Comparing WFRP 40K Homebrew - Italian and Australian Perspectives

 

(John Sibbick, instantly selling people on something wild)

100 posts for my blog. A nice milestone in general.

Before Black Industry made Dark Heresy from a somewhat mutated form of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2E (WFRP), there were two attempts to make a 40K RPG from WFRP 1E. Quite a seminal game that solidified or created most of the core lore for Warhammer Fantasy about the Empire and broad strokes about the rest of the world. The egregious canon characters would have to wait for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 4E to get created.

 

WARHAMMER 40000 Roleplay

Unofficial Rules for the 41^st Millenium by Colin Taber

 

WARHAMMER 40.000: THE ROLEPLAYING GAME

By Simone Gatti and Roberto Di Meglio

Translated by Marco Bizzarri and Claudia Rege Cambrin

Appended to, edited and updated by Michael Andersen and Ian Ward

 

The first attempt for a 40K RPG is two short articles in an Australian RPG magazine called Australian Realms (AR). Really just an Ad Copy and homebrew series, for a moment in the late 80s and early 90s, it seems to have been a source of creativity for a country that otherwise produced very little RPG content. I’m comparing that to a deeper Italian writeup to make a 40K RPG. The first two chapters ended up in an RPG magazine called Kaos but the rest only came from the internet as a series of .txt files.

First the eras. AR made two articles about draping the 40K setting from the original Rogue Trader (40K 1E) book over a body of WFRP 1E. Issue 8 and 9 total 8 pages and were published Nov/Dec 1992 and Jan/Feb 1993. This is the Rogue Trader era (RT), just before the new 2^nd edition of the 40K wargame. After all the White Dwarf articles were published in compilation volumes, vehicle and hand to hand combat were redefined and Realm of Chaos were published. So 40K was pretty much as is, with only the doubling down on the Grimdark to come with 40K 3E. So, despite being based on the original RT rules, they were made at a time when 40K had post-RT developed the concept of the Horus Heresy, Daemons from the Warp and the codification of the space marines with non-beaked helmets. The rules mention none of these except Eldar Harlequins.

Anytime the AR RPG mentions lore to read, it refers to the RT book. Effectively locking the setting at that style and lore by default. The Italian version covers some 22 chapters plus appendices. This was published after the release of Codex: Necron in 40K 3E, so after 2002. 40K was already fully developed and remains almost unchanged.

Character Creation

The Italian RPG features Ogryn (Ogres) as a playable species. This is noteworthy because regular WFRP wouldn’t get around to creating official playable Ogres until I think WFRP 4E. The Italian RPG restates the entire character creation process and integrates their changes, the AR RPG just has changes to each step marked with a page number for when to slip in new rules or alteration. The AR RPG explicitly removes Night Vision from all but the Eldar.

The Italian RPG has a lot more new and specialized skills. While the AR RPG has some new, but gameplay-wise superfluous racial trappings. AR as makes some simple adjustments to the starting career trapping table. A random weapon starting chart is included as there is no guarantee guns are available.

The Italian RPG also devotes a section to converting wargame characteristics, something that WFRP 1E relegated to the back of Apocrypha Now in 1995 but was probably published in White Dwarf prior. Notable Space Marines are listed as effectively a separate species for generating stat lines. In the AR RPG, they are a career you enter and advance up in stages, like a Wizard (Psyker).

And a massive list of changes to carers and Advanced Career listed in a table, mostly for new trappings and some skill additions. Also Troll Slayer is now an Ambull Slayer. A list of careers not available is explicitly because AR RPG focuses on Imperial World campaigns. Forerunners to how Necromunda will dominate how the setting sees Hive Cities. The disallowed careers are because they are overtly rural, which does not preclude a less sophisticated planet.

Due to the length, Careers are at the end.

Weapons are slightly different. The Italian RPG benefits from having several editions of wargear available to stat out. They end towards Weapon Strength + some number of D6s depending on how the weapon feels it should work. Compared to the AR RPG which keeps to a more conservative Weapon Strength + D6 (2D6 for the melta). Likewise, armor in the Italian RPG is quite a bit higher while the AR RPG keeps armor at a maximum of 2 AP (not including overlapping sources). There are also lots more special rules in the Italian rulebook for specialized weapons.

If I may make an interjection, I feel a good addition to the AR rules would be to take the Armour Penetration straight from the rules, to emphasize how future weapons cut through armor as the RT rule book explained. Since according to the Italian RPG:

“The damage inflicted by the weapons was obtained calculating 1d6 for each point of damage inflicted on average from the weapon in WH40K (for example: Las Cannon, damage 2d6, average 7, therefore in the RPG damage is 7d6), adding the strength and finally the Save Modifier.”

Psychic powers in the Italian RPG are based on the wargame, each with detailed effects. AR‘s RPG says to use Wizard spells (this came out prior to Colour Magic) and RT Psi powers. The AR RPG also says all other magic careers are possible, but some are renamed.

The Italian RPG devotes the rest of its chapters to lore. Most made by combining all the previous editions, codices and White Dwarf articles together and seemingly taking the latest source above the preceding. It’s quite detailed.

Then there are the bestiary (lots of creatures I’ve never heard of) and the availability of money, food, gear and guns on a world.

 

Overall, I think the Italian RPG is much closer to what we would get from a 40K RPG made prior to Black Industry. The setting as it was at the time, with the wargame details extrapolated out into a massive list of things to acquire and careers to explore, covering every possibility you could want from the Imperium and the Eldar. In fact I think this might cover nearly as much as the actual Dark Heresy RPG, excluding some of the more specialized roles which might not have existed in 40K circa 2002/2003. Except as lines of homebrew or converted models to represent other things.

But I think the Australian Realms RPG is far more gameable. Not only is it much more succinct (at the cost of more lookup). It keeps harkening back to a more freeform setting, where the Imperium and Eldar were much more willing to cooperate and the galaxy was not quite so rigidly defined into total Grimdark conflict. That more 2000AD meet the contents of the miniature collection era.

Both would be fundamentally weakened by their reliance of Squats to fill out the roster of playable characters. When even Games Workshop was keen to sweep the “silly” stuff away from their increasingly satire-less setting. Dwarves are so integrated into the WFRP system, that they just assumed they are so required in 40K.

 

AR’s new Careers:
Basic:

Squat Biker

Gang Member

Guildsmen (Squat)

Imperial Servant

Judge’s Squire (separate from regular Squire)

Miner (prior to Stone & Steel for WFRP 1E)

Pirate

Test-Bed Slave

Eldar Wander

Unrevealed Psyker

Advanced:

Adeptus Arbite

Administrator

Alchemist (modified)

Astropath

Cadet Marine

Marine

Harlequin

Pirate Captain

Pirate Lord

Technomancer

 

Italian RPG’s new Careers are:

Pusher (Basic)

Courtesan (Advanced)

Technician (Basic)

Chronicler (Basic)

Space Pirate (Basic)

Vehicles Thief (Basic)

Avenger (Unwritten)

Drug Trafficker (Advanced)

Rogue Psyker (Unwritten)

Settler (Basic)

Bonesinger (Eldar) (Basic)

Aspect Warrior (Eldar) (Advanced)

Guardian (Eldar) (Basic)

Seer (Eldar) (Basic)

Cipher (Basic)

Ordinate (Basic)

Curator (Basic)

Harlequin Artist

Harlequin Soldier

Subordinate

Scribes

Prefectus (Advanced)

Recorder

Imperial Assassin (Advanced)

Imperial Guardsman (Basic)

Inquisitor (Advanced)

Crewman (Basic)

Preacher (Basic)

Scholastia Psykana (Basic)

Astropath (Advanced)

Primaris Psyker (Advanced)

Schola Progenium

Tarot Seer

Technician

Foreman (Advanced)

Hacker (Basic)

Tech-priest (Advanced)

Techpriest Apprentice

Adeptus Arbites Footman

Arbitrator (Advanced)

Genestealer-slayer (Squat)

Tyrannid Slayer (Advanced)

Imperial Guard Sergeant (Advanced)

Lawman

Menial

Sniper (Unknown)

Space Hulk Warrior

Space Marine Scout (Basic)

Space Marine (Advanced)

Space Marine Sergeant (Advanced)

Space Marine Ancient (Advanced)

Space Marine Techmarine (Advanced)

Space Marine Apothecary (Advanced)

Space Marine Chaplain (Advanced)

Space Marine Librarian (Advanced)

Space Marine Terminator (Advanced)

Astropilot

Settler (Basic)

Android Hunter (Advanced)

Mutant Hunter (Advanced)

Spaceship Captain (Advanced)

Exodites Farmer

Dragon Rider (Unknown)

Exodites (Unknown)

Missionary

Dean (Advanced)

Navigator

Navigator Chief (Advanced)

Pedlar (Unknown)

Prospector (Basic)

Corsair (Unknown)

Taxi-driver

Web Navigator (Eldar)

Fleet Admiral (Advanced)

 

Sensei (Unknown)

Commissar (Advanced)

Adeptus Judge (Advanced)

Exarch (Advanced)

Gunner (Advanced)

Warlock (Eldar) (Advanced)

Farseer (Eldar) (Advanced)

Governor, Planetary (Advanced)

Governor, System (Advanced)

Governor, Sector (Advanced)

 Death Jester (Eldar Harl.) (Advanced)

Great Harlequin (Eldar Harl.) (Advanced)

 Solitaire (Eldar Harl.) (Advanced)

Abbot (Schola Progenium) (Advanced)

Adeptus Sororitas Abbess (Advanced)

Adeptus Sororitas Sister (Advanced)

Artificer (Eldar - Bonesinger stuck in aspect) (Advanced)

Electro-priest (Advanced)

Engineer (Advanced)

Chemist (Advanced)

Confessor (Advanced)

Lore Warden (Unknown)

Runepriest (Advanced)

40K Homebrew Sector Map and Sects

My final post in this series, covering the spatial relationship between my worlds and a more in depth look at the different religious groups that give Warhammer 40K texture. Since satire has been forgotten and "grim darkness" can only get you so far. It's more or a generally summery, so people don't need to go back and read each individual post.

Map done in draw.io, striaght connections are stable warp routes, dots are unstable of specualtive warp routes. Double lines are connections to other sectors or subsectors.

The Emperor’s Divine Spectre
A cult founded on Chirob. It stems from the mystic experiences felt by miners as they prayed deep underground in the cold and dark. Spread across the subsector by the yet unrecognised Saint Arzarimus, a Charterist who found common experiences during the long transit through the void of space.

A form of Theistic Mysticism, the adherents for a personal communion with the ever-present Emperor, allowing the Emperor’s presence to enter their bodies and bring their own souls closer to his divinity. With the eventual goal of uniting within his power and glory upon death. Common EDS, as found on Kastor’s Folly as well as Chirob, was Cataphatic, building elaborate cathedrals, painting murals, singing and other accepted Imperial Doctrine paraphernalia to emphasis and convey the feelings of communion and the eventual fate of their souls.

Chirob tended to have external murals. Aiming to proselytize the other sects found on the planet, with missionary work mostly directed to Chirona, where they have made great strides in recruiting Kastor’s Folly refugees to a few allied noble houses and hive strongholds.

Like many Hive-Worlds, Kastor’s Folly is home to nomadic cultures which eke out a living in the wastes beyond the hive-cities. Such nomads live as Feral Worlders do, engaged in a constant struggle against the elements and each other. However, they remain adherents of the Imperial Cult. Due to thousands of years of feuding and cultural division, they do not recognise the Bishop except as the Ecclesiarchy’s representative. They preferred their own Deacons who support any and all secular violence. Their common communion is via Introvertive meditation  by enwrapping themselves in a cloak and retreating into the warm depths of sleep.

Bawahayat is home to the Mataknecht racial type. Who as a whole practise the communion with the Emperor with light-refracting crystals. Which are the primary means of survival on their airless surface. Allowing each person to receive a survivable fraction of the directed spirit.

Befitting Agsuit’s greater social controls, the sect has transformed into a rejuvenating force, where personal communion as a higher step than shared communion. The Emperor’s spirit is called by the Priest Caste during massed prayers, with their holy songs, to those who have done the holy work. Entering each participants soul and filling it, possibly beyond the bounds of their bodies. Overseer and Serf prayers are held simultaneously, but on opposing sides of the manor wall. Both aiming to achieve salvation. It is not uncommon for participants to experience uncontrollable sounds and motions.

More archaic personal communion is a requirement of Priestly education. Where they imbue certain rare plants and expand their conscious to be more receptive to the Emperor. Those who seek to continue this personal communion, rather than the social role of priests are entered into the Monastery of Northpoint Mountain. Carving much of Agsuit’s high northern mountains into interlocking silos, cloisters and hermitages.

Holy Body Sect

A monistic form of mysticism where the adherents seek to embody and, in some cases, begin a transformation into a more holy being in the aspect of the Emperor. It emerged from within the ships of the great Rogue Trader Kastor, during his charting and colonisation of the sub-sector. The beliefs seek to balance an apophatic and cataphatic understanding of the Emperor, rejecting that which is not clean and divine while undertaking processes which refine the body into a better aspect. Becoming more holy and hence better people.

The greatest centres of the Holy Body sect are on Chirona, where they are split into numerous subsects based on the whims of the billions who dwell there. Statues and images of the Emperor and particularly close saints are prevalent, as the population seeks to emulate them. The most common form by weight is called Alchemic Holy Body, where the process of living a holy life and eating the holy refined stuff of the Imperium brings forth changes in the mind, and sometimes the body. Announcements of stigmata are common occurrences in the broadcasts and those who do are marked for skull-enshrinement.

Purity rites are common, usually a simple circling of the food with the finger. Such rites grow with greater frequency on Tryphobeta, where refined food must be kept free from the dust. There, the focus of correct actions and ascension to a higher form dovetail with the practise of the Tech-Priests. And among the Techno-Tribes, there is a conscious choice to ascend in body or mind first. Representing a commitment to allying with a Tech-Priest Refinery-Monastery or a Administratum Taxation-Seminary.

An extreme interpretation is found on Nazgool. Due to the high number of mutants, the human population enshrined within the Nine Capitans and the Moon are fanatical about purity. There can be no taint to their food or actions, even bodily functions are to be done in accordance with the local scriptures. Less the taint of the process begin a slow but inevitable corruption of their souls.

Such beliefs are almost chirally mirrored in the mutant workforce. With a variant sect, which pertains to the redemptive power of consuming blessed food and so in a way, reducing the taint of mutation which has built up in their bodies. The less mutated, the purer the soul. In fact, some of the eastern sects believe they are incarnating as the Emperor upon Nazgool, as they continue to reduce their radiation levels through strictly apophatic and naturalistic contemplation of a perfect world without mutations.

Four or Three Holy Ministries Sect

This is probably the oldest and possibly the most orthodox of the sects of the Imperial Cult. Coming from the more established regions of the wider sector before Kastor even set forth on his journey. This sect holds that the structure of the Imperium itself is a reflection of the will of the Emperor and he acts through leaders and bureaucracy. All subjects ultimately guided by the visible hand. This Panentheistic and extrovertive worship naturally glorifies imperial governance wherever it goes and no world where it resides has seen fit to ban it for that reason.

The exact combination of entities that should be worshiped for primacy vary and the vital difference between three and four spheres of the Emperor’s guidance is the difference between consigning a holy aspect to ignominy or elevating the undeserving.

Aspects of the Emperor’s Will are:  The Ecclesiarchy, first among equals. The Administratum, which receives most of the support, the Planetary Nobility, which encompass the Defence Forces and the Imperial Guard as a collective leaders and defenders of humanity. And the Navy, which also includes the Charterist ships which ferry life-sustaining goods. This is frequently a flashpoint of debate, as the Charterists are constituents of everywhere, nowhere and are seen as freakish voidborn as well.

On Sandaaina, the allocation of divine authority is passed down via the Holy Writ. The document from on high, which lays down the quotas and processes to govern the world, the manna. This empowers the local system incarnation of the Navy and Nobility (the Fullholders), who receive twice as much manna. And the working subholders as a devolved extension of the Administratum. Their souls only given mercy through the Ecclesiarchy for their toil.

The acquisition of manna in turn is equal parts mastery of one’s own soul and achieving greater prominence in a chain that rises to the Emperor. Greatly hastening many conflicts where power can be usurped or shared.

Vito especially holds the Ecclesiarchy is esteem as a Cardinal World, the local Administratum is all but an extension of the Imperial Cult. Even so, a Cardinal World remains a centre for pilgrims regardless of sect, filling neighbourhoods while they while away the times to reach steps of the Primate Palace, he who is closer to the Emperor than anyone else within the sub-sector. Interestingly, the local variation of the Four Holy Ministries sect holds the conditions on Vito-Aqua to be a physical embodiment of punishment. With convict labour signed over to the Tech-Priests to be made into servitors. The Tech-Priests do not appreciate the comparisons.

For the Three Holy Ministries, war-torn Ajax has long supplanted its veneration of the Nobility with the Space Marines. Not least because the Fire Unicorns recruit from the planet’s fighting and mining pits. Similarly, the veneration of the Navy ahs also been folded into the Administratum. Ajaxians seeing the defensive aspect taken over by the Space Marines as the holy sword of the Emperor and the Chartists as extensions of the bureaucracy.

On Four, the veneration of the Nobility and the Administratum are the same because Four has never seen any major interstellar conflict. Just violence befitting a human world of it’s status, led by and for the appointed leaders for the purpose of securing more favourable outcomes amid the record-keeping. The barren nature of the world has kept the Chartists in mind as the dominate image of a holy vessel as well. Surprisingly, a number of people from Four dwell on Chirob. Bringing with them their three devotions.

Local Others

On Subprodey and Trypobeta, the Cult Mechanicus remains strong and orthodox. Even if they consider Subprodey and then Trypobeta to be the third and fourth most important worlds in the Imperium after Mars and Terra. Updates from Mars emerging with regular if outdated speed and dutifully included in the worship process. Yet on Subprodey, the pointless make-work is slowly pushing the menials to adopt the Biological Machine Movement. A Tech-Heresy that proclaims the body is a machine and so requires repairs and downtime as well. On Tryphobeta, the Dust Khans are both the main source of local recruitment and the biggest danger. Far too many Tech-Priests will merge their duties with maintaining their tribe’s equipment, even as their tribe raid Mechanicus facilities and each other.

Worse heresies include the Vac-Scavs of Eytry, where abandoned workers have lived in relative peace as a low-tier space civilisation. Repairing by rote the machines, until Subprodey’s need for mineral has forced them into conflict.

 

On Nazgool, the Tech-Priests refuse to leave their radiation-sealed shelters. Leaving it to the mutant cult of the Pure Machine. A monastically order which delivers demonstration-sermons in the name of Saint Khamool, an acolyte who fled into the wilderness in the early days when mutations were just starting to be detected as a widespread issue. Their control of the domestic bio-fuel makes them indispensable, even for the human nobility. They believe in replacing mutated body parts with cybernetics to maintain purity of form. While the sermons are highly specific, enough general knowledge has accumulated in heretical codices to give the limited middle-class an esoteric knowledge of mechanics and sciences.

 

Ajax’s transformation from Mining World to War World has changed their religious practises probably permanently. Esoteric warcults of the dead have emerged, venerating warbands for their deed and martyrs. With every family having a serving member and many families having lost one or two relatives already, fatalistic memorials take over all previous traditions. Any pretence the planetary nobility had as a lesser sword of the Emperor beside the Space Marines is gone and replaced by such warcults.

Increasingly the clergy and people and being split between two new sects; the syncretic Cult of the Rhinoceros in Saint’s Rest and the traditional Three Holy Ministries in Beceen. Beceen is seen as more liberal in that it tolerates a degree of artistic endeavour in its iconography and so has been condemned as decadent. Forming a new ideology from a negative as more radical clergy move to its camp. Bishop Torquemada Phalan makes no secret his desire to purge the Ajaxian race of all deviance.

The Cult of the Rhinoceros was not founded by him, but he has done the most to interpret and spread it. It combines the Flaming Unicorn Chapter, whose rigid approach to duty as a Iron Hand successor chapter goes well with the ancient insistence on mining quota. First a mystery cult for pit fighters not chosen for the chapter. The Rhinoceros is the Unicorn: pure, mystical, stubborn and aggressive, it’s mind too small for doubt or questions. The Rhinoceros sacrificed itself to mark Humankind’s passage to the stars. For it was the steed the Emperor rode from the Garden of Life and led the way by ascension via holy human-mediated death. All should follow the Rhinoceros, to obey as a dead body obeys and Live for Death. For there is nothing but death for all mankind except the Emperor upon the Golden Throne.

The war has also given rise to the esoteric practises of the southern Tigmamanukans. A people unified by the revelatory theistic dream visions. Where the Emperor divines his intentions through dreams, mediated by the Bird. A legendary living angel, like a cherub but with no arms and hard lips. Which flies by the Emperor’s authority alone and not technology.

Which civitates depends on the Bird’s name: Quetzal – Rocky Garden, Sarimanok – Sun City or Uqar – Goodtown. The increasing familiarity of these practises as the Feaykin synchronize with the warcults has marked the Tigmamanukans for the purge. The holy warriors of the Cult of the Rhinoceros, Guetre, cannot have rivals.

 

While Four is a Three Holy Ministries world, it is filled with a variety of local practises aimed at ensuring good fortune and appeasing the dead. Both beyond and who inhabit the shafts and galleries. As the traditional power structure breaks down, these practises are coming to the forefront for each of the diverse people and regions in the darkness.

The Three Holy Ministries remain strong in Khis where they first began to preach. Finding themselves increasingly tied to the government and wondering where the text of the Emperor can justify revolution. Also, in Khis is the Cult of the Garden Emperor in Shaft-City Stan. The Emperor tends the garden of souls, pruning the unjust and the failures and encouraging the growth of the righteous, until their time has come to achieve their harvest, their foretold destiny. The Emperor is patient, just, firm and not arbitrary. To grow is to live in hope for a greater purpose, a good life that will come to those who are righteous. The gardeners emphasise this with the cultivation of fungi and even in rumoured greenhouses peaking into the surface, actual green plants. This food source makes them very popular even if little trickles down in the form of the Gren Pea Communion.

Azappo had a culture of shamans, Emperor-Talkers were able to communicate with his mighty spirit so long as they wore their sacred masks. Which imbued them with the smallest fragment on his attention and knowledge. But now they turn to more traditional rites. They turn to the Imperial Creed and the philosophical nature of what is a true human being. The First Ministry is not the Administrative, the People of Four are, and the Az are The True People.

“He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh – the stuff of which the Imperium is made.”

Though not yet a Chaos Cult, an Inquisition would disagree that the Cannibal Cults of the Az People believe in a correct Emperor. Who condones the rule of the strong over the weak, who revel in the power and the pomp for the fear and subjugation it inflicts and who profess the desire to torture and consume the bodies of those they deem lesser. To fuel their holy cause of insuring Mankind’s survival in their lightless universe.

The raiding clans of Tip have taken a somewhat fatalistic approach. Having been nearly destroyed as a general thorn in the side of all others. They can retain their dignity of not eating bodies but normal corpse-starch. Seeing themselves as being scoured by the Emperor to remove the weak and impious.

The Network of Lund remains conventional. But has increasingly seen an uptick in a syncretic faith brought by saviour Fran Warpmaster. He likes to portray himself as the chosen Man-Angel of the Emperor, who promises need for success and flexibility of traditions. Focusing on the problems of now over the problems of the future.

 

The Gelapknech of Bawahayat dwell underground with enormous fungal worms. They practise a few cults about the Emperor being the source of light and the Emperor speaking not just for or through Humanity but the worms as well. This is maybe within the tolerances of the Ecclesiarchy/Adeptus Ministorum for the Imperial Cult, though some of the Mataknecht think the later may need to be checked. As the Emporer speaks for the holy human form and only at a stretch should cover terran animals, let alone xenos. An attempt to request a synod on the matter from Vito has gone nowhere, due to more important matters.

 

Inspired by the crusade which cleansed the wider sector, Vito Secundus has long cultivated its own holy warriors. But given the distance to ship girls off to the sector core where the orders reside, it has turned to the fringe. Rapturous eunuch cults are long prospered, seeking their “future martyrdom” as Saint Porpus achieved in full. Though remaining functional and influential within the bureaucracy. Mindful of an adverse sector synod that eunuchs under arms are still men. Female hustreks possess the same loophole and are assumed to be even more devoted to the Ecclesiarchy and the Archbishop than Sisters must be.

While there are bands of eunuch warriors, they must remain outside the structure and so naturally form their own semi-sanctioned militias with their own authority. Leading to occasional clashes when local priests and organisations become intertwined with their radical influence.

 

The Annajmites of Hidden are Chaos worshipers and proud of it. Choosing to turn their backs on the god cult and worship the powers which reflect the nature of the universe and the soul. The dominate witch-cult was the Will to Power, they served as a counterbalance to authority, enforcing the law of Centre Point by breaking the power of the habitat nobility.  Freeing those unjustly bound, shatterig the staid natures of the nobility and practising the disturbing relief rites of the four primal emotions, to relieve stress of the people.

These rituals were important, for without it, people would be tempted to summon warp entities, and that would be invoking self-destruction. Yet Witch-Cults have their own heretics, who embrace power over lesser people but also seek to rule as the Imperium does, a Stark Side of Chaos. A natural ally of Imperial authority.

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 stunted 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 they 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 power 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 a 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.

40K System – Najm Al-Khali

A campaign in miniature.

The star is marked as Najm Al-Khali, or The Hidden Place in the old tongue of the third ship of Rogue Trader Kastor’s exploration fleet. There are neither planets or interesting features. Just a vast network of asteroid belts orbiting a red dwarf. It attracts no attention, a location on the voidcharts to mark the long cycle of Charterist captains on their way to Nazgool and back.

Yet life thrives in the void. To the people who live among the emptiness, the star is simply Hidden, and the people are the Annajmites.

Annajmites are a people apart from the rest of the Imperium, the lowest form of human life. For not only are many mutants, nearly all of them are heretics. Hidden can support small void stations and asteroid habitats, extracting enough resources to resupply Charterist captains away from prying eyes. In return they receive a portion of the tainted food Nazgool produces.

Over time, the independent void stations have been joined by pirates searching for a place to lay low and even rogue Charterists families. They bring knowledge of unstable routes through the warp and ships bigger than anything the Annajmites can construct. Making Hidden the backdoor to all adjoining subsystems and far-away places.

These form an aristocracy of sorts, staking claims over settlements as nobles, due tithes. The warp routes from Hidden mean they are excellent smugglers and raiders and exchange those exotics for manufactured goods from the orthodox sub-sector, brought by the legitimate Charterists. Increasingly their wealth and lifestyles are beyond what the Imperium would consider suitable for those bound to fly the same routes forever without pay. Thes nobles or habitat representatives meet in the great Centre Port to govern in a somewhat democratic fashion.

Each colony is tiny, usually no more than 10,000 people and frequently surrounded mining colonies of 100-1,000. Clamped like an unsanitary combination of limpet and leech onto the rocks. But they carry themselves like they are a planet unto themselves, developing radical dialects and cloistered inbreeding. Made even more florid by the mutations brought about by the void, refugees from Nazgool or their twisted religion. For most of the population are Chaos worshippers.

And here is the centre of the recent turmoil. As any human society in the 41^st millennia, enough genetic damage has been done that mutants will appear even among healthy families. And the times mean not a small number will be psykers. For survival and commerce, these psykers have been inducted into witch-cults since the early days.

The dominate witch-cult was the Will to Power. Long associated with Centre Port, they have served as the enforcers of authority. Freeing those unjustly bound, breaking the staid natures of the nobility and practising the disturbing relief rites of the four primal emotions, to relieve the stress of the people.

But what their seers could not foresee was a hidden threat. Long ago, some members of the Witch-Cult had recanted, they had turned to order and embraced a time where those blessed by the warp ruled over the lesser. The Stark Side of Chaos. They were thought extinct, eliminated for being lapdogs of the Law-worshiping Corpse-God in his golden sarcophagus.

But Supreme Leader Shiver was one of them, honing his skills through the manipulation of Charterist trade families. He declared himself First Man and appoint Constables to rule over the sectors of the system. He purged the Witch-Cult and set his traitorous Judges upon them.

Now Hidden is much more open to trade. First Man Shivers has long cultivated a pro-Charterist policy, allowing them to increase their wealth at the expense of the inhabitants. In return the Charterists market share has grown. Those who have misgivings are encouraged to try their luck elsewhere with support of course. Tempting rewards and possible discovery and condemnation as if they were tin-plated rogue traders. The pirates are kept busy harassing distant systems for new wealth and order is kept by system boat. These gunships are mere toys compared to even a Rogue Trader, but a thousand starkly-dressed troopers can easily cow a habitat.

The Annajmites persist in a state of hope. While brutal, the First Man’s rule is still better than what they know awaits them from the Imperium. Only slightly more crushing to the orally educated masses than before and there are always rumours of Rebellion. Ships flashing to and from isolated halo belts, fighting in the name of contradictory goods, daring raids and prophesied Witch-Cult chosen ones. The conflict is at a scale where a small band of heroes and a ship can tip it.

40K System - Demekog

Mining world descending into anarchy and cannibalism as supplies run out. This is trying to get back to the punchier style of earlier posts and failing miserably.

Mining worlds in the Imperium are extractive, but the limited technology of the 41^st millennia makes extraction by hand one of the most common means to render down a rocky world. This requires billions of human labourers and support structures, all which require food and oxygen. The planet Four therefore contained only the bare minimum of atmosphere required to sustain the workforce. And food is brought in every 20 years by circuit charterists.

Four is the first and only rocky planet, leading to much local humour. Roiling far too close to the small red star Demekog. A thin atmosphere allows breathing with difficulty amid the cooking landscape and the mines below merely baking darkness.

The Charterist had left but 5 years into the 20-year cycle when WAAGH!! Gaddzmax cut off Four from Ajax, the only stable route through the warp. That was some 30 years ago.

41^th Planetary Governor, Yoseph the Wisher, The Great Bailiff of the World, made the only smart decision of his life when he heard the news. He gave a down-tools order to ensure the population would not work itself into hunger faster. The first in the mining world's 1500 year history. However, he didn’t follow through with any more good reforms. Four’s mines delve into the crust in a network of ultraviolet-infused tunnels, with thousands of years of isolation and linguistic diversion separating the mineshafts into cultural and phenotypically diverse regions. Each shaft tribe was paid a set rate of food for their quota and suddenly the traditional had been broken. Food distribution had always been subject to their arbitrary of the powerful, but now there was no measure of worth except for the opinions of the Sub-Bailiffs, who were expected and did favour their own tribes.

With hunger came violence, exacerbated by Yoseph’s decision to move onto half-rations to ensure that the world could survive until help arrived. Yoseph saw the issue as a self-solving one. As conditions worsen, the population will hold on, minimising their strength and occasionally feuding, each death contributing to the corpse-starch reserves, which always formed a supplement in the cyclical diet.

But as the years dragged on and the favouritism starved the outcastes, the violence metamorphosed into general anarchy. Pit-Chiefs would band together to overthrown Sub-Bailiffs, traditional worker and quota raids began to target isolated and non-productive people for death to render down into corpse-starch. And in the galleries where the defeated regroup, not even waiting for industrial processing. Each Shaft-City is surrounded by a dissolving network of tracks, canals and galleries, each isolated light slowly waning.

Yoseph has not improved matters, the Incarnate of the Master of Mankind has always appeared weighted down with fat, to demonstrate his power and authority. From Shaft-City Boyoma, he paces his palace, hoarding supplies and threatening the populace into supporting him with nearly true tales of the cannibals in the darkness. His traditional authority has been slipping, and he has ordered that one per family or 1 in 10 randomly chosen people to be killed and processed when recapturing each rebellious region. He craves control over any other source food, for that is where all other power flows.

Though the Three Holy Ministries Sect predominated, the chaos of the famine has resulted in new religious groups arising in each of the tunnel networks. Shaft-City Malpool rules Khis, where the traditional missionary movement remains; Administrative, Ecclesiarchy and Navy.

Shaft-City Stan is home to the Adeptus Mechanicus and central corpse-starch processors. Though the death trains arrive only from pro-Governor or recaptured regions. The Techpriests of Subprodey has traditionally seem Four as a backwater posting, leading to a small number of foreign seniors cowering in their monastery while the local enginseers tend to the external machines. It’s becoming a sore point for them.

The other major force to emerge is the cult of the Gardener Emperor. Which has benefitted from the patronage of the Techpriests via the sole Genetor on the planet. The Emperor tends the garden of souls, pruning the unjust and the failures and encouraging the growth of the righteous, until their time has come to achieve their harvest, their foretold destiny. The Emperor is patient, just, firm and not arbitrary. To grow is to live in hope for a greater purpose, a good life that will come to those who are righteous. The gardeners emphasise this with the cultivation of fungi and even in rumoured greenhouses peaking into the surface, actual green plants. This food source makes them very popular even if little trickles down in the form of the Gren Pea Communion.

In the deep networks of Azappo, a dark flower has bloomed to replace the Mask-wearing Emperor-Talkers. The First Ministry is not the Administrative, the People of Four are, and the Az are The True People. Though not yet a Chaos Cult, the Inquisition would disagree that the Cannibal Cults of the Az People believe in a correct Emperor. Who condones the rule of the strong over the weak, who revel in the power and the pomp for the fear and subjugation it inflicts and who profess the desire to torture and consume the bodies of those they deem lesser. To fuel their holy cause of insuring Mankind’s survival in their lightless universe.

But yet:
“He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh eaten. Human blood and human flesh – the stuff of which the Imperium is made.”

Much the same could be said for the raiding clans of Tip, which much to impoverish their neighbours and deliver quotas religiously until the famine. The Tip network was the first to collapse completely, Yoseph having a deep dislike of the Tip ethnic group and their habit of importing weapons on the sly and the surrounding regions disliking their use of the same weapons. This has ironically saved them in their own eyes. Their wealth had meant they could afford their own corpse-starch plant, and it was the sole thing they could get running again after Boyoma was destroyed in the 10^th year of the famine. The Emperor had tested them and scoured the weak and the impious from them. The survivors could simply recycle the countless bodies of the dead as normal. Retaining their civilisation as the planet fell into outright cannibalism.

Cannibalism is fortunately rare in the network of Lund. More the preoccupation of isolated people whose galleries and shafts were already seen as backwaters. The narrow band of normality for Four is centred around the Shaft-Cities of Lub and Choc. Though having grown well from quotas and raiding, the mines were under heavy threat from Tip and from Azappo once Yoseph removed his forces to secure his powerbase. The shaft-cities have been saved by an unlikely emissary from space, the reinforcement of the Third Holy Ministry of the Navy.

Fran Warpmaster is a scion of the renegade Charterists and pirates of Annajmal Khali. Upon hearing about the isolation of Four, some five years after the start of the famine, he arrived with a great cargo of irradiated food from Nazgool, having acquired it through the Mutie Trade. He hoped to use the food to tempt the mutant inhabitants of Four to rebel, and instal him as governor before the route was reopened. Upon arrival he found that the inhabitants of Four were fairly mutation free, having been chosen for their ultraviolet resistance. No matter, he has been funnelling food and weapons to Lund, gaining their loyalty as he performs seemingly miraculous transits through unstable and unknown warp routes back to Annajmal Khali and Wraith.

He hopes to inspire the population to revolt and instal him as the new Kastor, before the radiation-drenched food triggers too many deliberating tumours and mutations. He brings with him a more unorthodox Imperial worship, one which prioritises the need for success and flexibility of traditions. Focusing on the problems of now over the problems of the future and the need to obey him as the chosen Man-Angel of the Emperor. He supports this with the title of Doctor of Theology, which might be legitimate, though would never be endorsed by Vito.

Once mastermind of the world, Fran plans to syncretise the traditional Emperor-Spirit cults he finds so aesthetic with a production-focused ethos that not-coincidently will allow him the theological groups to loot the place even more thoroughly than Yoseph did. He will pay in vast amount of money he has yet to own to get inside Yoseph’s palace. He was mad to start with to think of this scheme and he will get more maniacal if he gains unchecked power.

 

The irony of Four is that the warp route from Ajax has been safe since the Imperial Navy swept the Orks from the void some 15 years ago. No one has yet dared pass though the official designation of Warzone.

40K System – Telamon

Planet of wasted potential

An orange-yellow sun called Telamon entwines three rocky worlds, the third being Ajax, cursed with a prime position.

When the Rogue Trader Kastor first discovered this world, it was in the throws of biological creation, bacteria and slime transforming the oceans into bubbling froth of mineralization and self-refinement.

Over time the miners of Ajax delved, raising cities upon the cratons, draining the oceans into the fault line trenches. The briny soup of the trenches became the water and the food in the Fallas Network. Each craton became a civitates and the unchanging nature of mankind led to cultures, dialects and wars that served to improve one people’s mineral quota at the expense of another.

And then the Orks came, the long trail of destruction left by WAAGH!! Gaddzmax finally ending here. Every day for 21 years, the war has raged and every day for 21 years the population of Ajax runs down. It is not quite the famous line for the Third War for Armageddon “The death toll spiraled towards the billions” but the warcults of the dead grow evermore and will continue long after victory.

 

The situation on the planet itself is grim but stable. The capital Castellae remains secure in the northern-central craton. Adjoining it, the vital war factories of Total, home of the Techpriests and sprawling refugee camps.

The remaining civitates are affixed upon the old ocean floor and climb upon their cratons, perpetually under siege. Bunkers and trenches cut from sand and anchored by what once were seamounts. Saint’s Rest, reputed home of Kastor’s helmsmen Iacob and founder of the nobility. Beceen, home of the twisted cathedral. Voidport Alcázar, where fresh troops are delivered straight to the front lines. In the south, the isolated craton and civitates of Goodtown has fallen and been destroyed. Leaving only Rocky Garden and Sun City amid the slag heaps.

The Tigmamanukans are the cultures of the southern slag mountains: Goodtown, Rocky Garden and Sun City. Brought long ago based on a shared dialect/language but not culture. They profess shared mystical experiences where the Emperor divines his intentions through dreams, mediated by the Bird. A legendary living angel, like a cherub but with no arms and hard lips. Which flies by the Emperor’s authority alone and not technology.

Which civitates depends on the Bird’s name: Quetzal – Rocky Garden, Sarimanok – Sun City or Uqar – Goodtown.

The Fallas Network provides natural reservoirs and aquaculture and so form frontlines. It takes an incredible effort to successfully cross them under fire and are the most vital resource for long-term war. The Orks are hardy, but even their fungus cannot find great purchase amid the dried silt, only the Snakebite Klan might survive there in peace.

 

War defines life now. Every family has at least one serving member. The skies are lit nightly with mountain-shattering fire and whine of aircraft dogfighting over whole cratons. Desperate to conserve food and water, the Governor and local commanders have ordered some seven and fourteen years prior, that one soldier be drafted from every family for mass wave offensives. These have retaken limited ground, and the next conscription is coming. Trench warfare is backed by forward regiments of warriors fighting loosely from rugged terrain. Facing off against Komandos.

Much could be said about the worship of the Three Holy Ministry Sect and how it has been refined to include the Space Marines in the trio. But the noble leaders have lost prominence in favour of holy warbands.

Saint’s Rest is the new home of the Ecclesiarchy and the increasingly syncretic Cult of the Rhinoceros. Forefront is Bishop Torquemada Phalan, whose work on deciphering the mystery cult has provided the scripture needed to propel the faithful gun-martyrs. He despises the people of Beceen for their perceived indolence. Encapsulated in their hideous xeno civitates. The new masters of the Imperial Cult hope the orks next destroy it and Bishop Phalan deliberately withholds aid he can redirect.

When the war is over, there will be purges. The blood of the Ajaxian race will be purified of the slag from the left-hand path of Beceen and the south.

Beceen's crime was to crown their regimented masses of hab-blocks with a new district, a cathedral large enough to house all the nobility, priests and administration at once. This colossal structure looms on the craton, perpetually never finished. Planetary saint Gaudy the Mad designed it to resemble the fantastic forms of sea life that sacrificed their future existence for the glory of Ajax and humanity.

In the southern deserts and in the conscript regiments, Tigmamanukans teach their northern brethren about the Feaykin, warriors trained to seize enemy mineshafts or die in the attempt. This synchronises with the Rhinoceros Cult and justifies to Bishop Phalan that targeting the southern heretics in the refugee camps was divinely inspired.

The new name of these holy warriors is The Strong, Guetre.

Saint’s Rest and Beceen rely entirely on recruiting Ajaxians from sympathetic members of the interior and increasingly divided clergy. Warboss Gaddzmax besieges Beceen but grows dissatisfied. Gaddzmax is older, and the WAAGH!! ends here unless he came break onto the craton mass. He will not end up being a Boss of a bunch of feral orks and gretchin, eating slime and krill out in the desert. He’s thinking of doing something Kunning, like secret diplomacy or a big bomb.

Regiments raised from Chiron and Sandaaina continue to hold the vital northern gap, where the marine trenches do not run along the craton and must be dug. Here is where Warboss Karl concentrated his forces until his death from a Whirlwind missile. His chief drinking buddy Karl the Next runs the Karlist forces and has continued the same mechanized wave attack strategy.

Token Vito Secundus Purity Guard, alongside the few Skitarii from Total, man the defenses outside Alcázar. Neither get along with the local forces, but Alcázar is the only void port.

The remaining southern cratons are held by the 1^st to 3^rd company of the Fire Unicorns, the Space Marine chapter that recruits from Ajax. They are well suited to assisting the Fedaykin battle the Evil Sunz out on the salt-strewn flats. Buggy against land speeder and warbiker vs motorised roughrider.

 

The rigid approach to duty among the Iron Hand successor chapter, goes well with the ancient insistence on mining quota. From this was born the Cult of the Rhinoceros. First a mystery cult for pit fighters not chosen for the chapter. The Rhinoceros is the Unicorn: pure, mystical, stubborn and aggressive, it’s mind too small for doubt or questions. The Rhinoceros sacrificed itself to mark Humankind’s passage to the stars. For it was the steed the Emperor rode from the Garden of Life and led the way by ascension via holy human-mediated death. All should follow the Rhinoceros, to obey as a dead body obeys and Live for Death. For there is nothing but death for all mankind except the Emperor upon the Golden Throne.

Of the outer reaches, there is nothing. The moon, belt and gas giants were yet to be mined in force. Ajaxian politics being too concerned with taking each others quotas. Three Techpriest geological/observatories destroyed, a scattering of rare mineral sites. Maybe 200,000 dead. The watchstations in orbit swept aside by the ork fleet, whose ruins hangs in orbit, chewed up by a pursuing naval taskforce. The space hulk drifts, collecting all debris as a new satellite.

The Fire Unicorns are temporarily encamped on their battle barge. Their molten monastary on Ajax the Lesser (closest planet to the sun) was destroyed, but not before they evacuated their relics.

40K System – Vito

Paranoid religious capital

Vito is the system, and Vito Secundus is the planet, second rock from the orange star. A Shrine World, Vito Secundus has the distinction of being crowned the de facto head of the subsector.

Some 2000 years ago, the sector core was wracked by a heresy which proclaimed the time was right for the Emperor’s return. Imperial authority should be devolved to divinely inspired and fundamentally local Judges. Governors and minor Bishops on developed worlds who felt the best was being siphoned off. The subsector was too new to run out of growth and the two millennia old Civilized World of Vito Secundus was the origin of Bishop Nefarius Porpus, who resolutely preached against heresy in the halls of the Ecclesiarchy.

When the time came for a crusade, after pleading from a much-boycotted synod. The martyred bishop was elevated to a saint and Vito Secundus was diverted from it’s future as a Hive World. Since then, many of its citizens have developed the dogma and the ecstasies to become valued members of the Adeptus Ministorum or even minor saints themselves.

Since then, Vito has amounted to a lead weight on the subsector. More imports than a civilized world, with its greater population of 15,000,000,000. Especially office supplies and constant physical reports on the moral health of the sub-sector. It throngs with pilgrims and as such its economy remains local and insular.

Since the advent of WAAGH!! Gadzmax, the Archbishoip has become fearful of external threats. The chaos wrecked in the sub-sector threatens to teether it over the edge. The venal other worlds lack moral fortitude. Belonging to some other lesser sect or consumed by their own issues. The wider sector is still reeling from the orks’ path and the Archbishop is privy to reports from across the galaxy. The sheer scale of the problems is clear and has given rise to nihilism, to let the rot wither away and a new dawn come.

So, Vito stockpiles, filling vast caverns with machine parts, foodstuffs and promethium. It promises sheltered harbors for Charterist Captains, threatened by increasingly irritated demands from other systems to stop the outflow.

This paranoia is starting to seep downwards as admonishments to the flock to observe for deviances, especially among the pilgrims who come from unknown worlds, bathed in unknown lights. Setting up increasing dissatisfaction with the priests of those pilgrim communities which have settled.

Pilgrim neighborhoods or whole cities have always been a sore spot, since popular imagination assumes pilgrims will leave eventually, even though it takes several decades to cycle to and from.

Though increasing self-isolated, Vito does possess a rudimentary extraction economy. The Belters have been neglected for some 2500 years and the tribes trade among themselves or to the planet. Vito is self-sufficient in promethium, with the Tech-Priests operating refineries around Vito-Aqua, the last planet and gas giant. Vito even used to export promethium until the arrival of the orks on Ajax. The resumption of which is a key concern for the other planets.

The local variation of the Four Holy Ministries sect holds the conditions on Vito-Aqua to be a physical embodiment of hell itself, or at least an understanding of the punishing parts of the Warp. Convicts are sent there to be transformed into servitors and much fear is ascribed to it. The conditions are hellish but no more than normal for the galaxy. The Tech-Priests complain they are being demonized or associated with evil iconography.

In order to bolster the system against both internal and external threats, the Archbishop has invited the space marine chapter, The Fire Unicorns to rebase to airless and molten Vito Primus. The Fire Unicorns are normally based on the former Mining World Ajax and many long to recapture their home world. Furthermore, the Fire Unicorns are an Iron Hand successor chapter and do not mesh with the Imperial Cult. The Archbishop has promised they can recruit from among the Belters. The Belters have not been informed.

Inspired by the crusade which cleansed the wider sector, Vito Secundus has long cultivated its own holy warriors. But given the distance to ship girls off to the sector core where the orders reside, it has turned to the fringe. Rapturous eunuch cults are long prospered, seeking their “future martyrdom” as Saint Porpus achieved in full. Though remaining functional and influential within the bureaucracy. Mindful of an adverse sector synod that eunuchs under arms are still men. Female hustreks possess the same loophole and are assumed to be even more devoted to the Ecclesiarchy and the Archbishop than Sisters must be.

While there are bands of eunuch warriors, they must remain outside the structure and so naturally form their own semi-sanctioned militias with their own authority. Leading to occasional clashes when local priests and organisations become intertwined with their radical influence.

40K System - Chiron

Probably my longest one as it was the second one I came up with and originally didn't have a cohesive theme.

Chiron

Hiveworld suddenly having to shoulder all the burdens

A small dim red star maintains only two rocky planets. Breathable Chirona and airless Chirob. Chirona is the main hiveworld of the subsector, some 30,000,000,000 estimated inhabitants places it in the lower middle range of the 30,000+ listed hiveworlds.

With the almost complete destruction of Kastor’s Folly, Chirona has suddenly found itself in the awkward potion of being the major supplier of both taxes and manpower tithes for the subsector, with Vito unrelenting in maintaining the dues to demonstrate the continual strength of the region in the face of Orkish aggression.

A hundred hives line the planet in long looping lines, linked by great via-rails, each which is a narrow city in their own right. One cannot count the numbers of gangs, noble houses, guilds and sump-tribes which form the concrete bees.

Tribes of roving nomads and tailing-oasis purifiers eke out a living in between, avoiding the dust storms and transporting cargo between the via-rail lines. As the technology to build them has supposedly been lost. Rumors say their trade routes follow pre-Hive highways and so the unnamed cultures might be descendants of the ancient motor gangs of the 37^th millennia. Such rumors are near-heresy to the lorry-guilds as it implies that they were unable to successfully pursue their ancient but local crusades. They insist with all the wealth and threats they can muster that the nomads are descendants of lower-hive exiles, who couldn’t achieve their anointed fates of dying in the wastes.

The spaceport of Cenorbi is an anomaly. Once a vast landing zone, it has the capacity to house 40,000,000 people, or the estimated complement of daily spaceship traffic if need be. What it does house is 200,000,000 refugees from Kastor’s Folly, crammed into fleeing chartist ships during the WAAGH!! Working their way to only other hiveworld in the sub-sector. They were dumped here, forming a vast camp on the plain that chokes and disassembles the hangers, terminals, maintenance bays and storage pits with their lean-tos and tents. Who knows how many of the recorded have perished or fled to join some hive in upheval?

The 2,000,000 workers of the skeleton crew-settlement feel overwhelmed and have turned to their traditional foes, the nomads to maintain order. Among the new generation of increasingly feral Kastorians, who know nothing but the invisible boundaries of old gangs and the cruelty of the winds, the nomads cultivate the most vicious for their warbands. To move them back is a lesser priority that will cost yet more and could see them spill away into the wastes.

The interlocking combination of power players is proving to be a real headache for the planetary government. The increased extractive burden seems to slip from each group, deferred to another by cunning law-speakers, bribes and informing. No one wants to give up more wealth and personnel in case rivals pounce upon them. In such a closed system of power, there is only one form of advancement, the eventual disposal of the governor and assumption of the throne. Even the most benevolent of leaders see it as the final achievement.

Desperate to make up the numbers, the government has turned to a more extreme form of trog regiments. Normally trogs are “recruited” from the lower hive scum, barely a more than several gangs and prisoners, grouped into a paper regiment through press gangs and religious zeal. But now the governor seeks to press-gang mutant slave levies and worse send them to Ajax. Total outrage has been the result, mutant levies are only for the most desperate defenses. Had not the mutants of Kastor’s Folly achieved purgatory by their sacrifice holding back the Orks?

Such naysayers are headed by the Arcbishop, who as per the agreement with the Cardinal of Vito, is also the Archbureaucrat of the planetary Adeptus Administratum. A position wrangled by the higher Sector Cardinal in exchange for the deployment of the Sisters of Battle in far-flung wars, centuries ago. Such a potent combination denies the governor the official approval to deploy such forces, but the governor refuses to back down, imprisoning untold number of mutants in lightless cavern domes to train them into an army fit to die.

More complications can be found on the Sagi Gun Moon, the first moon that guards the system with cannons capable of hitting the halo belt. In order to sure up the defenses, the government has commanded more shifts and more crews from the proud Bastioners. The first decade was met satisfactorily, but as Vito remains increasingly fortified and Warworld Ajax absorbs more warriors, the paranoia has grown. With not enough Gunfalones, the governor has commanded the transportation of loyal people to establish new bastions.

This is a cultural clash that is seen as threatening the very fabric of the moon. The Bastioners have lived in watchful patience for 4000 years and cultural traits have diverged slowly but inevitably from the medley of hive-defenders. Who in turn, amid their own cultures, cling to their loyalty to the governor, commonly seen as the appointed hand of the Emperor. No Hive would let its defenders go without great payment, straining the vaults even more and upending the social contract.

Subjects serve as a responsibility, the quotas from above set by custom and justified by faith. But if money is now exchangeable for loyalty, then any assumed hierarchy is now at risk. Noble titles might be meaningless, gang leaders cannot rely on strength alone and fears of heretics paying those told to believe without question. Throne-Fever has gripped some hives, with loyalties changing daily as tiny fractions of money are offered. This “Nova-Rich” lifestyle has fueled the ascendancy of lower-hive gangs and traders, who have fewer social strictures and in turn encouraged gang warfare and new economic dynamism. New brutal slave-factories grow, old domes are purged for refurbishment and gladiator voxcasts echo. Pretensions to nobility and so mastery of society entice gang-lords.

War has gripped these places, hardening fears against the governor’s extractions. The governor has moved to the position that the divine order is unchangeable but the Social Wars are simply another means in which the Imperium clears away the impure and reveals the innate nobility of the pure human genome amid the dross. Taking a percentage of wealth and war-captives.

The Governor is reaching deep into his own family’s treasury to fund the press-gangers, the new gunners and the bribes to the Administratum. For deep in the holy records are the promises and exceptions made by millions of organizations that the governor can ply for the needed tithes. Rumbles of family tensions grow as in-laws press their own dissatisfactions.

The financial woes do not stop there. On the Mining World of the Ile Moon and in the Belt Mines of the Halo, the Guilds are unable to properly respond to the buck-shifting of Chirona. Increasingly, providing more of the new quotas for the last two decades, the guilds have decided enough is enough and declared the Ile Moon and belt to be an independent mining world. Such a world might still be subject to the authority of the System capital and may have to provide its own tithes of unaffordable manpower, so negotiations continue.

Chirob remains an outlier. While Chirona professes, as much is possible among a hiveworld to be a proponent of the Holy Body Sect, Chirob is a Mining world of many faiths. The claustrophobic galleries repurposed into pit-cites are home to the biggest monasteries of the Tech-priests in the system. Millions of Holy Body Sect worshippers descend from prior transportation and yet this world and this world alone is the cradle of the Emperor’s Divine Specter sect, the official sect of Kastor’s Folly and Agsuit. Spread by the unrecognized saint Arzarimus, the lavishly decorated shrines and ecstatic visions to him were considered an annoyance to the regular purity rites until the arrival of Kastorian refugees. Some 300,000,000 have swelled the population by a quarter and found common cause with the few guilds and cities governed by sect members. Uniquely the void-merchants, waste-reprocessors and elevator-guilds are descendants from the mining world Four, and so are Three Holy Ministry sect.

Rights are being asserted, and boundary areas are being pushed to establish new areas for the sect to grow. The followers of the Omnissiah and increasingly finding themselves as ill-equipped mediators, air-plant guards and gate wardens. The governor sees this as a self-fixing problem, the more hands there are, the faster the galleries will be depleted and so the more can be opened for settlement. And more digging is needed as shipments from Eytry decline. It will just take time Chirob doesn’t have.

40K System - Matastelsel

Bawahayat - Ag World suffering from racial tensions

The only planet of any note in Matastelsel is Bawahayat and it's the sole planet that is life-sustaining, despite it's inhospitable atmosphere. With a frozen and airless surface covered in with large crystalline structures. These are the equivalent of photosynthetic organisms, but they pump oxygen into the soil and not the air. This has allowed the evolution of massive fungi-worms, slowly crawling through the tunnels and chasms below the permafrost.

The planet is in an uproar because of racial and religious tensions between the surface (Mataknecht) and underground dwellers (Gelapknecht). The Mataknecht man the few spaceports and crystal-harvesting operations, they live in sealed and buried domes under the machinery and so see light more frequently. They tend to be the Emperor's Divine Specter Sect like those on Hiveworld Chiron.

Gelapknecht traditionally harvest and process the enormous fungi-worms into high-quality tallow (candles) and lower-quality protein-starches (food). They live in the dark tunnel-cities and don't use light beyond the faint glows of machinery, fire and bioluminescent. They have a few cults about the Emperor being the source of light and the Emperor speaking not just for or through Humanity but the worms as well.

This is maybe within the tolerances of the Ecclesiarchy/Adeptus Ministorum for the Imperial Cult, though some of the Mataknecht think the later may need to be checked. As the Emporer speaks for the holy human form and only at a stretch should cover terran animals, let alone xenos. An attempt to request a synod on the matter from Vito has gone nowhere, due to more important matters.

To forestall recruitment tithes for Warworld Ajax. The governor (Mataknecht) commissioned a genetics report that the Gelapknecht may be progressing into a Nightsider abhuman type and should therefore be exempt.

This started the riots. The Gelapknecht have long been told the tallow they make is for the benefit of humanity and it's their duty to labour in the dark. Now they demand they also get a share of the candle shipments to forestall their degradation. This also fuels the preexisting violence and mistrust between the two communities. Lynching of Voiddwellers as mutants has prompted the system's Chartist Cartels to demand action be taken or they will slow shipments of candles first, then food.

Also 5,000 years of intensive biomass extraction means new critical nutrients are needed. Asteroid bombardment or guidance is best option. This is naturally the purview of the Chartists, who feed off the asteroids and comets while also supplying crews for the few spaceships used as system patrols. But the risk is for the govenor, that such life-bearing asteroids could "slip" and strike a settlement or area of the Cartel's choosing.