Mendic

System: Mendic

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Hapster Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 6, 1 habitable

Dead World: Scalding

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: N/A

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

Adept Presence: N/A

Climate: N/A

Geography: The size of Terra, barren rock and open lava vents

Gravity: 1 Terran Gravity

Economy: N/A

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

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: N/A

Contact with Other Worlds: N/A

Tithe Grade: N/A

Population: N/A

Description:
At one point, this world was a breadbasket of the Imperium.  Remarkably similar to ancient Terra in size and biosphere, it was a world of purers, massive grox herds that roamed over low hills and through shallow rivers, and cities of glass and stone.  The planet, then named Letrione, had over two hundred million Imperial souls, and aside from some common and annoying volcanism and diastrophism, the world was a perfectly unremarkable Agri-world of Imperial humanity.
This came to a horrific end thanks to the forces of Chaos.  The world played host to massive slaughterhouses for the grox and bovine herds that traveled its surface.  Within the slaughterhouses, a misread psyker aptitude test resulted in one young psyker escaping the Black Ships.  Unaware of their psychic power, they began to hear the prayers of their neighbors to escape the endless drudgery of the slaughterhouse life.  He took pity on them, and reached out to bestow upon them gifts of psychic power, which changed their lives in many ways.  The simple, superstitious people of Letrione took this as a miracle, and offered up prayers and sacrifices to the Emperor for granting them the powers.
This, in turn, attracted the attention of dark beings.  The sacrifices turned from small piles of money and burned paper offerings to bloody ritual and debasing human misery.  The psyker who began it all felt the pleadings for release in his mind once more.  Reaching out to grant that release, his body exploded as a Warp Rift opened in his corrupted soul.
Within two weeks, eighty percent of the world’s population was dead, and an army of daemons rampaged unchecked over the planet.  When an Inquisitorial response force arrived, they immediately recognized that the world was lost.  Consigning the world’s population to oblivion, they pelted the planet with Exterminatus-grade weapons from their Longstrike cruiser.  The world’s massive volcanoes erupted as the tectonic plates of the world sank into the mantle, and the Inquisition left it behind, leaving only some automated warning beacons and the world’s new name: Scalding.


System: Cygnmo

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Delving Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 2, 1 habitable

Feral World: Cygnmo

Satelites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 78%, Oxygen 20%, Argon 1%, Water 1%, Carbon gasses .01%

Religion: Holy Emperor Star Cult

Government Type: Primitive

Planetary Governor: No

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

Climate: Cygnmo has periodic ice storms that follow the planet’s long day cycle, stretching from the equator to the polar circles, but is largely desert or pine forest

Geography: 1.9 times the size of Terra, with thin topsoil and rocky formations jutting from the oceans

Gravity: 1.11 Terra gravity

Economy: Local scrip

Principle Exports: Timber, gravel, textiles, natural gas
Principle Imports: Machined parts, plastic

Countries and Continents: Eight continents, roughly seven hundred small nations

Military: Celestial Guard barracks, Cygnmo Warbeasts (low quality PDF)

Contact with Other Worlds: Almost none

Tithe Grade: Aptus Non

Population: 11,000,000

Description:
As the fleets of Explorators and Rogue Traders aplenty scoured the worlds of the Oldlight-Proximate Circuit, patterns emerged at once.  Within solar months of the Gold Rush One beginning, these explorers found worlds with clear signs of human occupation in their past, or even some worlds that had whole populations that had since reverted to barbarism.  Cygnmo falls into the latter category.  Although there are some worlds in the Cloudburst Sector that have allowed their technology levels to rise since contacting the Imperium, Cygnmo has steadfastedly refused to allow modernity to pierce their traditionalism.  The onset of the Glasians may well bring about a change in this attitude, however.
The Cygnmen are a hardy and self-reliant force.  The Technofetishism and bland autocracy of the Imperium do not appeal to them in any way.  Although the population of the world has gained more Cloudburst-like traits over time, largely as a result of Celestial Guard barracks troops taking local spouses or going native, the hundreds of feral tribes of the world refuse over and over to be more active in the greater Imperium.  It is easy to understand why, looking at the world’s magnificent vistas, endless resources, and strong mystical traditions.  Cygnmo has withstood plagues, the passage of millennia, Imperial colonizations, and its own downfall, but their bone-deep stubbornness lingers.

For thousands of years, Adeptus Ministorum priests and Missionaries have pressured the world to adapt to the Imperial Cult, and eventually succeeded.  The ancient, variable mystical traditions of the people of Cygnmo faded in favor of Emperor-worship.  If the Ministorum had hoped that this would yield more Imperium-friendly conduct in the natives, however, they were sorely disappointed when the opposite occurred.
Cygnmen have a long history of valuing pride and military independence over cooperation.  Though avoiding inbreeding has necessitated some exchanges of clan grounds and women over the years, the individual clans, and the five or six individual tribes within each clan, would rather kill each other than work together.
Exceptions arise at times.  Chieftains of great charisma and willpower may forge multiple clans together into a proper warband.  These warbands may be allowed to run riot over the world by the Adepta, or they may be recruited into serving as the world’s PDF as needed.  Ultimately, the very mightiest of these warlords may even establish a kingdom among the clans, though these rarely outlive their first sons.

However, there is substantial evidence among the remains of these failed states that this was not always the case.  Imperial archaeologists, working in the zone the greater Imperium has claimed for itself on the surface for the Celestial Guard barracks, found architecture, coinage, art, and technology that the primitive clans of the worlds could not have possibly made for themselves in their current state.  Missionaries working with the nomadic tribes have also found evidence of complex religious hierarchies, a few scraps of working STC technology, and even complex sculptures of great formations of organized men in battle.
Any oral histories of what could have happened to break up this past triumph are long dead.  Physical evidence, however, suggests that this organization was not the result of purely local development.  To the surprise of the Missionaries and archaeologists, it was the Mechanicus who made the fateful discovery.  While excavating resource deposits in one of the great, uninhabited, rocky islands of the world’s oceans, the Mechanicus located what could only be a sign of past interplanetary presence.  To their shock, the Mechanicus unearthed a fully functioning Maskos mining machine, complete with an STC manufacturing serial number dating to the late Age of Apostasy.  All around it, the Mechanicus found more evidence of human work, including pre-fab housing units, laser guns, and mysterious powders in the refuse piles and trash heaps.  Spectroscopy revealed that this powder was dust from Maskos’ fine sandy shores.
Eventually, the Imperial colony concluded that the world had once been approached for trading rights by Drolorium, after the Age of Strife ended but before the Imperium recontacted Drolorium.  Preliminary dating work done on the remains of the ancient Cygnmo cultural artifacts suggests the timeline is accurate.  Why Drolorium left Cygnmo to its fate, nobody knows, but it clearly happened quickly, if the invaluable Maskos mining machines had to be left behind.

However, the presence of an interplanetary colony site on the planet does not, by itself, explain why the Cygnmen seem to have once had a world-spanning and successful culture of higher standards than it currently enjoys.  It would suggest how that culture was initially supported, perhaps, but given that Drolorium seems to have given nothing to Cygnmo in return for its resources, it could not have sustained it indefinitely.  Some newer dig sites have revealed that an even more advanced culture, with some parallels to early Imperial culture, may have once existed on the shores of the world’s great oceans, and traded with the ancient Cygnmen clans.  This one appears to have been of entirely local origin, and perhaps its own collapse accelerated the decline of the majority of the worlds’ clans, as a symbiotic ecosystem fails with the loss of the largest member.

Regardless of the ancient history of the world, it is clear that the previous efforts to civilize the Cygnmen had no more success than the current Imperial effort.  The Imperial Missionary and limited Administratum efforts to bring the Cygnmen into a more modern way of life have convinced only a few dozen clans of the many hundreds that existed on the world.  Some clans have even attacked the Imperium for the temerity of suggesting that they may enjoy living in places with clean water and impartial law enforcement.  Once the offending clans were exterminated, these raids ceased, but the underlying displeasure with the Imperial lifestyle has never gone away.

Those clans who have elected to become more normal Imperial citizens have enjoyed their decision’s fruits, at least for the most part.  A modern Imperial city has sprung up in the shadows of the world’s largest mountain, and its comforts are freely available to all who dwell there.  The high,tall electric fence that rings the city keeps out those who would not work for what they have, while a small Precinct Fortress of Arbites keeps order and trains the friendlier locals in Imperial law.  What defenses the world has are generally in the hands of the permanent Celestial Guard barracks on the planet, though it is not uncommon for a tribe of overly hostile Cygnmen to be snatched up in the night and taken as defenders of the world in its notional PDF.  There, they can look at great Imperial buildings and bases in astonishment and awe, and perhaps come to a better appreciation of its virtues.

To the interest of the Administratum, some of the more isolated populations of Cygnmo are developing along the same historical tracks as their ancestors.  Patrilineal kingdoms of warriors, organized around a small cadre of priests and sages and led by their greatest general, have started to conquer and absorbd neighboring migrant groups of similar linguistic character.  Some of these are now approaching the tens of thousands in number, with leadership castes too large for any one king to know them all.  These groups all seem to gradually migrate towards the world’s equator, despite the worsening weather.  Attempts to infiltrate and redirect these miniature kingdoms towards Imperial loyalty have thus far been unsuccessful.  The clans that evolve into kingdoms are generally those that have developed their own written language or adopted the Low Gothic one.  Eventually, the Imperium may well lose patience and declare one the legitimate rulers of the planet, and assist them in ‘pacifying’ the others.

Adjusting to the world’s strange climate is an effort for new Imperial Adepts and menials in the population.  The planet has an eighty-four Terran hour day, a five hundred day year, and vicious storms that chase the terminator line around the world.  At the polar circles, this is means lingering, slow snowstorms, more pretty than obstructive.  At the equator, this means rapid and destructive gale-driven rain, propelled by the cycle of cold night air and hot day air in the atmosphere.
The local calendar is, obviously, not even slightly compatible with the Imperial Standard Dating System.  Instead, the local population keeps track of time by the passage of nights.  The migratory clans have no other means of keeping observations of the passage of time, since the world lacks recognizable seasons.

The world’s enormous size has allowed for some covert implementation of local Imperial colonization of a more useful sort.  In parts of the planet with no native human life, the Mechanicus and Administratum have organized surveys to establish the planet’s mineral wealth, and its defensibility against Glasian incursion.  The results have been uniform.  The planet has abundant, untapped mineral wealth, and nowhere near the defenses needed to drive off even the lightest Glasian attack thus far recorded.  The planet’s future hangs in the balance of the Administratum’s ledgers, then: to invest the resources needed to make the locals more pliable and the land more productive, or continue as they are, and simply resign the world to loss if the Glasians come?