40K System – Colsuit

Last planet and perhaps a little bit of a boring one.

Agricultural planet in the throes of social revolution from having too much food.

Agsuit is the second planet around the yellow star Colsuit. An Ag-World, its primary function was to supply compressed mats of vegetation to Kastor’s Folly, in precise measured ratios of 75% Holy Carbs and Blessed Proteins. With the near destruction of Kastor’s Folly, the shipments have begun to back up and no other world within reach can absorb such amounts of produce. So, the food has been spread back into the serf population.

The serfs of Agsuit are stunt and scrawny folk, eating the offcuts of the mats, carefully cut and measured by the Overseer caste to precise definitions laid out by tradition, from the Emperor himself. But their caloric intake has tripled since WAAGH!! Gaddzmax departed, an entire generation has reached adulthood at human norms and their own children are being born without the forms and minds of the starved.

This “Engorged” generation are not only obviously bigger and more threatening than their parents, but their desires have increased as well. No longer are they content to sing and hum before the Priest caste but many are seeking opportunities to develop or record their prayers and own work-chants in their nightly periods. They above all feel like they can think for the first time and are surrounded by the decreasing elders who cannot. Experiencing a rapid period of cultural growth for the first time in over 5000 years as they climb to a level of sophistication normally seen with feral and feudal-worlders.

Singing has increased year by year as work-chants pass between communities who would have been too tired to take notice prior. Even low jati of Overseers are starting to sing, as achieve the physical requirements for ranks thought to be impossible for their hungry frames. Too-liberal Priests compile the songs into written records and broadcast them into new sermons for the illiterate. As well as writing new philosophic texts. Art among the Overseers is beginning to flourish.

This terrifies the Noble caste. The Serfs have occasionally been upset before, driven by some mad spark across a manor. Mindlessly charging a granary like a human tidal wave or devouring anyone they could find in a frenzy. But they have never seen them act like they are people. They cross caste-boundaries, now aping the Entertainer caste but soon they will be acting like the armed Overseers and eventually trying to seize pow from the taller.

Beyond this there is a deeper fear of the Planetary Governor, the Hand of the Emperor. If the current rates continue, the population will be consuming 30% of all normal agricultural surplus within 100 years. And when Kastor’s Folly starts demanding it’s determined share, or if anyone else replaces it, Agsuit will not be able to provide. Not just a failure but an existential sin, for Agsuit exists only to provide food. Asuit cannot afford to feed itself and its holy tithes. The people must understand they have but one life to give when their souls are at risk.

The Priests have been authorized by the Monks of Northpoint Mountain to curb such practices within their manors. Denouncing such free-singers and idle art-makers as heretics. The Monks of Northpoint can do this as they are both Overseers priests of the Adeptus Administratum through their lordship of the northern continent and members of the Ecclesiarchy. Allowing them to convey the commands of the Appointed Nobility through their command of the Overseers without trespassing on the Priest caste’ s authority.

Needly to say this has not gone down well. The Porters report feeling threatened as they control the vast banked highways where produce moves by foot, wheelbarrow or sacred Autowheeler. For the Porters control the weights and measures the manorial Overseers are judged by.

Many ambitious nobles have already started organising the Overseers of their manors into illegal armies, allowing them to bypass the restrictions on the Noble Retinue jati. The Servants, the lowest of the jati that regionally blur between Overseer and Noble, whisper that they might to ascend if they can engorge enough followers with the artificial flavourings stolen from the kitchens. Reports are coming in from the Entertainer caste Spy jati, of manors burning as new Nobles seize control and pass out the reward of polearms and guns to their Serfs. This is fearmongering, the weapons go to their Overseers. But the Noble Grain Guard jati continue to sweep across the planet, courtesy of the Adeptus Mechanicus. All change must stop. Righteous duty is work and ascetic consumption, otherwise all will perish as the Emperor turns his wrath upon them.

Emperor's Divine Specter sect is the sole form of worship. Through holy work and massed communion on each side of the manor walls, the Emperor himself comes into the participates, filling their souls with the power to live even if their bodies cannot contain it. Or even fills the unworthy with his wrath until they burst. Cries and moans erupt as people begin to shake and roll, spending their hoarded calories in the name of the eventual passage to salvation through righteous duty. All carefully timed by the Priests, who alone know the songs to invoke and remove the Emperor’s presence, for they each achieved personal communion as part of their education. Feasting on the rarest of plants from spire-top gardens. Without them anyone might be filled with the daemons which lurk amid the night’s sky, a fearful time for all.

Th small Techpriests component resides in the sole hive and voidport, Ascension. A series of palaces built around a grassland of lifting elevators. They tend to the few machines used to convey the Nobles around, the voxcasters of the Priests and the mechanisms of the conveyers. Greatly distrusted for they lack the flesh and the will to be filled by the Emperor. To the Techpriests, this is a backwater posting, though not a small number come from Ascension Overseers who grew up too close to the mechanism.

The real intrigue comes from the three families which form the highest Jati of the Nobles directly related to the governor. All despise the Hand of the Emperor for his fretful placidity. Judging that Kastor will not return to importing level for generations. One advocates wholesale extermination and repopulation from loyal manors.  One is seduced by the whispers of the conspiratorial Techpriests. According to aa report from the Magos Biologis, bombarding Agsuit with comets would plough under present nutrients with extra, destroy the rebels and allow Agsuit to emerge with a mechanised workforce for another thousand years before exhaustion. The last group are decadent fops who hoard contraband media from Kastor’s Folly. They have struck deals with freakish Voidborn who claim to be Charterists. Planning to demonstrate new contracts for food to a place called Hidden. Forcing the rebels to face spiritual failing or quota, and the governor to abdicate or die.