Sunday, February 09, 2014

Ianthe IV

Within Segmentum Pacificus, Sabbat Worlds sector, lies a lonely, cold and long forgotten planet. The surface of the planet is ash grey, the soil corrupt and the sky above covered with thick layers of dark and tattered clouds. Two orbiting moons - one red as blood, the other pale as sick skin - float over the sky every two months, bringing havoc on the surface in form of dreadful ash storms.

Religious pilgrims took the planet as their home many thousand years ago. They harnessed the hostile environment, made it tolerable to live and build the first immigration stations (which later became places of religion and worship). After them came the proletarians and their heavy machinery. Cities grew tall, level above level was build. Soon the whole world was tightly wrapped by a web of monumental sky-reaching Hive Cities.

The Hive Cities used to be fairly safe place for man to live, even civilised you could say. But as cities grew taller, so did the greed and corruption. Noble houses used their power ruthlesly, sucking the slim wealth of the planet and spent it in arms race against each other. Soon the tightening and violence became tools of power and rulers used them without hesitation. The walls of the Hive Cities started rotting from within as the gangs of lower class started rebelling against their masters. Humongous wars between gangs and mad tyrants teared the planet's infrastructure to shreds, dragging the planet in an unending civil war.

War dried the wealth of the planet. Wealth was followed by the tithes. The suffering situation of the planet caught the attention of the Administratum and their solution for it was immediate. Imperial Guard, the Anvil of the Emperor, was sent in to solve the vexatious problem. That they did. The raging civil war was over within weeks. But what the guardians of the Emperor left behind could only be described as a total devastation; Staggering piles of corpses, burning remnants of once notable civilization and a dead world where only bandits and criminals dared to wander. Where there once was a spectacular network of monumental Hive Cities, build by the great men of the Imperium, now lied crippled ruins that represented mere shadows of their past.

In the maps of the Imperium, Ianthe IV was no more.

The moons of Ianthe IV

Ianthe IV was classified as a War World before it was wiped off from the books of the Imperium. Even though the long and bloody civil war of the Iatheans ceased long time ago, the Administratum never tried to re-populate the planet. No-one seems to know the reason for this call.

The only ones populating Ianthe IV are the survivors of the Imperial massacre. Bandits. Mercenaries. Murderers. Marauders. They battle for their everyday lives in small gangs, looting, hunting, fighting and surviving. Some of them are lucky enough to get drafted by ferocious space pirates evading the far-reaching law of the Imperium.

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This pitiful planet will work as a set for our narrative campaign, Punk Moth. We'll be lifting the lid a little bit at a time to reveal the plot that binds the stories of our rival Inquisitors together.

This is the beginning of the Pupation phase of the campaign...

7 comments:

  1. You guys really know how to introduce a story!

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  2. Very exciting! Looking forward to finding out an more importantly seeing more.

    PDH

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  3. Cool beginning, a big post-apocalyptic (which i love!)

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  4. Thanks fellas! Though, it might take another year for this campaing to happen...

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