice proper.  This serves to clear the remains of Glasian ships after their assaults on Septiim, at a small scale.  Heavier defense stations and small orbital docks allow for limited manufacture and protection over Solstice’s surface, but the subterranean work takes priority, and is far more productive.

The system of Septiim is a rare jewel in the galaxy’s outer fringes.  The presence of fully three non-terraformed and shirtsleeves-habitable worlds in one system, with three gravity-anchor gas giants in the outer system, is extraordinarily rare.  That humans and Eldar alike would have missed it for colonization beggars belief.  Nevertheless, no alien has yet laid claim to the Septiim system, and it has remained a human colony of the Imperium for well over two thousand years of relative stability, despite everything.  Referred to colloquially as a Pasture Gate system, both for the tendency of such systems to support immense agriculture and the general need for those systems to hold massive defenses, these systems are treasures beyond price for the Administratum.


Outer Worlds

The three gas giants in the outer system are economic holdings of the Administratum, and serve to pump chemicals and ores into the greater markets of the system.  However, given the routine beatings the Septiim system takes from the Glasians, the stations demand heavy protection from the SDF and Navy, and don’t always get it.
Septiim Tetranus is a vast gas giant, it is the largest body in the system beside Septiim itself.  The cloudy ribbons of a hundred gasses and orbital rings encircle the solid uranium core, believed by astro-Adepts to be a piece of the core of one of the first second-stage stars to have existed in the galaxy.  Its many dozens of moons are too small to be of great resource value, but their incredible beauty and magnificent vistas have resulted in some of the larger ones to be bought by nobles and made into shrines or vacation homes.  Its atmosphere is mined for rare gasses, including a gaseous form of petrochemical that is identical to the product of the first stage of promethium refinement.  Its rings conceal a top-secret Navy sensor platform, and its two poles have large way-stations for gas freighters on their way to the refineries.  The world has over eight thousand residents on its stations and its eighty-five moons.
Septiim Pentius is also an economically active region.  Large LaGrange stations in this gas giant’s orbit house thousands of pilgrims, who journey here to visit a large shrine on the L1 station.  Within the shrine, known as the Home of the Penitent Traveler, is the cryo-preserved body of a member of the bridge crew of the Imperator Somnium, the ship the Emperor had used during the later years of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.  Exactly why it is so far from Terra is unknown.
The gas giant itself is a nitrogen giant, though its polar clouds include rich and vast clouds of hydrogen and methane, which the orbital platforms mine for fuel.  Its moons are much larger than Tetranus’, and there is some minor mining there, for ice and frozen petrochemicals.
This world has a hair under thirty-one thousand people on its orbitals and moon bases, and twelve moons.
Septiim Septimus, as confusingly named as it is, is the final world in the system.  This cold giant is unremarkable in every scientific way, and its atmosphere is a largely inert mix of light noble gasses, methane, nitrogen, and other common gasses.  Its moons are small and unremarkable, its gravity is high enough to be annoying to freighter crews, and its sole point of interest is a vaguely pretty brown streak on its atmosphere, where a comet hit the planet at an odd angle.  Its LaGrange points, however, are far more important, as the first one houses a very large void platform, within which the Navy has built a combination dry-dock, hydroponic food growth block, protein recycler, troop garrison, and counter-boarding training center.  The soldiers here have the dubious honor of being the first to be attacked when the Glasians assault the system, and postings here during the buildup to the centennial invasions are regarded as something of a punishment.  The Mechanicus also maintains a small outpost at another LaGrange point, where a repair station and long-range vox relay have been built around a chunk of cometary ice and nickel, caught by Septimus’ gravity.  The Blue Daggers use a small, servitor-maintained void platform here for Terminator deep-space boarding practice and isolation training.
Its seven moons and its various stations hold a widly fluctuating number of people, from sixty to ninety thousand.


Septiim Guard
The Septiim Guard are the Imperial Guard forces of the Septiim system, with three regiments in the system now.  Septiim Guards divide into 10 battalions, each with 5 companies.  1st and 2nd battalion are always heavy infantry, regardless of regimental specialization, 3rd through 6th are always specialized (mechanized infantry, heavy infantry, scout infantry, sharpshooters, artillery, or other roles).  7th and 8th are contingent on a specific mission profile.  If fighting within Imperial territory, these battalions consist of support, logistics, medical, recruiters, trainers, liaison personnel, target acquisition specialists, rangefinders, spotters, etc.  If fighting outside the Imperium, and therefore outside its logistics network, the 7th and 8th battalions usually consist of a mixture of dedicated support and repair units and field ranger units.  9th and 10th battalions are the regimental vehicle pool regardless of specialization.
Specialized regiments do exist, though they are typically no larger than the generalized regiments.  For example, the 9th Artillery Regiment consists exclusively of indirect fire units, flak guns, and vehicles to tow them around, but is still ten thousand heads strong, and therefore rarely all deployed to a single theater unless they represent the sole contributing force of artillery in an Imperial campaign.

The Septiimi military forces rarely employ paratroopers, thanks to their lack of useful training grounds in Septiim itself, and their total reliance on Navy and SDF assets for transport in air and space.  Septiimi forces instead, at least for the most part, rely on the use of heavily upgraded ground transports.  Equipping bolters on transports and combat vehicles is expected of all unit commanders, with special emphasis placed on pintle and coaxial bolters – these, after all, can be used as rangefinders as well as weapons.  Conversely, Septiimi heavy weapon teams avoid the use of bolters whenever possible, both because their vehicles already mount so many, and because it lends their infantry more flexibility.
Likewise, Septiimi regiments are enamored with artillery, but are more ambivalent regarding mortars.  Rocket artillery and heavy shell artillery are their preferred strength, and commonly attach at least some Basilisks or Earthshakers to all of their regimental-strength ground forces.  Less common are heavy guided missile artillery such as Deathstrikes.  Septiimi officers view them as being extravagant and superfluous in a world that contains orbital guns, though this can leave them lacking in long-range firepower if orbital support is cut off.
Mostly, the Septiim Guard prefers joint strike tactics when possible, for the sake of preventing tactical inflexibility.  However, in combat scenarios where forces must be deployed in less than regimental strength, this is not always a viable possibility.  As such, Septiimi forces have a significant decline in capability when faced with small-unit breaking tactics by the foe, and prefer to fight in company strength or higher at all times.  When this is not possible, by default, the Septiimi Guardsmen fall back on their upgraded equipment and staunch courage to carry them through difficult engagements.

One quirk of the Septiimi recruitment process, which relies near-exclusively on volunteers drawn from the Economic Zone, is that its officer and enlisted populations are historically raised from different population groups.  Enlisted soldiers are largely drawn from the working classes and middle classes, while officers are drawn from the upper classes and the populations of the other systems in the Economic Zone.  This is not doctrinal, however, and it is not enforced.  Officers who began in the enlisted ranks are usually welcomed into command positions.  However, all officers below the rank of Lieutenant Colonel are expected to participate in combat when called upon to do so, regardless of their occupation.

Within the force organization system of the Septiim Imperial Guard, operation at most levels is divided into “Conventional” and “Specialist” groups.  Conventional forces include typical artillery spotters, infantry, squad sharpshooters, plasma gunners, tank crewers, artillery crews, and garrison troops.  Specialist forces are not part of the conventional squad or fireteam structure, and are instead company command groups them or attaches them singly as needed.  They consist of heavy weapon teams, dedicated sniper teams, special recon teams, battlefield controllers, special operations troopers (not Stormtroopers, they have their own formations), and heavier anti-tank weapon operators.  Since the number of these specialists is static per company, regiments are able to afford some flexibility in their composition.  An artillery company, for instance, can rarely make use of battlefield controllers; they may instead employ special recon units, outfitted with the best camouflage and optics the regiment can afford, and equipped with satellite vox gear.  An anti-tank company, consisting of tank destroyers and accompanying infantry, may attach a mix of sniper teams and battlefield controllers, to pick off enemy infantry or lay down detcord on a battlefield in advance of the tank destroyers’ arrival.

Septiimi combat doctrine does not emphasize special operations or psychic warfare.  As a flexible and well-funded Guard force, however, they are aware of the value of both, and will deploy either their own special operations troops or Scholastica Psykana loaners as needed.  Most psykers in Septiimi battle groups serve as either advisors to the commanding officers, or local force multipliers.  They will be issued standard Septiimi battle uniforms and pistols, and conceal their presence amongst the regular troops until they are needed, at which time they reveal themselves in a storm of psychic lightning.  The Septiim Guard avoids the use of Rough Riders, especially biological ones, though they may allow the use of armed snowmobiles.

Septiimi armored tactics tend to be reliant on numbers and speed.  The possibility of fighting inferior local equipment if fielded against local rebels or traitors is easily accounted for by the quality of their Leman Russ tanks, while heavier Ork and Chaotic equipment can be neutralized by the application of tank hunter squads.  The presence of Vindicator, Eradicator, Executioner, and Annihilator variants in Septiimi regiments is helpful in this task, though these are rare variants.  Part of the Septiimi doctrine, then, calls for individual tanks to be as capable of holding off dangerous opponents as they can be while Navy or anti-tank support fields.  To accomplish this, Septiimi tanks equip their sponsons, pintles, and turrets with as many rapid-fire weapons as they can mount.  Multilasers, bolters, stubbers, and autocannons festoon Septiimi armored vehicles.  This serves three purposes: first to allow the tank to engage multiple targets concurrently, second to strip enemy tank units of their infantry cover, and third to allow for focused fire against enemy armor that outclasses them in weapon damage per shot.  Though this is nearly useless against Titans and other superheavies, it is highly effective against Ork mobz, which tend to have many infantry and slow vehicles.  The choice to replace the hull lascannon of the Russ with another heavy bolter means that the Septiimi Armored Spear formations are somewhat less able to engage heavy vehicles in parity.  The morale and suppression effect on the enemy of being fired on by three or more bolters per vehicle per formation makes up for it, in the Septiimi tactical mindset.  Likewise, frequent use of smoke dischargers allows Septiimi vehicles to close gaps quickly.

Though Septiim is a wealthy system compared to most, it lacks the raw industrial power and money of a Hive system, and therefore can afford only infrequent superheavy vehicles.  The largest vehicle frequently attached to Septiim regiments is the Praetor Assault Launcher, while some also have Gorgon Carriers in some number.  On those occasions that the regiments in question can afford a more combat-oriented superheavy vehicle, they gravitate towards tank-killers, decorated as always with extra rapid-fire weapons.  As such, the Baneblade and the absurdly rare Stormhammer are the preferred variants of the Bane-chassis.  Septiimi regiments do not field Crassus or Macharius tanks.  Malcador tanks are also found in older regiments.  Rank systems in armored units are different from Cadian and Terran standards, however.  Where Cadian and Terran tank crewers tend to all be non-commissioned officers at least, Septiimi Armored units use the same system of Privates and Corporals that infantry units use, at least at first.  After training is over and a tank crew wins a few battles, the entire crew may be promoted to serve as Corporals with a single Sergeant leading them, though this is meritorious and not automatic.

Septiim-based regiments most prefer the use of Leman Russ variants that excel at engaging enemy armor with their turret guns, while leaving the sponson and pintle mounts to engage infantry.  That said, the Punisher, Conqueror, and Exterminator variants are effective against both infantry and vehicles, and are quite popular, though their cost diminishes their commonality among the regiments.  The Conqueror can mount six independent rapid-fire weapons per vehicle, plus a missile launcher, rendering it highly desirable by the quartermasters of the Septiim regiments.

Light armored vehicle and recon vehicle tactics tend to focus on collecting information on the enemy, harassing enemy infantry and tanks, and then rapidly withdrawing.  The Septiimi combat style of mass-equipping of bolters, stubbers, autocannons, and multilasers lends itself well to light vehicle tactics, and allows even recon units to put up a solid fight against enemy vehicles in the same weight class.  However, their job is to acquire recon and leave at once, rather than trying to engage against superior forces.  Recon infantry often disembark from their transports on foot, and are usually equipped with at least one lascannon or anti-tank missile per fireteam, though this is not universal.  In addition, it is both common and encouraged by their tactics manual for any group of recon soldiers larger than four troops to carry at least one long-las or hotshot long-las, equipped with both a rangefinder and a target designator beacon for calling airstrikes or artillery.  The equipping of their mechanized forces is undertaken in a similar pattern to that of their other vehicles.  Their Chimaeras are traditionally outfitted with single or twin-linked heavy bolters, autocannons, or multilasers on the turret, a hull-mounted rapid-fire weapon of some kind, and whatever other upgrades are at hand – usually a pintle gun.  One favored tactic of recon companies is to send camouflaged trucks and Tauroses forward in a widely dispersed formation, looking for points of enemy contact, and then send heavily armed Chimaera variants behind them in a second line, then call the forward line back to the APCs if contact is made.

Infantry tactics for Septiim Guards usually follow the pattern of older, more successful Terran or Cadian formations, with the focus being on small-scale flexibility and massive formations.  Creativity in finding solutions to tactical problems is accepted if it is successful, but failed improvisation is punished.  Likewise, while a squad or platoon may be able to stray from their base mission if needed to complete a tactical objective, they are not to do so if the unit’s ability to complete larger goals is jeopardized.  The highest-ranking person in any given formation carries out command decisions, with the chain of command decided clearly down to the fireteam level.  Fireteams that absorb individual survivors from other fireteams may have that survivor breveted to corporal to serve as an advisor or potential replacement for existing corporals.

Given their expertise in garrisoning an entire sector against Glasian invasion, Septiimi regiments often emphasize garrison training for their infantry and vehicle units.  This includes the frequent use of smoke, searchlight, dozer blade, and track guard upgrades for their vehicles.  Between that factor and the high use of extra weapon upgrades, the average Septiimi vehicle is rather expensive.  If Septiim didn’t have multiple Garden worlds and a Forge Moon in it, they would certainly not be able to supply themselves with as many vehicles as they do.  Forge Masters from the Septiim system are glad that Septiimi officers don’t have a fixation on more expensive weapons, like meltas or plasma.  It is indeed partly because of their largely defensive nature that Septiim Guard make frequent use of stationary weapon platforms; Earthshaker and Manticore variants are perennially popular.

Septiim does not generally field penal legions, though it is not without precedent.  The small number of Sororitas in the system prevents them from taking an active role in offenses by the Septiim militaries.

Regiments of Septiim Guard are not retired upon depletion.  Instead, survivors of a depleted regiment are folded into other regiments, and the number recycled on Septiim.  At most, the Septiim system has supported forty full-strength regiments, with the others partially depleted or awaiting their recycling.  Numbers may be retired only if their regiment is deployed as the new PDF of a freshly conquered world, which has only happened a few dozen times in the Cloudburst Circuit and elsewhere.  This means that the senior PDF officers and trainers (and their families) of these worlds have ties to Septiim beyond simple Imperial loyalty, but bloodlines as well.

Special operations troops are never fielded at Regimental strength, and are rarely raised as anything more than a battalion tacked onto the existing battalion structure.  They are outfitted with the very highest quality hotshot weapons and camouflage, and emphasize stealth above all else.  They are not Stormtroopers, nor are they Scions, but they do train to infiltrate enemy encampments prior to outright assault by conventional forces.  There, they liberate slaves, blow up ammo caches, sabotage vehicles, steal fuel, and assassinate officers.  The integration of Septiim Stormtroopers and Scions into the normal Guard is not always without acrimony, but High Command tolerates it thanks to the lack of alternatives.

While the Septiim military respects the Mechanicus, they do not allow the Mechanicus any discretionary control over their deployments.  Mechanicus personnel who accompany Septiimi Guardsmen into the field do so as enginseers, servitor controllers, and repair mechanics at most.  Given how many Skitarii are stationed on Solstice, however (and this number never seems static when Guard officers ask), this is rarely a concern.  Above the petty emotions of the flesh the Mechanicus may be, but few Cohort Masters will refuse the opportunity to wow and awe Guard regiments on nearby assignments with their superior firepower and discipline.

Generally, the composition of a full-sized Septiim regiment is reflective of the assets needed to overcome the obstacle for which the regiment was raised.  As such, regiments that survive their first campaign tend to be specialized in some way, especially if they were raised over strength or with a focus on a specific equipment type.  The 10 general categories into which common Septiim Guard regiments are organized are as follows:

1.	Conservators: Garrison and armored hybrid regiments, with a heavy emphasis on combined-arms tank and infantry disposition.  Generally lacking in heavy artillery, but equipped with as much in the way of rapid-fire and flak AA as they can get their hands on.  On the offensive, their job is to punch a hole in a city’s defenses, then become impossible to dislodge.  Their heavy infantry and light tanks then serve as garrison and ground control forces.
2.	Grenadiers: Though this term means ‘elite infantry’ to some planets, the Septiimi use it to refer to specialized heavy infantry, universally equipped with explosives.  These infantry are outfitted with as much body armor and personal supplies as they can carry without limiting their offensive capability, and freely mix special and individually portable heavy weapons into their infantry fireteams.  These regiments prefer the use of rocket artillery, and mechanized transports to move their forces into the battlezones.  Crack sharpshooter teams with anti-vehicular rifles and hotshots flank or precede infantry advances, in order to soften up defenses and pick off potential threats.
3.	Defenders: As the name suggests, these regiments focus on holding actions, whether within or without a city’s limits.  Sometimes this involves the mechanization of forces with vehicles, but Defenders train in building fights and room clearing, and carry at least three flamers per platoon as a general course of action.  Heavy use of anti-air vehicles, such as Hydras, is standard to all Defender Regiments.  Super-heavy transports are more common in these regiments.  They also serve as the PDF for the worlds of the system.
4.	Spearman: These expensive and potent regiments focus nigh-exclusively on vehicular combat.  Whether that entails tank battles, towed artillery, self-propelled guns, or AA vehicles, the Spearmen are equipped for it.  Their forces consist of hundreds of Leman Russes, Manticores, Chimaeras, Salamanders, Basilisks, Hydras, Gorgons, and Tauros variants, often with a dizzying variety of upgrades and equipment.  These are the only regiments that can reliably gain a super-heavy combat tank.  Occasionally, Spearman regiments even deploy Ragnarok tanks.  Infantry are relegated to making flanker and cover formations in these regiments, taking and holding terrain or buildings the tank has cleared, and spotting targets.
5.	Cavalry: These regiments serve as the mechanized force of the Septiim Guard.  Relying on Chimaera, Taurox, and Gorgon class vehicles, these regiments cross open ground under curtains of smoke from their launchers and artillery.  These are the regiments most likely to employ breachers in any large number outside of dedicated siege units.  Cavalry regiments generally pair upgraded Salamander vehicles with other Chimaera-chassis vehicles, so their formations aren’t bottlenecked by the speed of their escorts.  These regiments also rely heavily on the use of Hunter-Killer missiles, to compensate for their lack of heavy armor.  Septiim Guard avoid deploying Rough Riders in general, but if any regimental specialization has Rough Riders, it is this one.
6.	Paratrooper: Specializing in airdrops and light infantry tactics, these regiments are raised to rain from above.  Their combination of grav-tech, parachutes, and gunships allow them incredible mobility.  Lacking their own, organic aircraft, they are reliant on the Navy for the transport and insertions for their troops, but also employ Tauroses and Sentinels for their own use.  As Septiim Tertius has several extremely high mountains at its equator (with smaller ones on Septiim Secundus), there are some native opportunities for high-altitude drop training for Septiimi regiments, though they lack the experience and prestige of Elysian and Harakoni Drop Troopers.
7.	Artillery: A self-explanatory designation if ever there was one, artillery regiments rely on long-range weapons to level their enemies from far away.  Employing the full extent of Imperial Guard indirect weapons, from the classic Earthshaker to the archaic Medusa, from the Manticore MRLS to the Gorgon, there are no indirect fire weapons the Septiimi won’t use in their artillery regiments.  In fact, these are the only Septiimi regiments that employ the Deathstrike missile system.  They are also, coincidentally, the only Cloudburst regiment ever to be issued the dazzlingly rare Ballista energy artillery weapon, which – at least in the Cloudburst Sector – is manufactured exclusively on the Solstice Forge Moon.  Thudd and Bombard weapons make infrequent appearances here, as do simple field guns.  The most numerous non-indirect units in these forces are the Salamander, the Sentinel, and the Tauros, which can quickly carry out recon and spotting missions, then fade away, or deliver withering defensive fire if needed.
8.	Stormtrooper: Septiimi Stormtrooper regiments are far smaller than their conventional counterparts are.  The use of heavy and special weapons fold into squad-level deployment, while vehicles are crewed exclusively by conventional troopers trained in their support.  Generally, Septiimi Stormtroopers fold into conventional regiments, despite their differing chains of command.  Within larger forces, Stormtroopers are often used to either augment existing Special Operations units, or lead them directly; though officers are rarely stupid enough to field them as basic infantry, they certainly can be.
9.	Scion: Technically, the Scions raised in the Septiim Economic Zone’s area are not Septiimi, but belong to the Officio Munitorum proper.  In practice, the clusters of inhabitable stars of the Cloudburst Sector are so far apart that there is little reason to stand on this regulation, and so it is not impossible for Scions to field alongside the conventional infantry or even Stormtroopers.  As the average Guardsman can’t tell a Stormtrooper from a Scion anyway, this may seem to be of little distinction.  However, it is a point of pride for Scions that they are the product of two straight decades of unrelenting training and hard work in the Schola Progenia.  They are equipped exclusively with the output of the Solstice Forge Moon; it is the only place for fifty light years to produce the Taurox in sufficient volume for their needs, and they employ all of its variants.
10.	Garrison: Rarely, the Imperium calls upon Septiim to tithe up large regiments of standing troops to hold territory that is already under Imperial control.  When called upon to do so, the regiments thus raised are equipped and staffed as variable infantry.  Light infantry in their fast vehicles, recon infantry with their expensive optics and active camo, medium infantry with their IFVs and APCs, and heavy infantry in their carapace armor all have a place in garrison duty.  Garrison regiments are the most lightly armored of all Septiim Guard regiments, and attach few, if any, artillery pieces.  Perhaps understandably, these regiments have fewer dedicated Specialists in their ranks, but have disproportionally large Minesweeper teams.

The integration of the Commissariat and Scions into the command structure of the Septiim Guard is thorough, and it is rare for any thousand-plus unit of Septiim Guard to have no Commissar at all.  Given the defensive nature of most Septiim wars, ascertaining the death of officers and other types whose progeny are eligible for Scholam Progenium membership is not difficult; Glasians do not take prisoners.  The Commissars and Stormtroopers, Scions and even occasional Space Marine Librarian that these facilities produce are generally attached to regiments that are not raised from the same world from which they hailed, to reduce the likelihood of unrest.  Likewise, the Inquisition and Adepta Sororitas (and the larger Adeptus Terra) heartily recruit from the Scholam system of the Economic Zone, as do the Arbites, the Imperial Navy, the Ecclesiarchy, and even the Mechanicus.  The Zone’s lesser participants also provide the ubiquitous Sabre gun platforms for the Guard and PDF, lightening the logistical demands of the region on Cognomen.

Relations between the Officio Munitorum of Septiim and other branches of the Adeptus are cordial.  The enormous mineral and tax wealth of the system, the presence of a Forge Moon, Monastery, and Space Marine Chapter Headquarters in one system, and the iron grip of the Arbites on dissenters ensures that the mechanism of liaison between the military and the other armed Imperial branches is smooth.  Combat psykers, advisory psykers, Ministorum priests, Commissars, the occasional Scion advisor, and on the rarest of occasions, a Blue Dagger, will accompany officers of Septiim regiments into the field to provide encouragement, advice, and spiritual shielding from the rigors of facing humanity’s anathemas.  The Daggers who sometimes accompany the regiments generally are present solely to assess the defensibility of conquered alien worlds, newly pacified planets, or other potential human colony sites, as they will inevitably be tested against the Glasian menace.  That said, the Inquisition is ever vigilant for signs of Tzeentchian manipulation of Septiim officers; more than one Septiim Techpriest or officer has met a brutal death for pocketing Warp-tainted war trophies.

As of M41.999, there are three full-strength regiments of the Septiim Guard assembled in the system.
The 109th Defenders have 3rd through 6th battalions consisting of defensive infantry, with lots of sappers, sharpshooters, flamer troops, anti-nonconventional weapons experts, and no breachersl.  They have a small number of Gorgons.  Their principle vehicle is the Chimera, but they are not properly mechanized – they use the Chimaeras as a combination vox-relay, fire-support platform, field hospital, command hub, emergency troop carrier, and sensor net-deployment station.  They do have a few Tauroses, which they use as defensive runners and scouts, and employ two platoons of Sentinels.  They field a force of thirty Hydras, as well, for fighting enemy aircraft and infantry, and a squad of Bane Wolves, just in case they are attacked by Tyranids – always a risk in the Segmentum Ultima.  Finally, they have six Praetor Assault Launchers and two Wyverns.
The 119th Conservators have their 3rd through 6th battalions equipped with formations of tanks and light infantry, scouts, target spotters, and minesweepers, with special forces.  They field a few Vanquishers and a few Exterminators, but most of their tanks are either baseline Russes, or simple variants, like Conquerors, Demolishers, Annihilators, and a small group of Executioners.  They only have four Punishers, but they do employ a large number of Hellhounds, Devil Dogs, and other Chimera-chassis vehicles, like Salamanders and Basilisks, and a fair number of normal Chimeras and Sentinels.  They generally do not use Tauroxes, Tauroses, or mortars, but they do field several platoons of Hydras, and they have a support unit consisting exclusively of Centaurs and Trojans.  They have no superheavy vehicles, and no Malcadors.
The 129th Grenadiers have six full battalions of heavy infantry, with some Salamander Scouts and upgraded Chimaeras for transports, but most of their vehicle force consists of several hundred basic Chimaeras, Trojans, and other simple transports.  They are generally mechanized, and their focus is on anti-infantry units and explosives – Demolishers, Punishers, Exterminators, Devil Dogs, and two Malcadors.  No Baneblade variants, though they do have a single Doomhammer.  Like all Septiimi forces, they have the tendency to outfit all of their vehicles with as many bolters as they can, be it on pintles, sponsons, or hull mounts.  This is to ensure that the principally infantry-based Septiimi forces are never outmatched by enemy infantry forces, and retain the ability to force enemy light vehicles back if needed.  This regiment also has a few dedicated special operations platoons, though they are also mechanized.

Two more regiments are under generation on the planet at the time, those being the 135th Artillery Regiment and the 136th Stormtrooper Regiment.  Both are bound for the Cloudburst Circuit, to pacify small alien strongholds that Rogue Traders have found there.  As an example of the order of battle, a typical Armored Division of Septiimi Guard consists of 3,600 tanks of various models, roughly as many APCs and IFVs, 1,300 various mobile artillery platforms, 300 reconnaissance vehicles, and 40 missile AA platforms.  The number of flak and rapid-fire AA units is hugely variable, but averages 60 medium to heavy units per division, with as many heavy weapons squads outfitted with their own missile or laser AA.  A smattering of Sabres with quad-stubbers, light autocannons, or proximity-fused flak burster guns are mandatory for nearly all regimental makeups, including the headquarters detachments of the paradrop regiments.

Most Imperial institutions have at least one outpost in Septiim.  The closest allies of the Chapter are the star-sailors, aviators, and seamen of the Imperial Navy, alongside whom the Daggers have shed and spilled blood, slaughtered aliens, crushed pirates, and generally defended the Imperium.  As a rule of thumb, the Imperial Guard and various Planetary agencies view the Astartes of the Daggers as somewhere between high nobles and terribly violent angels, though the flag-grade officers of the actual Septiimi Guard and system forces tend to understand them as people, instead of religious figures.  The Ecclesiarchy holds them in a measure of mingled respect for their loyalty to the Emperor and His citizens, revulsion for their flesh-twisting augmentations, and awe at their unmatchable combat skill.  There are temples and chapels in every major settlement in Septiim, but only one convent, and it has a mere handful of Sacred Rose Battle Sister Sororitas, who respect the Blue Daggers to their faces and glare at their backs.
The Mechanicus is much more open to the Daggers, and share some assets and equipment with them for the common good of the Imperium.  The Daggers have never hesitated to pay the Mechanicus their tithe, even though as an Astartes Home System, the Septiimi are theoretically allowed to exempt themselves from it.  The Daggers, however, know how the Imperium is teetering on the brink, and do not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for the loss of a system or world because they did not contribute to the supplies of the Imperium.  Because of this respect, and because of the Daggers’ inherited respect for their equipment (due to their Novamarine heritage), the Mechanicus works alongside the Daggers when they are asked to do so.  The Daggers are also actively encouraging of the Mechanicus dig on Solstice, and their efforts to turn the gradually hollowing moon into a true Forge Moon.  At present, the number of Mechanicus personnel (as opposed to mere laborers) on Solstice is highly classified, but Lord Neverember’s office lowballs the number in the nine-digit range.
The Inquisition allows the Chapter a degree of discretion and leeway in the direction and guidance of their system, though they do not go so far as to allow the Chapter to administrate the Septiim system directly.  The Daggers have a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Ordo Xenos, and get along about as well with the Ordo Malleus as any Astartes can after their harassment of the Chapters who defied them in the three wars of Armageddon.  The Ordo Hereticus has no particular special vision for the Daggers, since few are stupid enough to be openly heretical in a system with an entire Chapter based within.  The minor Ordos are generally not interested in the Chapter, either.
The Officio Assassinorum doesn’t greatly concern itself with a backwater Chapter in a backwater sector, even one in an extremely wealthy system like Septiim.  Likewise, the great distance between Septiim and most major Warp storms prevent there from being a significant number of psychic births or mutations locally, and so the Adeptus Astra Telepathica pays them little heed.  The Adeptus Arbites are given free rein to enforce Imperial law and judgment throughout the Septiim system and all adjacent systems by their administrators and the Daggers, and so their relationship is rather comfortable, if formal.
Likewise, the Imperial Estate and Administratum pay lip service to the Chapter, and in turn are allowed to rule the system as long as they do not abuse their positions to the extent that the defenses of the sector are compromised by bureaucratic nonsense.  The Chartist Captains and Rogue Traders of the sector were delighted to learn of the presence of a new Chapter, since there are few more ominous portents for local pirates than an entire Chapter moving into their back yards, and will generally assist the Daggers at-cost if extra evacuation craft are needed.  If there are any small-scale alien empires or colonies in proximity to the Septiim system, nobody really cares what they think.

Septiim PDF
The entire Septiim Economic Zone raises regiments collectively, and they are equipped by the Forge and Civilized worlds of the Cloudburst sector.  As much material as possible is manufactured on the Septiim worlds themselves, however, including simple vehicles and artillery.  The troops of the Septiimi PDF generally employ lasweapons, mass-built by the Mechanicus, with very heavy body armor when they can get it.  The mixture of rural, arboreal, and tropical climates of the Inner Worlds are ideal for amphibious combat training, and the Septiim PDF train with those environments in mind.  The PDF generally use the same weapons and vehicles with which the Guard regiments they raise are equipped, both to ensure familiarity, and to ease the logistical demands of the military.  Generally, the only equipment the Guard makes for itself that is not derived from Forge World patterns is breaching gear and climbing gear, as well as armor and sometimes helmets.
The PDF troops are organized along the same lines as the Guard.  They contribute to the manpower tithes of the Munitorum, when needed.  Ostensibly, they, like all PDFs, are under the ‘direction’ of the Commissariat, but there is no dedicated PDF Commissar present in the system most of the time.  The PDF forces make use of their own air bases, and they are equipped with ample Marauder bombers from Tertius.  Their principle air units are the Avenger, Thunderbolt, and Lightning, with a small number of Aquila shuttles maintained for personnel.  Finally, there are a small number of oceanic vessels under local military control, employed for cargo-moving, amphibious combat training, weapons testing, and for use as aircraft carriers.  However, as Septiim Primus is nearly all forest, most of its airbases are small and based around the planet’s barren poles, and they make heavy use of long-range aircraft with extra fuel pods and stripped-down weapons.
The three rocky planets in the Septiim system also maintain House Troops for the Imperial Governors, consisting of the best PDF troops who didn’t tithe up to the Imperial Guard.  The soldiers in question are outfitted with the best carapace armor the Septiim PDF can afford, and usually carry a mixture of master-crafted lasguns, some hellguns, and some hotshot lasguns.  The finest PDF troops may volunteer for Defense Kill Squads, which are 13-soldier Stormtrooper equivalent squads that only operate at full squad strength.  These can be sent on counter-insurgent missions or local point-of-contact threat suppression missions, and are nearly as well equipped and capable as Stormtroopers, though they would be quicker to bring this up than real Stormtroopers.  PDF troops can raise directly to the Guard, though this is only done in an actual emergency.

Septiim System Defense Force
The System Defense Force of the Septiim system is one of the most celebrated in the Segmentum, not only because of their flawless success rate, but also because of the sheer speed of their expansion.  Literally, every single ship berth that can be spared for ten light years is churning out ships for the Septiim SDF, and they need them all.  The SDF here is ultimately responsible to the Navy, but in practice, the Captaincy of their ships are determined by need and skill, and the Navy does not begrudge the SDF a degree of independence in this regard.  After all, it’s not like the SDF aren’t under blood oaths to die to the last man, defending Septiim if ever it is overrun.  Unlike some other SDFs, the Septiim SDF is also eager to build Warp-capable ships, to allow it to travel to other stars in the Economic Zone if needed.

Flagship Mars Battlecruiser, two Luna cruisers, four Defender light cruisers, four Endurance light cruisers, one Endeavour light cruiser, seven Falchion frigates, two Firestorm frigates, seventeen Cobra destroyers, three Viper missile destroyers, one courier speedboat, twenty defense monitors, four patrol boats, various fighter groups.  The SDF also maintains a force of Valkyries, Vultures, Vendettas, and Sky Talons, manufactured on Tertius.

Septiim Imperial Navy Contingent
Based on the Waterscale Naval Anchorage platform, the Imperial Navy in Septiim coordinates its patrols and local warships with its own Astropath, plus another stationed on all ships over three kilometers in length.  In a system that was not routinely assaulted by aliens, that would be excessive.  In Septiim, it’s the cost of doing business.  The planet’s network of ships and stations collect sensor data and share it with the SDF and the Daggers, as well as the tiny fleet (barely half a dozen escorts) of Solstice.  As the Navy is outgunned by the Daggers and SDF in the system, despite theoretically commanding most of the ships in the system at any time, the Navy provides a command and control fuction to the combined forces of Septiim.  Generally, the Naval crews fly in from Coriolis, Nauphry, or Spindle instead of Septiim itself.  The ships of the Navy contingent can leave the system to fight or patrol elsewhere in the Sector as needed, but rarely do so unless ordered to directly by the Lord Sector Cloudburst or a higher authority.  Accordingly, the force allotment of the system is recorded separately from the general fleet composition.

Septiim Contingent: Luna cruiser, three Tyrant cruisers, six Claymore corvettes, four Sword frigates, Endurance light cruiser, two Cobra Missile destroyers, accordant fighter groups, single Starhawk bomber squad based on commandeered civilian transport.


System: Cognomen

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Capital Cognomen Subsector

System Overlord: Lord Fabricator Beraxos

Planets: Nine, one inhabited

Forge World: Cognomen

Satellites: Two moons, Onomatos and Thesi, both uninhabited save for servitor mining operations and radar buoys

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 76%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide 1%

Religion: Cult Mechanicus

Government Type: Adeptus Mechanicus

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

Climate: Temperate, formerly savanna, now becoming wasteland

Geography: Tectonically stable, wide blocks of land, with steep, cold oceans.  Small, shrinking polar ice caps.  Extensive resource deposits, now largely depleted.

Gravity: 0.97 Terran Gravity (with evidence of lower gravity prior to Terraforming)

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: All manner of technology and finished goods
Principle Imports: All raw resources possible, Food, Textiles, Convicts

Countries and Continents: No national divisions.  Extensive canyons around one enormous cleft canyon down center of largest continent.

Military: Cognomen Shields (small PDF), Cognomen Legions (Skitarii), Legio Congelatio (Titan Legion)

Contact with Other Worlds: As the largest Forge world between Drumnos and the edge of the Imperium, with over two hundred worlds as trading partners, Cognomen has extensive and daily contact with other worlds.

Tithe Grade: Exactis Particular

Population: 39,000,000,000 (human), servitor count constantly changing

Description:
Cognomen had enormous resource deposits, but these have been nearly depleted through colossal strip-mines that have rendered much of the planet a barren wasteland.  Although there is still extensive construction on the surface and below, the usable amount of open agriculture land on the planet is all but gone.  As a result, nearly all of Cognomen's food is imported from over a dozen other planets.  Cognomen's heavily saline oceans are rapidly drying out.  Total loss of all non-terraform-active outdoor habitability is anticipated within eighty years.  Cognomen's senior Magos Biologist have completed gene-sequencing all of Cognomen's native life, and have written it off.  Once, Cognomen was a world of grasslands and silty seas.

The vast forges of Cognomen are the pride of the sector Mechanicus, and for good reason.  They are among the largest, the most productive, and the most technoarcanely blessed in the far north of the Segmentum, and Cognomen's vast data banks contain most of the blueprints of the far-off Martian forges.  Lacking some of the most advanced, they make do with high production of as many templates as they can manage.  The vast shipyards in orbit have seven 10-kilometer yards.  They are theoretically capable of building any vessel of equal or lesser size, including the mighty Universe-class mass conveyor vehicle or most Imperial Navy battleships.  As of M41.999, six yards are occupied with building capital ships of the line: two Universe, three battleships, and a Grand cruiser.  The seventh yard is undergoing retrofits to accommodate even larger hulls, up to the massive Emperor battleship.  Dozens of smaller yards manufacture lesser ships, of all designs, including the all-important Galaxy and Constellation troopships and Marketeer livestock barges.

Cognomen defends itself.  Unlike certain Forge Worlds, which rely on the constant movement of Imperial Guard forces through their Worlds to defend them from invasion, Cognomen fields a vast variety of forces in its defense, and occasional offensives.  Although it was established after the end of the Age of Apostasy, and therefore does not have the ancient strength of an archaic Titan Legion, nor does it have a network of Knight worlds in its fealty, it has the means to build both.  Modeled after the ancient forces of Mars, which has its own domestic House of Knights, Taranis, Cognomen is slowly building up Titan and Knight forces from its own population.  Other Forge Worlds accuse Cognomen of executing a power grab, which may be fair.  Cognomen's Explorator fleets are always on the lookout for other Forge or Knight Worlds that may be within the greater Cloudburst area, which it could add to its holdings.  The possibility that any Forge World so long removed from Mars may be either disloyal or far more advanced than Cognomen itself seems not to have occurred to Lord Fabricator Beraxos.

The Explorator forces also seek to find or perhaps make a Knight World of its own, out in the lightly exploited Cloudburst Circuit.  The fact that this is not traditionally permitted in the highly tradition-bound Mechanicus is something that Lord Fabricator Beraxos has chosen to disregard, respectfully.  Rather many of the lower-ranked Techpriests of Cognomen have debated reporting this to Mars; this has been a subject of ongoing discussion for many decades with no sign of letting up.  When pressed by his nervous subordinates, Beraxos insists that building an unauthorized Knight World is a crime, not a heresy, a distinction about which he cares more than most others would.  ABX202020 is a planet of infinite potential, in his mind, and a chance to show that even a world born in isolation and schism can be loyal, productive, reliable, defensible, and proper in the eyes of His Most Blessed Circuitry.

The establishment of a Titan Legion is far less controversial, and has been embraced wholeheartedly by the military forces of the Cognomen system.  So far, Cognomen has established the formal structure of Legio Congelatio (or Frostbite Army in Low Gothic).  Recruiting Principes and Moderatii from any population that can produce them and building smaller models before moving on to the more complex ones, Cognomen so far has built three Warhounds and a Reaver, with two Warlords planned for but yet unbuilt.  This is remarkably little progress given the centuries of hard work that have gone into the process, but it is also a determined effort – Congelatio used to be larger, but the first six Titans of the Legio were lost in a catastrophic battle against the forces of the Dark Eldar and Chaos.  The three-way war in the Corumbino Nebula, two hundred years prior in the Naxos Sector, cost Cognomen all of its progress; the capture of the Nebula seemed small consolation to the ruined Cognomen army.  Frantic rebuilding is now underway.

The Cognomen combat forces do not yet field a Legio Cybernetica unit, though they theoretically could.  Their Skitarii are loyal to Mars first and Cognomen second, but the Cognomen insistence on exploration and heavy military expansion means that they feel well treated and respected by the Cognomen bureau-clergy.  They augment their forces with extensive combat servitor units, and typically avoid mercenaries or the use of militia; this is academic given the sparse population of Cloudburst anyway.  The Skitarii stationed on this world are Martian in origin, but their ranks are filled by the humans of Cognomen.  Their paint scheme uses russet camouflage, with black and grey trim.  At any given time, the Skitarii legions of Cognomen have approximately two million active troops, a five hundred thousand man PDF, and another million Skitarii out among the stars, aiding other Mechanicus forces or on the Quest for Knowledge.

Of course, Cognomen is first and a foremost a Forge World.  The extensive military preparations and exploration they undertake are secondary to the manufacturing they perform on behalf of the Cloudburst Sector.  Appliances, vehicles, farming equipment, mining gear, and ship components alike churn out from the massive Cognomen factories by the gigaton.

In high orbit, there is a large but unpainted space station.  Inside this station, the Cloudburst Inquisitorial Ordos maintain a vigil.  The Ordos make use of their own Astropathic choir aboard the orbiting platform, as well as a hangar.  This is not the principal Inquisitorial Palace for the sector, however, and never holds the convention of the entire Conclave Cloudburst.  Instead, the Inquisition uses this platform for the disposal of relics, whether Chaotic or xeno, which are not safe to dispose of otherwise.  They make use of unmanned, servitor-controlled kinetic rockets, which cannot be unsealed once shut, and launch the items into the system's star.  These items are made to order, of the sizes the Inquisition requires, on Cognomen itself, and are delivered by a member of the Cognomen Electro-Priesthood only after undergoing extensive background clearance.  The consequences of launching a variety of bizarre and possibly Warp-infused artifacts into a star that lights a system with thirty nine billion residents have not been fully explored.

Cognomen maintains a token force of Arbites and PDF, solely to uphold its commitment to the Cloudburst Administratum, but does not tithe up Imperial Guard regiments as a matter of course.  Instead, it meets its tithe requirements by supplying its own knockoff Vanquisher and Eradicator cannons to systems that can't make their own, as well as a variety of other military weapons such as Hellhammer cannons.  As Cognomen’s wealth and power grow, it may come to pass that it will pay a tithe no longer.  A higher percentage of its output goes to other worlds in the sector every year; the formality of a tithe may eventually become unneeded.

Though Cognomen is perfectly capable of supplying Rogue Traders and other non-military assets that explore the Circuit, it prefers not to, instead leaving that responsibility to other Forge World vassals in Cloudburst.  The heavily expansion-weighted preferences of the Cloudburst government ensure that the Explorators of the Cognomen fleet take high priority in their own ports.  Of course, on the rare occurrence that the Rogue Traders of the region do find anything of value, this means that Cognomen is the third Forge World to benefit from it, after the Rogue Trader's port of call and Mars.

In ancient times, Cognomen was a lonely beacon in the depths of uncharted space.  The location of the planet was known to pre-Imperial Mars, as established by the stellar coordinates, found scribed on the headstone of the Explorator who found it deep in the Martian Mausoleum Tunnels.  For thousands of years, Cognomen sat in the deepest depths of the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit, untroubled by neighbors or politics.  Loyal but untrusting to Mars, Cognomen drifted through space, its leaders content to labor in obscurity.  That changed with the sudden successes of famed Explorator Justin MacDonald, who found several habitable worlds close to Cognomen itself.  Faced with the knowledge that the rest of the Imperium would surely come to occupy their region of space, Cognomen reluctantly opened its doors to further trade and work with the greater Imperium.  This even resulted in the Forge World becoming a Subsector Capital, to their surprise.  A mighty Navy Anchorage station, fully eighteen kilometers in width and twenty in length, hangs over the equator of Cognomen.  Connected to the ground with the planet’s only working Orbital Spire, the anchorage serves as the regional command station for the Navy, and can build vessels of up to Oberon displacement.  The station also houses the Master of the Administratum Cognomen, the highest-ranking member of the Adeptus Terra in the subsector.

Cognomen is the result of a schismatic philosophical discussion in the upper ranks of the Mechanicus, after their reforging as the Adeptus Mechanicus following the Great Scouring.  Given the number of cultural and military shifts in the Mechanicus that followed the Heresy, the old ways of the Mechanicus had to change, that much was clear.  The feudal Taghmata system was dead, so too was about a third of the Martian Priesthood and over half of the Basilikon Astra.  When the call came, once the Great Reforging Era began, to reclaim lost Forge Worlds and build new ones besides, the losing side of the schism saw their chance to preserve their freedom without having to resort to Tech-Heresy.  Taking to ship, the schismatics, specifically those who thought that tech-augmentation should be used as an actual augmentation and not a surrogacy for human tissue, settled on Cognomen.  This world of vast wealth and great isolation was perfect for the schismatics to build their society, preserving what they thought to be the best parts of Martial theology and culture, without the fetishisation of self-mutilation.

They were unsuccessful in stamping out the germ of the idea, of course, because worship of the machine is easier if machines are a part of the body.  Tech-augmentation is as much a part of Cognomen culture as it is Martian, by now, but some aspects of the schismatics' beliefs still linger.  Core to this belief, as reflected in the world’s own description, is the power of names.

Names are crucial to Cognomen culture and lifestyle, and theology also.  Individuals may have as many as four or as few as one name, and may choose new names for their selves upon reaching adulthood at sixteen.  Each and every building in the great hive-forges has a name; individual cogitators have names stenciled on the side in indelible ink.  Every starship, Titan, Skitarii, and illegal Knight has its name emblazoned on its armored carapace in a place of honor and visibility, even compromising camouflage for some.

Names are power in a galaxy in which the Warp exists, and the Mechanicus knows it.  Cognomen takes these names as a point of pride, however, and woe betide a visitor to Cognomen who forgets the name of the Priest to whom they are speaking.  Cognomen Skitarii and Titan crews commit the names of their enemies to memory before battle, and gouge the names of the worlds on which they fight into the hulks of wrecked enemy vehicles after a victory or their own after a loss.  No fewer than fifteen star systems in the Cloudburst Sector are named after the forenames of specific Rogue Traders or Explorators, simply because their names became infamous in some other capacity shortly after making their discoveries.

This belief extends to knowledge, too.  Cognomen is obsessed with learning the blueprints of the lost STCs, of course, as all Forge Worlds are, but they take their obsession to a less practical extent.  Cognomen doesn’t just seek out lost blueprints, but also the ancillary information of the STC files themselves.  The names of inventors who contributed to the great STC Datalibraries, the locations of the laboratories and workshops and Universities where those inventions were made, and the names of the materials from which the templates may best be built – all of these things are sacred to Cognomen.

The great Data Chapels of Cognomen have the titles and names of inventors and engineers, designers and scholars of the Dark Age and Golden Age scribed by hand onto great sheets of canvas, with abstract depictions of their lives’ works all around them, and frozen in expensive stasis fields.  Statues of Mechanicus and Terran inventors of the past decorate public squares alongside Fabricators of Mars and Primarchs.  Across the Great Canyon of Dolomblen, the endless ravine that splits the main continent down the middle, vast train bridges stretch from Forge-Hive to Forge-Hive, and each bridge has a name emblazoned on the side in solid iron letters the size of Warhounds.  They are allowed to rust, staining them red, the color of the priesthood, and drip down into Dolomblen, like the blood the Mechanicus has shed for Mankind.

Given the Cognomen obsession with names and history, it is perhaps somewhat surprising to Martian observers that Cognomen is not equally fixated on the crime of Innovation.  This is especially surprising given the Cognomen preference for unobtrusive and functional augments, and their history of schism from Mars.  Cognomen, of course, has its sects and factions, like all large Forge Worlds, but by and large, they are obedient to Mars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When time comes, as it often does, for Cognomen to export weapons to the rest of the Segmentum, it does have a few foci for its manufacturing.  Although it is just as capable of building basic human and Astartes wargear as any other Forge World of its age, the world’s Fabricator Magos Council has elected to pursue excellence in specific forms of weapons rather than try to master them all without the absolute support of Mars like mighty Anvilus or Lucius.  The focus of most Cognomen arms trading for now is infantry weaponry, specifically high quality autorifles, stubbers, lasguns, and grenade launchers.  Though this is a far cry from the diverse and technologically bizarre weapons of the Dark Age and Age of Strife, that’s the point, in Cognomen’s way of thinking.  Laser technology is one of the few fields of technology in which present-day humanity is unambiguously superior to Dark Age technology, so why not focus on what they do best?  Cognomen lasrifles and autorifles are cheap, quiet, easy to repair, easy to maintain, waterproof, and light – perfect for a Guard or PDF force without much money.  For the forces with more money, like Septiim and Celeste troops, there are all manner of options: plasma, melta, bolter, shotgun, missile, and flamer weapons of the usual variety.  By necessity, the Cognomen Forgemasters have also grown accustomed to making the various vehicle upgrade kits the Blue Daggers and Septiim Guard love so much, like sponson and pintle bolter packages.
Sniper weapons are the natural progression of Cognomen’s infantry rifle focus.  Cognomen manufactures a line of projectile rifles dubbed the Razor series by its testers.  Based loosely on the ancient Martian and Terran hunting rifles from which it takes its name, the Razors are mechanical simplicity itself.  Using the expanding gas from the primer and powder of its discharged slugs to both propel the slug and clear the chamber, they come in automatic, semi-automatic, and bolt-action variants.  Long-barrel variants and variants with integrated sound suppressors are especially popular with counter-sniper and counter-terrorist specialists, while shorter ones with integrated forward grips and compensators or flash hiders pop up often in Imperial Guard infantry units.  Cognomen Lasweapons are based on ancient Martian designs, with few technological deviations.
Cognomen combat vehicles are a different story.  Septiim provides the template for vehicle equipping, in the post-Glasian worlds of Cloudburst.  With Septiim’s love of vehicle upgrade kits and Forge World-quality guns, this means that Cognomen must produce a massive variety of vehicular weapons and do so to the highest standards it can.  This is wholly compatible with the Cult of the Machine, of course, but logistically, this takes a toll on Cognomen’s expanding infrastructure.
To get around this cost bottleneck, the Cognomen Council of Magos has established two satellite worlds of their own Forge World, with the intent of eventually making them Forge Satraps of Cognomen.  The first is the planet Foraldshold, originally discovered by the Rogue Trader Forald Drenweiss during the First Gold Rush.  The world was earmarked early for colonization by the Administratum, but the Mechanicus’ subsequent tests revealed significant geological instability in its two continents and deep seabeds, and recommended that the world be subjected to limited Terraforming before a colony be built.  The Administratum acceded to this.  Thousands of years later, the planet is tectonically stable and ready for inhabitation, and the Mechanicus has already erected a massive city of colonists and tech-Adepts, ready to begin turning the planet into a Forge Satrap.  The other is the Forge Moon of Solstice, in the Septiim system, which is already manufacturing advanced weapons for the Blue Daggers.  Solstice is more independent, but recognizes Cognomen’s undeniably higher placement in the Mechanicus hierarchy.
What few vehicles Cognomen does not build, it would very much like to.  The planet has, after two thousand years of careful negotiating – the Martians would say ‘wheedling’ – Cognomen has finally gained access to the -hammer and Bane- hull tanks, including the mighty Baneblade itself.  Although its components and cannons are somewhat larger than the glorious Martian master design thanks to Cognomen’s less advanced (and less numerous) forges, they are no less deadly for it.  Next, Cognomen seeks the rights to build the Storm- and Shadow- series tanks, and perhaps even the Leviathan and Capitol Imperialis.  The Macharius tanks are hardly a mainstay of Cognomen forges, but they do build them for the regiments that ask for them.
The one non-standard vehicle template that Cognomen presently has the means to build is the Cognomen-pattern Siege Dreadnought.  This Astartes-exclusive Dreadnought chassis mounts the typical Siege Drill and integrated Heavy Flamer of the Martian template, with an Inferno Cannon mounted on the other arm.  The distinction is a coaxial heavy stubber on the Inferno weapon, as well as a Storm Bolter mounted underslung from the main chassis.  Coordinating all of these weapons can be intimidatingly difficult for a newly-interred Battle Brother, especially if the optional searchlight, Fragstorm package, and smoke discharger are equipped as well.  However, the sheer amount of room-clearing power the Cognomen Siege Dreadnought allows its occupant to employ at once is telling.  More than one bunker of heretics or aliens have thought themselves impervious to the Imperium’s hate, right up until it knocked a wall down and set them on fire.
Mars is aware of this development.  Cognomen Magos successfully argued that this is not an act of Heretek, the sin of innovation.  All they did, they explained, was affix a coaxial gun to a flamer, which some models of Imperial Knights already have, and put a Storm Bolter on something that carries them as a matter of course in other configurations.  Since Cognomen has built a grand total of nine (one prototype, six for the Daggers, two for the Deathwatch) and there is no evidence of insanity in the known occupants, Mars suspects that there is no harm in keeping the template active.

As a Subsector Capital, Cognomen is granted an honor and a responsibility that few other Forge Worlds are.  Cognomen bears the burden of leadership for the Subsector, which contains five other inhabited systems and several systems only good for mining.  This requires that Cognomen take a role in the greater Imperium for which it was unprepared.  The establishment of a well-appointed Astropathic and Adminsistrative orbital platform over Cognomen allows for the staff of the Subsector Governor to work without having to visit the dying planet below.  Any desire the people of the platform may have to visit their host vanishes at the sight of billions of acres of dying grasslands on the world below as the planet succumbs to industrial overbuild.
The Subsector Governor coordinates the logistical and political needs of the Subsector from the platform, which possesses a suite of luxury apartments for himself and more spartan accommodations for his staff and less-liked family members.  The platform has only a few small point defense weapons, and is wholly reliant on the Cognomen fleet for protection.
The work of the Administratum here is made easier by the fact that the current Lord Fabricator, Beraxos, couldn’t give a damn about the rest of the Subsector, and has no desire to challenge the Administratum for leadership of the Subsector.  This, given that Cognomen could steamroll the whole Subsector if they chose, is a great relief.  If anything, this lack of concern for their neighbors is convenient for the Governor, who can simply foist responsibility for any unpopular decisions on his indifferent counterpart.  Should Beraxos ever complain too vocally, the Governor can simply inform Beraxos that he is fully aware of the little secrets of ABX202020, while the Sector Overlord is not.


System: Elumanie

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Celeste Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: Eight, all uninhabitable

Planet Elumanie 5
Satellite: Moon – Lossos

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 88%, Carbon Dioxide 12%

Religion: N/A

Government Type: Astra Militarum

Planetary Governor: N/A

Adept Presence: Adeptus Astra Telepathica

Climate: Thin, dry gasses, uneven ground, no tectonics

Geography: Lossos is a barren, stable rock, with what once was a network of mining tunnels

Gravity: Lossos has .42 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Watch Components, Nitrogenous Gasses, Carbon Nanofibres
Principle Imports: Food, Soldiers

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: Celestial Guard, Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Detachment

Contact with Other Worlds: None yet

Tithe Grade: [REDACTED]

Population: 200 humans, unknown number of xenos

Description:
Lossos was once a world of productive mining.  A peaceful, if boring, life of mining, harvesting, and processing was once all the people who lived here, descendants of a former Arbites prison colony, had to look forward to.

That changed, when the Space Hulk Predator slammed into the world in M41.999.  The Hulk, a five-kilometer-wide agglomeration of several wrecked starships and small asteroids, fell from the heavens and flattened a small Imperial mining camp.  Hours later, the shockwave blew the walls off buildings around the tiny globe.  Panicked Astropathic signals for evacuation followed minutes after.

When Astra Militarum Search and Rescue teams arrived eight weeks later, when the message finally arrived at Celeste, they reported the Hulk was surprisingly intact, and appeared uncontaminated.  However, the only active electronic signal on the planet came from a mining truck radio, four kilometers from the impact crater.  All contact was subsequently lost with the Search and Rescue team, despite orbital cameras making it clear that they were still active and moving on the surface below, looking for survivors.  There was no response, no matter how often the ship in orbit hailed them.

Next to arrive was the Inquisition, responding to the Navy request for aid.  Inquisitor Afiram Proterr of Celeste, an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor of 80 years’ experience, led his force of 400 Stormtroopers and 9 Throne Agents down to the world below.  They were approached first by a pair of starved-looking Techpriests, who begged on bent knees for food and shelter.  Proterr promptly shot them both and searched them, and what he found confirmed his worst fears.  Both men had been implanted with Genestealer nerve bundles.  His Stormtroopers prepared a defensive perimeter, but it was far too late.  Mining trucks and Guard vehicles surged to life all around them, driving towards the Stormtroopers with murderous intent.  The jig was up, and the bundle-implanted Guard and miners slaughtered over half of Proterr’s men before the canny Inquisitor managed to evacuate his surviving Stormtroopers into the Hulk.

Inside, they encountered something worse.  Thousands of Genestealers sat in biostasis in the hold of one of the freighters.  The shock of the crash had awakened their steward organisms, but it would only be a matter of time before the horde outside came to awaken the one inside.

The surviving Genestealers and Implants outside mustered for a suicide charge.  They needed only to kill the landed Imperials or reach their slumbering kin to escape, since one of the freshly implanted Guardsmen was a pilot.  The hive mind drove them on, into the teeth of the surviving troops’ Hellguns.  Hundreds of miners and Guards died in minutes, their souls freed of the Hive taint.

Still, numbers proved telling, and the surviving Stormtroopers were forced back, deeper into the Hulk.  At last, Proterr realized what needed to be done.  The Stormtroopers formed a cordon around him as he knelt and dedicated his soul to the Emperor.  Abruptly, the Genestealers nearest him stumbled and fell, their minds wracked with toxic confusion – Proterr had used his mighty Warp powers to sever their link to the Hive Mind for precious seconds.  His Stormtroopers surged out into the corridors of the Hulk, desperately killing the aliens and their thralls.  This included their own, whom had been taken by the beasts.

After ten torturous minutes, the Genestealers had been pushed back out of the Hulk, and run headlong into the arms of the 150 troops Proterr had been smart enough to station at his landing site.  Pincered and unled, the surviving Genestealers and Implants were cut down in moments.

Proterr did not survive his sacrifice.  Now bereft of their Inquisitor, the surviving Stormtroopers rallied behind Throne Agent Illaten, his apprentice.  Illaten has frantically requested any reinforcements the Sector Conclave can send, to cordon off the Hulk and kill the remaining Genestealers.  What Illaten did not know is that several Stormtroopers who survived the final battle were already infested, and though they cannot break away from their guard duties to enter the Hulk and awaken their masters, a few creative accidents may be enough of a distraction to allow them to slip into the vast Hulk, unnoticed.


Xerxes Mark IV Naval platform: Thunderhead

Thunderhead Station is more than a template-copied Imperial Navy way-station.  Though externally identical to so many of its kind, Thunderhead is also the nexus of several crucial civilian merchant routes, and the closest Naval platform to Drimmerzole, Triune, and Coriolis.  Therefore, it is not only responsible for hosting the huge Imperial Creed missionary population needed to convert and tend to the two Feudal Worlds, but also sending supply ships and troop barques to the vast fortresses of Coriolis.  As a result, although its external defenses are no larger or heavier than those of an upgraded Battlecruiser, its internal spaces have been given over almost entirely to personnel and food storage.

The station’s external guns include several Weapons Batteries, a trio of Grand Cruiser-strength Lance Batteries, and several Attack Craft bays.  As with all Xerxes IVs, it also contains a variety of small refit bays, for vessels of Endurance class or smaller.  Internally, nearly everything that doesn’t serve the purpose of moving absurdly large amounts of people and cargo is gone.  Medical bays and recreation halls replaced luxury suites; barracks replaced fighter hangars, and even some of Thunderhead’s ammunition storage made way for refrigerated storage chambers.  To compensate for the slight loss in defensive capability, a larger-than-average number of Defense Monitors and a trio of Vipers were assigned to the station’s perimeter patrols, more than enough to bolster its protection.

Inside, the station is a warren of cabins, bays, and corridors.  Air recyclers chug and protein resolidifiers churn, and the business of housing tens of thousands of visitors goes on.  The Navy provosts and enlisted men who crew the huge station dislike the fact that the Guard and Ecclesiarchy have control over as much of the station as they do.  The vast metal construction is theoretically under total Navy control; however, the Ecclesiarchy has been ceded authority over one deck to serve as a community chapel of sorts.  Whole kilometer-long compartments ring with hymns and bellowed preaching.  Alms cups sit side by side for hundreds of meters, all ignored by the thousands of peasant pilgrims, Frateris Militia, and Ecclesiarchial Missionaries on their way to places far distant.  Adeptus Arbites watch over the whole procession, staring from under their identical masks, ready for any sign of lawbreaking.

At the theoretical peak of the capacity of the station, Thunderhead could support three million temporary passengers.  In practice, there are never more than eight hundred thousand at the most, and more commonly four hundred thousand.  Whole decks occasionally sit empty.  In the least-used decks, permanent residences have popped up like fungi.  These little slabs of metal and polymer are simple affairs, and house all sorts of indigent or runaway Imperial citizens.  Some may be people tithed up to fight for the Imperium’s wars; others are members of the Ecclesiarchy who were summoned to serve as Missionaries to tribes that were wiped out in the interim.  Some are less wholesome, like smugglers or tithe evaders.  The most common, however, are what local Arbites refer to with disgust as ‘dropouts.’  These sad souls, from over two dozen worlds and stations at least, number in the low thousands.  They are peasants and pressedmen, convicts and pilgrims, but each has two things in common: they cannot leave the station, and they would like nothing more than to leave at once and never come back.

The first dropouts were members of the crew of the Gaunt Lights, an Ecclesiarchy pilgrim ship from Hapster.  According to them, they had nothing in common at first, but all awoke one morning to find that they had been exposed to knockout gas, then rounded up to serve as crew for an Ecclesiarchy vessel.  This, as most of them knew, was both flagrantly illegal in the spirit of the Decree Ecclesiarch Passive, and crippling to Hapster’s economy, which is so tightly bound to its population and industry.  When the pressed citizens demanded that they be returned to their homes at once, the Archbishop of the Gaunt Lights calmly informed them that they were already in the Warp, and their alternatives were either to serve the Emperor or walk back home on foot.

With no choice, the pressedmen turned to the arduous labor of serving in the massive cathedral-ship, flying to Thunderhead on their way to the Feral and Feudal worlds of the sector.  As soon as the vessel docked on Thunderhead, however, they rose up as one, strangling their Ministorum owners and escaping en masse into the depths of the station.  When the Arbites, shocked by what appeared to be a simultaneous mass mutiny and mass evacuation, tried to corral the fleeing pressedmen, they were swamped and instantly overrun by the thousands of panicked ship crewers.  The Archbishop escaped a bloody death by seconds, leaping into a shuttle and flying directly to the Naval controller office of the station.  He then demanded that Naval Provosts and Arbitrators round up his wayward flock.  The pressedmen, however, had reached the vast staging areas for the Imperial Guard contingent of the station, and hurriedly explained what had happened.
Outraged and appalled by both the remorselessly illegal conduct of the Archbishop and the utter disregard the Archbishop had shown for Hapster, Colonel Regatz of the Celestial Guard 9th Heavy Rifles stormed his entire force into the docking area of the Gaunt Lights.  He demanded that the Archbishop present himself for punishment, or face the immediate capture and impoundment of his ship.  Meanwhile, the Arbitrator Senioris of the Arbites detachment the pressedmen had overrun on their way to the Guard was howling for blood; he ordered the entire Arbites contingent of the station to gear up for a massacre.

Left with three competing, bloodthirsty groups all demanding that he side with them, Navy Commander William Somerset commanded that the Guard, Ecclesiarchy, and Arbites stand down at once.  By sealing all of the vacuum-tight doors near the three groups, he was able to force them to halt their advances.  Addressing them over the station’s general public address system, he commanded Colonel Regatz, Arbitrator Senioris Vanamonde, and Archbishop Clement to report to his personal conference room at once, as well as a speaker for the pressedmen.

Once all parties were assembled, glaring daggers at each other over finger food and amasec, Somerset instructed each to tell their story in turn.  He listened patiently as Clement described the urgent and all-consuming need to move as many folk as possible to the Feudal worlds of the sector, and the need to save the souls of the heathens.  Next, he listened to the spokesman of the pressedmen, a construction foreman named Wallace Lornsby, who described his abduction in heart-wrenching terms.  Next came Arbitrator Vanamonde, who coldly laid out the penalty for killing an Arbitrator as one panicked pressedman had, and the costs of the various law and military works the stampede had interrupted.  Finally, he heard Colonel Regatz point out that the Guard was obligated to protect Imperial citizens from mass abduction by aliens; surely protecting them from criminals wearing Bishop’s hats was not so terribly different?

In the end, Somerset made his decision.  To the horror of Lornsby and suppressed delight of Clement and Vanamonde, he began by saying that he agreed with the lawman, saying that the unneeded death of an Arbitrator was tragic and that a demand for justice was totally fair.
He then turned to Regatz, and criticized his own decision.  Storming a sovereign ship of the Ecclesiarchy was well beyond his remit.  It would have been more appropriate to simply contact him, and notify him of an emergency.
However, he continued, the Archbishop was in violation of the spirit and letter of the Decree Passive, and responsible for both problems arising in the first place.  He instructed the Archbishop arrested, and instructed that the pressedmen were to produce the person responsible for killing the Arbitrator for punishment.  Until that time, the pressedmen were not to report for service on any vessel.

As the sputtering Archbishop was marched off by Provosts, and Colonel Regatz returned to his regiment, Lornsby pointed out the obvious flaw in the order.  Nobody knew which pressedman had been the one who had slain the Arbitrator, since it had happened in a panicked onrush.  Somerset, who had had entirely enough of the affair and simply wanted it over and done with, said that that was their problem.  No pressedman was to leave the station until a guilty party was identified.  The Gaunt Lights was to be given an emergency Navy crew and flown to Jodhclan’s Paradise, until a more law-abiding Archbishop could be found to command it.

Months later, the dropouts, protected by Naval law from Arbites brutality, had uncomfortably settled into an unused deck of Thunderhead.  Eighty years later, all of the original parties are long dead, but remain bound by the Navy’s ironclad demand for a guilty party to be found.  The ranks of the dropouts have swollen with similar escapees from the decadent and untrustworthy Jodhclan Ecclesiarchy, along with thousands of others who have escaped Imperial impressment.  That, or they simply do not want to be found.  So long as the Arbites maintain a bitter watch over the dropouts’ ranks, there is no leaving the station for them, no matter why they are there or how long they’ve been trapped.  There are bounty heads with local contracts, men drummed out of military service but undeserving of execution, descendants of the original pressedmen, and more.  These pitiful louts form the core of the station’s long-term population.  Commander Somerset has long since perished, and the time may someday come that either the Arbites or the Navy lose patience with the indigents and evict them.

Other residents of the station are less criminal in nature.  The families of lifer Navy personnel, they tend to be the operators of the various living facilities on the vast station.  They serve as maids, janitors, cooks, decorators, and even guides to help people navigate the largely identical galleries and docks of the station.  Others are families of long Imperial Navy tradition, who send their children off to earn officer commissions, then return to help run Thunderhead’s operations.

Thunderhead has a history of violence.  The station has come under attack four times in the past eight hundred years alone, each time from Ork raiders looking for a quick score after spending their teef at Gorkypark.  Time and again, the greenskins sweep in from the rapids of Vasari’s Cruelty and assault the Imperial station, and each time, the brutal creatures inflict savage battle on the Imperial defenders.  The concentration of Arbites, Navy, Guard, and Ecclesiarchy personnel present make it a tough target to attack and a harder one to destroy or board, however, and there are always ships ready to fight in its defense.  Twice, the Orks actually managed to board the station with their ramshackle boarding craft, and both times, vast groups of Imperial Guard staging there on their way to Coriolis drove them off.  Unable to field their vehicles inside a space station, the Guard would instead use the huge vacuum containment and atmospheric control plates the station employs to seal off damaged parts of the station.  The huge blast-proofed shields, usually used to block off compartments that had been exposed to vacuum, can be lowered to half-deployment, and used as excellent cover by the Guard.  When Orks drew close enough to vault the half-lowered doors and fight in hand-to-hand, the Guard would simply close the doors and vent all atmosphere on the other side, then reset the trap once the pounding stopped.

Only once, over two thousand years ago, was Thunderhead at any real risk of permanent loss to the Imperium.  That threat came not from Orks, but the perfidious Dark Eldar.  Night-black ships, shaped like needles and as fast as Fury fighters despite being eighty times the size, slid in from above the plane of the system and assaulted the Imperial station with a cold rage that caught the Navy off-guard.  Most of the defense ring platforms and ships of the station were too far away to make a difference, while the rest were quickly silenced with precision xeno weaponry.  The hull of the station ruptured in a hundred places, spilling thousands of hapless Guardsmen and Naval crew into the void.  Tiny ships swooped around, collecting the flailing victims, while hundreds more pierced the hull and landed inside the station.  With a speed and total silence that unnerved the defenders, the Dark Eldar invaders ripped their way through bulkheads, capturing thousands of prisoners.  A prize team made their way to the control office and shut down internal fire suppression and security systems, while squads of Grotesques tied up the Arbites and Navy garrison response.
After an hour of total chaos, the entire Eldar attack group abruptly retreated, even though the Naval reinforcements had been another hour away.  The aliens disappeared as suddenly as they had arrived, leaving twisted bodies and burning wreckage in their wake.
Though publicly claiming victory, the Navy was baffled.  Why had the Dark Eldar even bothered attacking them in the first place?  Had they been seeking something other than slaves?  For that matter, where had they come from?  Two years of frantic rebuilding and exploration followed, but even after Thunderhead was brought up to full readiness, the Inquisition still had no idea why the Dark Eldar had attacked them, and were quite certain that there were no Webway gates nearby.  That meant the Dark Eldar either had a completely stealth-cloaked Gate nearby large enough to transport a while raider fleet, which even the Dark Eldar would find pricy to attack one space station, or that they had arrived in the Materium somewhere else and flown there manually.  That seemed even less likely, given the huge risk that all Dark Eldar face while stuck in either realspace or Warp flight.  To this day, the Inquisition remains in the dark as to the slavers’ intention.


System: Drimmerzole

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Maskos Subsector

System Overlord: Grand Duke Emmanuel Voss

Planets: Two, one inhabitable

Feudal world: Drimmerzole Secundus
Satellite: Moon – Elcyros

Tropospheric Composition: Drimmerzole has Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 20%, Krypton 2.5%, Water 1%, Carbon Dioxide 0.05%; Elcyros has no atmosphere

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Local Peerage

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

Climate: Drimmerzole Secundus has lengthy grasslands, broken by low mountains and long rivers, with frequent light rain and the occasional catastrophic tornado.

Geography: Drimmerzole is smaller than Terra and has little tectonic activity, having 72.9 million mi² of surface; Elcyros is a barren, non-tectonic rock of little interest

Gravity: Drimmerzole has Terran Gravity

Economy: Local Gelt

Principle Exports: Antibiotics, Textiles, Sand, Salt, Oil
Principle Imports: Red Meat, Carbon Fuels, Laser Weapons, Processed Alloys, Agricultural Technology

Countries and Continents: Drimmerzole has nine continents, each connected by secret subsurface tunnels maintained by Mechanicus volunteers for emergency defense use.  The world is further subdivided by a massive peerage of local nobles.

Military: Drimmerzole Scarp-wrights (feudal PDF and brainwashed Guard)

Contact with Other Worlds: Minimal and purely economic

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

Population: 21,500,600

Description:
Drimmerzole is a small world, in terms of both its physical size and the role it plays in the sector.  Although it has deposits of gold, salt, and oil, which make it at least profitable to exploit for a colony, it is of no travel or strategic value beyond that.  The world is ruled over by roughly two thousand Dukes of the local peering, with the Imperial System Overlord serving as the Grand Duke.  Although elevation to this position is contingent on Adeptus Terra approval, ducal positions are not.  The peerage system is vicious, with lesser nobles competing to be the most successful, so that they can enjoy the patronage of the nearest Dukes.  Each Duke is allowed to raise some household defensive troops, equipped with black powder weapons.  The Imperial Governor alone may raise lasgun-equipped troops, and these are technically restrained from engaging in local political disputes.  Given that the incumbent Grand Duke detests his colleagues, and wouldn't allow himself to be involved in their petty squabbles if held at gunpoint to do so, it seems like an unlikely possibility.

In case of Glasian invasion, the main continents are connected by nine tunnels, all bored in secret by the Mechanicus.  These tunnels are where the Scarp-wrights, the Imperial Guard inductees, are trained and brainwashed into the service of the Imperium.  Here, they train in air-cycled underground chambers, overseen by bellowing Astra Militarum Drill Instructors and Commissarial Cadets from the Celeste Grand Scholam Progenium.  The brainwashed serfs and peasants are seen as a low-risk first assignment for these new Instructors and disciplinarians.

The planet raises Imperial Guard regiments from the ducal armies, though generally only to engage threats in neighboring inhabited systems.  Regiments favor infantry and rough riders, both biological and mounted on all-terrain vehicles.  The local Ecclesiarchy often assigns Chaplains from the populations of larger worlds in the sector, to prevent political ties.  This rises above habit and becomes law with the assignment of other Adepts.  Service in any Adeptus Terra or Commissarial duty in the system is forbidden outright for people born in the system, or their descendants for three generations.  The contempt the Grand Duke feels for his peers, the distance between Drimmerzole and any other Imperial system, and the harsh rules against local employment for Adepts add up to a situation in which the population and supreme government want nothing to do with each other, which suits the only real winners of that affair: the merchant houses.

Vast farms, operated by a mixture of servitors and serfs and owned by one of five Cloudburst Mercantile Noble Houses, grow the rare Red Lilac flower for interplanetary sale.  Too delicate to be harvested by combine, but too short-lived to be harvested by hand, the serfs instead use great slashing machetes and scythes, made of Mechanicus carbon steel and lethal in close quarters.  Baskets made of local wicker and freezers provided by Cognomen, in exchange for small cuts of the flowers’ profit, store the plants.  Once harvested and dried in very low temperatures, the flowers’ unique proteins can be rendered loose from the flower husks and made into a dazzlingly effective antibiotic; one that is effective against all known Human-pathogenic gram-positive bacteria.  Useful for trauma hospitals, military Field Chirurgia, and augmetic implantation clinics, this antibiotic (formally called P-n-benzene-triarsenolysitide and informally called Petals) is worth ten times its weight in platinum, and every flower collected is wrung clean of its protein before being mulched.  Despite the backbreaking labor and monotonous life of harvesting, the position of a Harvest Serf is actually sought-after by many Drimmerzole peasants.  This is thanks to its quite high-paying compensation, the free medical care its holders receive, and a hard exemption from all military levies by anybody short of the Sector Overlord himself.

The other major advantage of living and working on the huge farms is the view.  Red Lilac (which is only distantly derived from the ancient Terran plant of the same name, thanks to an error in a Diaspora seed ship) grows best in wet, elevated terrain with clay-thin soil, and therefore only grows on Drimmerzole’s picturesque mountain plateaus.  From the plateaus, workers can gaze down on the petty, squabbling Dukes, Counts, Earls, Barons, Lords, and other well-to-do, and reflect on how it sucks to be them, before returning to a life of picking flowers.


Drimmerzole’s single moon is, if it’s even possible, less interesting.  Having nothing more remarkable than the local Mechanicus command post and a single Defense Laser, the Techpriests here have made the best of their mind-numbingly boring post.  They work on large farms of servers and cogitators, sequencing the DNA of Drimmerzole plants and looking at the world through hand-made telescopes, having essentially nothing else to do.  Rarely, however, a priest will actually request assignment to the Elcyros station, as it does provide excellent meditative opportunities for those who best contemplate the Omnissiah in the absence of complex work.


System: Clegran

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: Five, one inhabitable

Civilized World: Clegran Tertius

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 21%, Krypton .2%, Water .7%, Carbon Dioxide 0.01%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Local Kingdoms

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Broad, wet bands of thick clouds, punctuated by snowstorms and occasional yearlong hot streaks at the extremes

Geography: 79.9 million mi² of surface and heavy plate tectonics

Gravity: 1.08 Terran Gravity

Economy: Throne Gelt and Silver Gelt

Principle Exports: Clay, Boron, Imperial Guardsmen
Principle Imports: Iron, Oil, Water Filters, Clothing and Shoes, Timber, Poultry, Ammunition, Weapons, Construction Equipment

Countries and Continents: Eleven local Kingdoms, all answering unofficially to the Minister of Industry for the Administratum.  Four continents.

Military: Clegran Hunters (medium quality PDF and Guard)

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent, as an Imperial Guard staging world

Tithe Grade: Decuma Particular

Population: 1,209,290,000

Description:
This is the only habitable body in the system, or indeed for fifteen light years in any direction.  The planet is large as Terran worlds go, but it is resource-poor for its size.  Though it has enough soil and water for its agricultural needs, it does not have sufficient iron for most Imperial-style basic manufacturing, and little petrochemical resource.  It has no Imperial Governor, though the Minister of Industry holds the title de facto.
Clegran’s vast plains house millions of Imperial citizens in tightly packed cities, to shelter from the ripping wind.  Agriculture on the plains is difficult, to say the least.  The winds whip any usable minerals from the topsoil, thick plant roots hold scraggly grasses in place to resist the wind and must be cut through, and the high winds prevent any large river convergences except near the coasts.  Power is abundant despite the lack of oil, thanks to the wind turbines with which the planet has been gifted by the Mechanicus.  Additionally, the high tectonic activity of the planet allows for common geothermal taps, and the clear, windy sky easily accommodates solar panels.  Larger cities cannot be walled, and have their outer faces directed towards the wind; some large buildings make use of overlapping plates of synthetic rock and pressure-molded metal to prevent too much wind damage.  Some buildings go the opposite way, and make use of highly flexible materials for walls, with elastic cables carrying power and internal communications from floor to floor.

Outside the cities, there is some agriculture in the rich valleys that cut through the hardpack dirt and gritty plants.  Some valleys are shallower, with slower water movement, and tend to have rich soil along the banks.  Others are nearly vertical and very deep, cut by thin, fast rivers.  The former have some textile farming, but most employ grain and fruit vine farms.  The vertical valleys generally have no agriculture, and are instead left intact for their water supply.

Hereditary Kingdoms rule the continents, with each King serving as a combination regional governor and Internal Tithemaster.  Ecclesiarchial input for King selection is roundly ignored, though the Ministorum does preside over many other affairs of state and soul.  The Arbites have at least one full-size Precinct Fortress in every city, complete with Rhinos, combat Servitors, and even Leman Russ tanks.  This, plus the heavily centralized force of government in the Kingdoms, usually ensures a relatively low-crime environment despite the population density of the cities.

However, not all Imperial citizens on Clegran live in the cities.  In fact, tens of millions eke out a living in the great mountains at the higher latitudes of the planet, or in the wind-farms of the plains.  Additionally, there are dozens of military bases, including a landside Naval listening post connected to telescopes and sensor arrays in orbit.  Nomadic tribes of barbarians on the plains used to be common features, but these tribes have gradually moved to the cities as time goes by.

The Hunters are the Guard regiments of the Clegran system.  They largely base their designs, tactics, and techniques on Septiim, though at a far smaller scale.  They make use of both conscripts and volunteers.
The Clegran Hunters specialize in the use of plains-warfare tactics, with line-of-sight guns and tanks being their preferred combat platforms.  Flamers and plasma weapons are their favored non-conventional weapons.  However, the scavenger conditions of their cities make for an odd quirk in combat: the Clegran practice of collecting random weapons.  Clegran troops augment their wargear with whatever sanctified equipment they can find.  There is no pattern to this.  Clegran spotters may collect shotguns, an artillery crewer may take a liking to a sword, or a tank commander may affix a door breacher to his pistol.  Though permissible by the Mechanicus, many of their number find this trait annoying, as it could be interpreted as an affront to the Machine God and the forges that produced the perfectly serviceable gear the troops are normally issued.

Clegrans also have one common formation that the more generalized Septiim regiments lack: Rough Riders.  Whether on horseback or employing motorized mounts, Clegrans use a combination of Hotshot weapons and Explosive Lances to use while riding to corral enemies.  A particularly effective combination they have discovered is that of the Mobile Grenadier and the Waffen-Werfer, as it is nicknamed by Clegran Artillery Masters.  Small groups of Rough Riders with grenade launchers, rifle grenades, and flare guns encircle and harass enemy formations or fortresses, firing explosives and flares to mark the target and distract defenders, while spotters from the Mobile Artillery use those flares as target indicators for artillery batteries in the rear park.  Though this tactic is obviously more useful for nighttime bombardments, it is excellent for shattering enemy morale and forcing them to either relocate or hunker down - both of which would open them up to other approaches.  The Clegran artillery preferences trend towards mortars and rocket artillery, such as the Wyvern and Manticore batteries.

Clegrans avoid the use of paratroopers and gliders, but show surprising aptitude for trench and sapper war for a people of steppes and plateaus.  The great flats of their worlds, dotted with close-built cities and threadbare industry, breed Clegrans tough and stocky, and more than able to hold their own in pits and trenches, perhaps somewhat less than Kreigers or Catachans.  The venerable and battle-honored First Clegran Hunter Regiment has the rarest of prizes for a frontier planet: a Stormhammer Super-Heavy Assault Tank.  Outfitted with the massive Stormhammer Cannon with coaxial multilaser, two Battle Cannons, six sponson multilasers, a pintle-mount heavy stubber, three hunter-killer missiles, and a fore-firing Lascannon, the tank is configured like those of the Solar Auxilia armies of old, and is outfitted specifically to engage and destroy huge Ork mobz.  The regiment is currently leading the charge against the sudden Ork invasion of Oglith, where they are in the van of over two hundred other regiments from across the Sector and beyond.


System: Fathon

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: Four, one habitable

Feral World: Fathon Prime

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 73%, Oxygen 25%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon gasses .01%

Religion: Holy Emperor Star Cult

Government Type: Primitive

Planetary Governor: Yes

Adept Presence: Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Mechanicus

Climate: Fathon Prime is an arboreal paradise, with polar ice caps and vast oceans

Geography: .9 times the size of Terra, with only one large continent taking up one quarter of the surface of the planet, and two floating ice caps, seasonally present

Gravity: .83 Terra gravity

Economy: None

Principle Exports: None
Principle Imports: Weapons, Luxury Items, Cogitator Parts

Countries and Continents: One continent, no nations to speak of

Military: Celestial Guard barracks

Contact with Other Worlds: Almost none

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: 7,000,000

Description:
Fathon Prime is a curious combination of historical mistake and the Emperor’s luck.  Once, well over nine thousand years ago, the world was a resort and getaway world for members of the Imperial Army and Flotilla.  A single, tiny city held sway over the world’s vast, awe-inspiring forests; peace and tranquility reigned over the world.
Then Horus claimed ambitions above his station, and all hell broke loose.
The world declared for the Warmaster, to the resounding indifference of all Imperial authorities of note.  Cut off from Terra by the Ruinstorm and deep in Heretic territory, Fathon accomplished nothing of note in that time.  A few thousand residents volunteered for Horus’ militaries, but in seven years, the Heresy was over, the Scouring began, and Fathon Prime was overlooked by the reprisal fleets.  Fathon cut off all ties to the greater galaxy and went dark, hoping to be forgotten by the Imperium.

Nine thousand years later, Cloudburst Explorators found the planet in a state of barbarism.  All technology or knowledge of the greater world was long gone from the degenerated minds of the few hundred thousand surviving humans on the planet.  The wrecked shell of their city had dissolved to scrap and sand; all knowledge of the Heresy, or indeed other planets at all, had long been forgotten.  The Ministorum, unaware of the world’s history, began the laborious process of converting the locals to the Imperial Cult.
The Inquisition, however, was able to discover the world’s true roots from the extensive records of tax and tithe income from the Crusade, which of course predate the Ecclesiarchy substantially.  To this day, a small cell of Ordo Hereticus spies operate from a concealed bunker on the planet’s equator, using psychic screening and an occasional population infiltrator to keep an eye on the planet for any signs of recidivism, even as the world slowly crawls back towards proper technological integration into the Imperium.  A small militia of Celestial Guard keeps watch on the world from high orbit, along with the planet’s few administrators, who stave off terminal ennui by spending all their money on imported luxuries.  The Glasians have not yet targeted the world.  If they do, evacuation will be the planet’s only recourse, as there is no way to defend it.


System: Remenanos

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: Overlady Santher Liminiel 3rd

Planets: 4, 2 habitable (1 uncolonized)

Mining World: Underbar

Satelites: One moon, uninhabitable

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 2%, Water 1%, Carbon gasses 20%

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Adeptus Terra

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Boiling hot, dangerous metal gas storms

Geography: 1.4 times the size of Terra, with five continents and a slurry of metallic oceans

Gravity: 1.15 Terra gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones, Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Stone, Iron, Manganese, Copper, Xenon, Uranium, Promethium, Salt, Zinc, Tungsten, Gravel, Nitrogen, Mercury, Cesium, Gallium, Bromide
Principle Imports: Food, Luxuries, Nickel, Paper, Air Filters, Clothes

Countries and Continents: One continent

Military: Celestial Guard barracks

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent

Tithe Grade: Exactis Tertius

Population: 2,000,000 humans; 900,000 servitors

Description:
Underbar is a gleaming ball of silver in the black void of space.  Toxic, dangerous, lightly defended, and utterly inimical to life, Underbar remains a prize for the Imperium.  Its oceans are a mixture of metal, bromine, and horrifically polluted water.  Its air is a morass of nitrogen, carbon, and metal molecules, and it has no native life.  The Imperium, however, has aggressively colonized the world, and uses mighty Mechanicus machines to extract the precious elements from the glittering oceans.
The history of Underbar is unremarkable.  Mechanicus Explorator Dammelvine discovered it in M41.201, and promptly wrote it off as a potential fourth-string mining site.  It was only after a coincidental visit by a Chartered Captain performing a routine navigation check that what Dammelvine had thought to be rock formations were actually pools of liquid metal, floating under skies of carbon gas and nitrogen-filled storm clouds.
The Mechanicus ordered the phenomenon investigated, and soon enough, the world was categorized for a colony.  Shortly thereafter, the problems of such a colony became clear.  Though filtering the air is not so hard, the incredibly corrosive and hot oceans of liquid metal eat through the aluminum hulls of typical Mechanicus ocean mining barges.  This, combined with the relatively small infrastructure for permanent support of industrially demanding colonies outside the immediate area of Cognomen, made the colony unsustainable for the Mechanicus alone.  Free chartered merchant houses began competing for mining rights, which the Mechanicus stubbornly refused to give up.

Eventually, a compromise was reached with the Administratum.  The labor forces and funding for the colony would come from Thimble, while the special alloy-hulled mining equipment needed to harvest the precious metals of the world would come from the Mechanicus.  Though most labor here is compelled, because of Thimble’s vigorous crime rate and the need to do something with the convicts, there is a core of specialized, well-trained, and very well paid professional miners on the planet.  These veteran workers direct the convicts, operate the great mineral separators, and if need be, fill the first seats on the evacuation lifters when waves in the metal seas threaten to capsize the vast processing stations that float over those same seas.
As the world is unable to spare what little manpower it has, Underbar does not raise Imperial Guard forces.  However, the vast volume of rare metals it produces entitles it to a small, permanent garrison of Celestial Guard.  Additionally, overused convicts can always be returned to employment as Servitors elsewhere on the planet.

There is another planet in the Remananos system that could potentially be colonized.  It is a planet of steep, alpine mountains and churning oceans.  With only a few decades of work by the Mechanicus, it could be rendered a viable human colony.  However, the Mechanicus presently has far larger concerns on its hands, and there are no attempts to build a colony underway until after the next Glasian Migration.

Warp Storm: Hell’s Vortex, Nauphry Subsector
An apt name if ever there was one, Hell’s Vortex is speculated by Imperial Ordo Malleus experts to be the reason that the Dark God Tzeentch – ever obsessed with prophecy and foretelling – had originally focused their attention on Cloudburst, before the pleasant diversion of the Glasians came along.  This relatively small but non-navigable Warp Storm centers around a binary star system that orbits in the opposite direction of the galaxy’s spin.  The binary stars, however, are nearly invisible behind a dense cloud of radioactive gas and Warp-stuff that constantly spews from inside the roiling Warp Rift between the two stars.  There, like batteries feeding a dynamo, stellar material streams from the surfaces of the two stars in perfect symmetry, and disappear into the Rift.  What lies on the other side, none know for sure.  What matters to the Imperium and Chaos, however, is the effect of the gasses.
When the first Imperial Rogue Traders and Explorators flew into the region, many thousands of years ago, Hell’s Vortex was much larger, in both physical dimensions and total energetic discharge.  Mechanicus Astral Savants suspect this to be the result of the stars shrinking.  Easily mistaken for a black hole at a distance, it is only at the very edge of the Storm that the true, barely-comprehensible horror of the Vortex becomes clear.
Anomalous behavior of time-space near Warp Storms is quite common.  Near Hadex, for instance, ships may suddenly corrode as if oxidizing in an atmosphere like that where their raw materials are mined.  Near van Goethe’s Rapidity, ships suddenly move faster.  Near the Damocles Veil, time slows, and people may even stop aging temporarily while in Warp-flight.  Hell’s Vortex, however, is so far the only Warp Storm known to the Imperium where time actually flows backwards, and in quantifiable amounts.  Experiments carried out by the Ordo Chronos and Ordo Thanatos established this after tests carried out in M41.007.
To confirm their suspicions of the nature of the Vortex, subjects were chosen from a convenient Penal Legion.  Subjects were strapped to life-support machines and given a simple series of numbers and colors to memorize.  Their memories were then erased completely, and they were shown a new set of colors and numbers.  The subjects were then flung into the Storm in surplus Lightning Fighters.  When the Lightnings returned from the other side of the storm, some years later, their ships were stripped clean of all paint, as if the metal of their hulls had aged backwards.  More shockingly, the surviving test subjects were all much younger than they had been, and remembered no sequences of colors and numbers.  Some did not even remember committing crimes against the Emperor worthy of sentencing to a Penal Legion.  Three fighters simply disappeared.
When the results of these tests were relayed to the Sector Conclave in orbit about Maskos, however, the true horror of the Vortex manifested.  As the Inquisitors Chronos in charge of the experiment regaled the outcomes of the test to the listening audience of Inquisitors, the Inquisitors Thanatos that had accompanied them activated pict-screens on the walls of the audience chamber.  Displayed on the walls, the Inquisitors present saw the contents of three vaults that had stayed unopened in the guts of the station for as long as any living Inquisitor had been aware.  The vaults contained the three missing Lightning Fighters, perfectly intact.  Inside their cockpits, the Inquisitors saw the remains of the three missing Legionnaires, their faces twisted into expressions of animal terror.
The Thanatos Inquisitors present then explained that the three fighters had been found, drifting through space some half light-year from the edge of the Vortex, by Inquisitor Berlenstein of the Ordo Malleus, over four thousand years ago, while pursuing a group of Khornate pirates.  Berlenstein saw, after taking the fighters aboard, that they had come from the far future, and had given them over to the Ordo Thanatos to establish how this could be possible.  The fighters had stayed in the Ordo Thanatos’ care, until a hunch had led to their secret transfer to the Maskos station after its construction.

There was nothing left to discuss.  The Conclave immediately set about the business of declaring the entire Warp Storm as Perdita Aeternus, and the Ordos Chronos and Thanatos destroyed what remained of the experimental equipment and Penal Legion.  What the Ordo Thanatos elected not to share with the greater Conclave Cloudburst is that only one thousand years later, a full Ecclesiarchial flotilla emerged from the same Warp Storm.  All of the people aboard, including five Ordo Hereticus Inquisitors, wore the garments of the Ecclesiarchial Palace of Celeste, numbering over four hundred thousand souls total.  Though the Ordo Thanatos concerns itself with life and death, they interpreted this to mean that the Ecclesiarchy would someday send a fleet – itself a violation of the Decree Passive – into the Warp Storm, apparently with the cooperation of the Ordo Hereticus, in an attempt to turn back time.  Quite how the Ordos Chronos and Astra would have allowed this is unknown, as is why the ships have extensive battle-scars on their broadsides, but not their engine blocks or armored prows.  All eighteen ships and their contents were disposed of in a nearby black hole, to prevent time paradoxes, after the Ordo Thanatos had surreptitiously downloaded the contents of the ships’ cogitators, which they have kept guarded and unread ever since.

As to what Hell’s Vortex actually is, nobody knows.  Eldar Corsairs in the region suspect it to be a damaged Webway Self-repair Ward Nexus.  If this is true, then the Inquisition has significantly underestimated the regional damage Hell’s Vortex could cause.  After all, the portions of the Webway made by the Old Ones had extensive magical self-repair wards, of greater complexity than the Eldar ever managed to duplicate.  The Eldar and Old Ones both knew how to displace stars into the Webway, however, and if what the Hell’s Vortex storm represents is what the Eldar suspect, then what is visible from the outside of the Storm is the opposite of what is actually happening.  Sometime soon, the Eldar predict, the buildup of stellar matter in the system, as a result of stellar material being ejected from a self-repairing section of the Webway, will result in a nova that will destroy both stars, and leave a permanent Webway portal in its place, at the heart of a radioactive Warp storm.  Whether these Eldar Corsairs are aware of the lost Ecclesiarchy fleet or not is unclear, and only adds to the Ordos Chronos and Thanatos concern.  The other issue is that it is not clear if the light being emitted from within the cloud is the product of reversed time flow, or if it is depicting things as they happen, which does not simplify things.

There is another possibility, which has occurred to neither Eldar nor Imperial military.  It is possible that the Warp Rift that birthed this chrono-displacement is not a product of the Webway, but the remains of a Warp Gate, like the Maw-Jericho Gate in the Segmentum Obscurus, and it is siphoning stellar material to repair itself.  If this is the case, however, it is of little benefit to the Warp-faring races of the galaxy, because the heat and radiation from the stars is more than enough to boil any ship that gets close.


Asteroid Cluster: Disaster, Thimble Subsector
Perhaps the name of the asteroid cluster came from the bad luck story that it hosted, or perhaps it was just a portent.  Either way, Disaster is a well-covered-up story of greed triumphing over self-preservation.
In M39.873, shortly after the formal declaration of the neighboring Celeste Subsector, a small convoy of Imperial ships crossed the Disaster area.  Consisting of four Explorator ships from Cognomen and one Rogue Trader ship from what is now known as Brotherhood, these five ships sought out unknown technology.  The Explorators and the Trader had a mutually beneficial arrangement in place.  Whenever caches of technology popped up in the path of the flotilla, the Explorators would pick it over for any signs of Omnissiah-blessed technology, while leaving the xenos junk for the Rogue Trader.  The Trader, in turn, would dispose of anything too heretical to be sold in the Imperium, while keeping a few choice trinkets for sale.  For a time, this worked well.  However, one day, while examining the remains of an unknown alien freighter, the Explorators discarded the remains of what they concluded was an alien robot.  The Rogue Trader, hungry for wealth, did not discard the machine, as they should have done.  The Trader kept it instead, and came to admire its beauty, its perfect proportions, and its clearly advanced nature.  Over time, the Trader came to hold more and more xenos relics.  The crew of the vessel noticed nothing, concerned as they were simply working and staying alive, and did not notice as they slowly lost their minds.  Over time, the power locked away in the robot spread through the ship.
Eventually, on a trip back to Disaster, the Explorators and Rogue Trader were met by an Inquisitor from the Ordo Malleus.  The Inquisitor, he proclaimed, had read a message from the Emperor in the Tarot.  He insisted on boarding each ship in turn, looking for what he sternly promised would be ‘immediately, obviously visible Warpcrimes.’
The Explorators blustered, but ultimately could not refuse.  One by one, the Inquisitor boarded each Explorator ship, declaring each in turn to be uncontaminated.  When the time came for the Inquisitor to board the Trader ship, however, the vessel stopped responding to all hails.  The Inquisitor demanded boarding.  Again, they were refused.  The Inquisitor finally forced their way in with a Melta torpedo.  The Inquisitor’s shuttle departed again, only forty seconds later, and commanded the Explorators to cast the ship into a nearby star.
The Explorators refused, shocked at the proceedings.  The Inquisitor transmitted two images to the lead Explorator, who commanded that the ships of the flotilla cast the ship into a nearby star.  Coming from one of their own, the order was obeyed at once.  After the vessel had been disabled and flung into a nearby white dwarf, the Inquisitor revealed that the entire crew had been replaced with unholy monsters.  The cameras on the hull of the ship he had flown through the Melta hole had shown crew members fused to each other’s bodies, pulsing with sick fluids, wrapped in metal cables and flailing in delight at scenes of carnal hell enacted on each other, and worse.  The Rogue Trader, the Inquisitor said grimly, had been infected with a Slaneeshi daemon’s powers, and sold their entire ship to Chaos.
Sickened, the Explorators related the tale of the smashed robot.  This left the Inquisitor with a tough choice.  The Explorators, after all, had managed to miss a daemon outbreak in their own flotilla, but had done so while doing their own jobs.  They had disposed of the robot, after all, and the Rogue Trader had had no obligation or order to collect it.  The Explorators, they argued, had missed something they should have caught, because they were just working that hard on their real job.
The Inquisitor eventually decided to remand the flotilla to the Cognomen Magos, and the five remaining vessels flew back to Cognomen, where the entire incident was covered up, and the Explorators responsible punished outside the sight of the Inquisition (partially because their transgressions included disobeying an Inquisitor, something Cognomen is sensitive about at the best of times).  The Rogue Trader’s Warrant of Trade had been on their ship at the time of its destruction, it transpired, and the House in question is now lost to history, like so many others who interpret their permission to entreat with xenotech as a right to ignore its risks.