lorelei

System: Avius

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Maskos Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: Seventeen, one inhabitable

Frontier World: Lorelei

Satellites: None

Tropospheric Composition: Nitrogen 77%, Oxygen 21%, Argon 1%, Water .99%, Carbon Dioxide 0.01%.

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Local Hegemony, Elected President-By-Consent

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

Climate: Thick, broad ice caps and seasonal glaciers above polar circles, vast jungle and arctic rain forests, some isolated plateau have year-round dryness

Geography: Wide plains between tropics and polar circles, some with heavy foresting; extensive river networks with abundant natural water springs; long chains of volcanic islands, light crustal materials means little volcanism and upthrust, .96 times the size of Terra

Gravity: Hangonne has 1.01 Terran gravity

Day Length: 34 Terran Hours

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

Principle Exports: Metal Ores, Unrefined Plant Matter, Talc, Ice
Principle Imports: Aircars, Crafting Materials, Teachers

Countries and Continents: Lorelei has no nations on seven continents

Military: Lorelei Militia (low quality PDF), No Guard yet, Deathwatch (fluctuating)

Contact with Other Worlds: Uncommon

Tithe Grade: Solutio Extremis

Population: 19,744,000

Description:
Lorelei is a profound pain in the fundament.  There is no world in the entire Cloudburst Sector that is quite like Lorelei.  Not restive Hapster, not frequently assaulted Oglith, not bipolar Nauphry IV.  No world in the Cloudburst Sector, the Cloudburst Circuit, or the pitiful collection of colonies in the Exo-zone routinely comes so close to outright defiance of Imperial rule as Lorelei, and its inhabitants are innocently unaware of just how close they are to a reprisal that will give their grandchildren the night terrors.

Lorelei is a young colony of the Imperium.  Among the many, many worlds of the Imperium of Man, there are natural categories into which they all fall, usually defined by climate or population level.  Like some other worlds in peripheral and sparse Cloudburst, Lorelei is a Frontier World, meaning that it is, or used to be, a world with little central Imperial infrastructure, and used to be near the edge of Imperial space.  It also has a low population, and largely undeveloped resources.  Beyond that, Lorelei has developed a trait that some other Imperial Frontier Worlds have acquired in their past, to their detriment.
Lorelei, unlike Hangonne and Oglith, has a rebellious streak that local law enforcement and military can’t seem to stamp out.  The world’s location near the edge of all formal Imperial territory has drawn in hundreds of thousands of outlaws and isolationists from the greater Imperial heartland, some from as far away as the Scarus Sector.  The world has never officially turned on the Imperium, but some Arbites assigned to the world’s sole Precinct Fortress think that to be only a matter of time.

The planet’s populace lives in scattered towns, each more or less identical in its content.  Most have a small mine and a few ranches, a few large farms, and a chapel, plus residences, a few markets and shops, and a variety of local businesses.  These are no low-tech idyllic burgs, however, but instead employ the same levels of technoarcana and business savvy of wealthier worlds, except for a few specific cases.  Between each town, outside the control zones, the planet has massive open fields and deserts, fed by alternating dry and wet seasons over most of its landmasses.  Thick roadways taper off to two-lane affairs between the settlements; smaller family homesteads fend for themselves.

The prevailing view of the Imperium among the populace is that it is, at best, a distraction, and at worse an active impediment in the ability of the people of Lorelei to live their lives as they wish.  This is, in the eyes of the Adepta, obviously the case.  The Adeptus Terra would not exist if the people of the galaxy were capable of making the right decisions about government, religion, and defense without it.  Lorelei is not special, they scoff, it just wants to be, and so pretends that the thing keeping it from that specialness is what every other world takes for granted.
This is an understandably unpopular opinion on Lorelei, but there will always be nonconformists in any large enough group of people.  Actual crime is no higher on Lorelei than on Oglith or Hangonne.  The Adeptus Ministorum has a tenuous grip on some of the towns, but there are enough clergy on the world to prevent the trend of anti-Imperial sentiment from translating into an overwhelming force of lawlessness.

However, the trend of opposition to the Imperium tends to peter out among the ruling classes.  Like most Imperial worlds, some of the families of Lorelei have naturally drawn towards leadership, and although the President-by-Consent of the planet is elected by locals and Adepts do not get to vote, the last eight Presidents have all been in favor of greater integration with the Imperium.  The benefits are obvious to any official who pays attention, and as the Planetary Governor, the President-by-Consent naturally gravitates towards that integration.  The problem for them is that the populace strongly opposes it, and so each President publicly decries it even while pursuing it out of sight of the people, to varying degrees.

At the moment, this is proving to be a huge liability.  Many of the populations that contribute to the election of planetary and regional governments presently oppose higher integration into the Imperium.  However, the planet is also suffering under the effects of a plague.  So far, over ten percent of the planetary population has come down with this viral illness.  Discreet Ordo Malleus investigation has revealed that the illness is not Nurglite in origin, but its effects are still crippling.
The plague begins by causing constant coughing, followed by severe and uncontrollable excretion and dehydration.  This is followed by high fever, dizziness, sore throat, and lymphatic swelling.  Death follows in ten percent of cases.
Naturally, the people of Lorelei would very much like aid from their government in solving this problem.  However, no cure or vaccine exists, and the Inquisition has placed the entire planet under quarantine until a solution presents itself.  The people are outraged and demanding the quarantine lift, and some towns are even discussing open rejection of the quarantine in favor of seeking off-world help, perhaps from the Mechanicus’s biological sciences offices.

If the people of Lorelei pursue this to its natural conclusion, the retaliatory action by the Inquisition would cause a death toll higher than the disease.  The Inquisition has been highly specific on this point, which has driven the stubborn streak of the people even higher into prominence.  So far, the official actions the planetary government has taken to contain the illness have seen some success, but if the people of Lorelei continue to resist common sense, there is no telling what might happen.  What the Inquisition has not seen fit to tell the people is that they are entirely convinced that the pathogen responsible for this trouble is alien in origin, and probably artificial.  At the moment, Ordo Xenos Inquisitor deWalt Prang believes that the same force of mysterious aliens responsible for driving the Ork fleets of the Oldlight Exo-zone back from the borders of the Cloudburst Circuit in M41.839 is responsible for this disease.  This is based on some few genetic samples recovered from a crippled savior pod from an alien ship found adrift after the three-way brawl for the edge of the Circuit ended.  If the people of Lorelei were to learn this, the Emperor alone knows how they would react.

One Imperial institution on the planet has not seen widespread protest: a prison.  The Lorelei Isolation Penitentiary is one of the securest locations in the Sector.  Located deep under the surface of the water in one of Lorelei’s deep green oceans, the Penitentiary houses some of the worst criminals in the entire Cloudburst Sector, save those in the secret prison of the Sanguine Soul Convent.  As part of the deal to manufacture the prison on the planet with the Lorelein Government’s approval, the Adeptus Arbites agreed to foot most of the bill, and also hire Lorelein workers when possible.  The fact that they didn’t have to pay for it, and the fact that it creates high-paying jobs for natives, has overtaken resentment among the people for Lorelei being a destination for the Sector’s worst scum.  In the poorly-lit cage in the ocean, the condemned are given a choice between an 85% sentence length in exchange for hard labor, a normal sentence, or a conditional removal of sentence in exchange for working in Penal Legion minesweeper teams.  Those who choose labor dig under the prison with picks and simple machines, collecting manganese and copper ore for the Mechanicus.


However, there is another point of contention between the Imperium as a whole and Lorelei.  The Deathwatch has constructed a Watch Station on the planet, and they did so with the permission of the Planetary Governor.  Nearly any other world in the Imperium would consider this a positive development, but the Lorelein stubborn side has produced considerable opposition to this effort.

The Watch Station, ironically codenamed Peacekeeper, is the Deathwatch’s intended research defense-in-depth of the Subsector against alien incursion.  The possibility that the plague that bedevils the planet is alien in nature has added a sense of urgency to the Deathwatch’s construction of the facility.  Peacekeeper sports several fixed guns for its defense, and the locals are quite put out over it.  The problem the locals have with the Deathwatch isn’t the defenses per se, since they are clearly static and useless for impressing Deathwatch edicts on the populace.  The problem in the minds of the Loreleins is that the mere presence of these defenses may serve as provocation to the Glasians.  The stubborn mindset of the local colonists does not allow for the idea that the Glasians might just attack them anyway, which the Deathwatch has patiently explained again and again.
The Planetary Governor, the President-by-Consent, has made similar declarations of the blindingly obvious, to no avail.  The possibility that he may be voted out of office by the Loreleins for daring to side with the Deathwatch over the will of the people hangs heavy over the Governor’s head.  He has pleaded with the people to see reason, and his pleas have gone unheard.

Lorelein Military
The various city-states of Lorelei do practice self-defense, although none are presently at war with each other.  As the world is Imperial despite its best wishes, it does muster a PDF, although the world has managed to weasel its way out of raising Guard regiments so far.  It pays its tithe instead with metal ores, raw textiles for Thimble, and blocks of ice, as well as the world’s abundant talc.

However, its PDF is undistinguished.  Lorelei has never faced external attack.  Its troops specialize in the use of snipers, minefields, and Rough Riders, and in fact has some of the best Rough Rider PDF in Cloudburst, at least in terms of their marksmanship.  Lorelein lack of discipline affects the PDF, and its troops are notoriously unreliable even under their own officers.