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System: AZH2109 (Nzark)

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Undefined Region

System Overlord: None

Planets: Unknown

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

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

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


System: Aule Windows

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Nauphry Subsector

System Overlord: None

Planets: 13, 0 habitable

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

Satelites: Hundreds

Tropospheric Composition: N/A

Religion: Cult Mechanicus, Imperial Cult

Government Type: N/A

Planetary Governor: N/A

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

Climate: N/A

Geography: Gas giants, rocky moons

Gravity: Varying

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

Countries and Continents: N/A

Military: N/A

Contact with Other Worlds: Frequent

Tithe Grade: Solutio Prima

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


System: Coriolis

Galactic Position: Cloudburst Sector, Hapster Subsector

System Overlord: Supreme Marshal Emmitt Roscoe

Planets: Ten, one inhabitable

Fortress World: Coriolis
Satellite: Moon – Schutz

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

Religion: Imperial Cult

Government Type: Military Hierarchy

Planetary Governor: Yes

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

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

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

Gravity: Drimmerzole has .92 Terran Gravity

Economy: Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones

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

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

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

Contact with Other Worlds: Constant

Tithe Grade: Exactus Prima

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because of the logistical demands of supplying a population of seven billion civilians and variable millions of Guardsmen, plus the ships in the system, Coriolis must import vast amounts of goods, but also manufactures as much in the way of valuable supplies as it can.  Mechanicus-operated forges and manufactorae produce tanks, armor, primers, aircraft, simple vehicles, and even some weapons locally, while importing teratons of more complex materiel from Cognomen.  However, all of Coriolis’ surplus industrial capacity goes to its own economy, by necessity.  The world has its own requirements, after all, and seven billion bellies and wallets to fill.  The world grows much, but not all, of its own food, and