Mission Dossier
++Date: M41.819.0116
++Classified: Iota Tau
++Subject: Investigation “Regicide"
++Threat Rating: Hereticus Diabolus/Extremis
++Location: Askellon++Overview: Your next mission takes place across the Askellon Sector, chasing the path of a rogue band of Inquisitorial Throne Agents after the death of their Inquisitor. A year prior, Ordo Malleus Inquisitor Malik was declared excommunicates traitorous by Lord Inquisitor Witch-Hunter Spiron Hark and subsequently hunted down and eliminated by the Ordo Sicarius. Her loyal, if misguided, band of Throne Agents managed to elude capture and termination, and have gone into hiding throughout the sector. Make no mistake. This is a wetwork assignment. The throne agents of Malik must be captured, interrogated, and then exterminated with all haste, for the sources of the Inquisition tell us that they are still executing the last orders of their master.
Ave Imperator
Cell Alloy
- Interrogator Castus - Gold
- Lt. Gallach - Steel
- Gnaritas Seculis - Titanium
Cell Medusa
- Interrogator Gallach - Cerberus
- Octavius- Hydra
- Gavriel Zane- Typhon
- Lazarus Hayl- Chimera
Mission Data
Location Data
++Name: Port Lokhart
++Designation: Station/Satellite
++Satellites: n/a
++Government: Imperial Navy
++Populace: Unknown. Due to the incessant comings and goings of the Port, official census data is unavailable.
++Environment: Sealed
++Tithe: Exactus Majoris (System Defence)
++Capital: Port Lokhart
++Overview: The Imperial Navy maintains several facilities in the sector, collectively referred to as the Askellon Station Command. The most important of these is Port Lokhart, strategically located to provide its vessels with ready access to a number of Warp routes leading towards the nearby Scarus Sector, as well as away into the unknown reaches beyond the sector’s trailing borders. It is unusual in that it occupies a far older orbital structure discovered long ago in the sector’s distant past. The port takes the form of an artificial ring, apparently wrought from some unknown material by the hands of unidentified, but undoubtedly alien, masons. The ring encircles a small, jewel-like planetoid in the Pallisada system, itself the source of much debate amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus.
++Port Lokhart was established at some point during the first millennia of the Age of Imperium. The archives relating to this period are incomplete at best, but they appear to suggest that the Imperial Navy wrested the system from the control of local forces who opposed segmentum high command establishing a presence in the Askellon Sector. Whatever the truth, the Navy has occupied the alien construct for almost nine thousand years, the structure now studded with countless thousands of weapons turrets, docking arms, observation blisters, and similar, man-made components. The interior of the enormous ring is divided into a honeycomb-like structure, an internal arrangement that has been altered, expanded, and rebuilt over the ages by the capital shipwrights of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Despite millennia of occupation, the Navy has only ever imposed its presence on a fraction of the interior, leaving countless thousands of chambers unexplored.
++Name: Temperance
++Designation: Agri/Feudal/Frontier
++Satellites: Two moons; Stalibo, the larger; Zodd, the smaller
++Government: Legion of Twelve; Oligarchy of Arbitrators
++Populace: Impossible to ascertain given the high mortality rate. At least 2 million live in Bastion, and a further 3 million in Beacon. It is estimated that there may by as many as 10-12 million other inhabitants in the lands outside the major cities.
++Environment: Vast stretches of rocky plateaus and mesas encompass the world, with large bodies of water collecting in various canyons and basins. The unpredictable and torrential rains which plague the planet have no reasonable explanation as to their origins. Only a few feet below the sandy surface is a thick bedrock of heat-formed stone.
++Tithe: Exactus Minoris
++Capital: Bastion
++Overview: Originally settled by travelers from Kalto, Temperance was hoped to become a sustainable agri-world in the far rimward reaches of Stygies. Initial reports show the world to be verdant and fertile, yet the settlers encountered a barren and desolate waste of knee-high shrub and baked-clay earth. Hardship and death marked the first several decades of her occupation as the population struggled to eke out a living. A virulent fungus called Mindmould, likely an off-shoot of the dangerous Boneweed of Kalto, began infecting the crops and turning those who were exposed to its spores utterly mad. When the Pandemonium swelled the world was cut-off from Askellon, and the desperate people turned from the light of the God-Emperor, embracing far darker paths to salvation. When the world was once again free from the warp storms a pilgrimage of supply ships set out to assess the damages. Aboard these vessels were a cohort of twelve Aribtrators, and upon arriving quickly set to task bringing the wayward people of Temperance back into the Imperium. They have met much resistance in their efforts, with the Sons of Temperance cult holding much power of the world and its people. Lacking sufficient manpower to simply annihilate the Ecclesiastical imposters, the Legion of Twelve constantly deputize members of the populace to act as soldiers in their war for order. These individuals are given little training in the Lex Imperialis, and are nothing more than sanctioned thugs at the best of times.
+++Three major cities are present on Temperance; Bastion, the home of the Legion of Twelve, the Tower of Conviction, and defacto capital of the world; Beacon, originally designed to be a shining example of Imperial rule now the home of the Sons of Temperance and their many followers; and Thirdstone, the haunted and abandoned city where men fear to tread.
+++Unique among worlds in Askellon, the Legion of Twelve have forbade any citizen or visitor to bear arms on Temperance - the remit to do so falling only upon the shoulders of the Arbites and their Deputies. Offenders are dealt with harshly, despite the fact that such a draconian law leaves farmers with little to defend themselves from the native fauna or violent raiders and bandits. The one exception to the rule is the humble flamer, the device seeing extensive use in burning crops of Mindmould. Indeed it is rare to see a citizen of Temperance without some kind of fire-maker, whether it be a Guard-issue flamer or a simple flask of promethium and a handful of matches.
++Asset Report
++Jotunn. Pertaining to what I was sent to investigate, I can find no connection after 113 days on-world. Currently I am residing in the outskirts of Bastion disguised as a beggar among a thousand others as such - my tools are stowed in a bolt-hole further out in the Flats. I await the arrival of Hawk eagerly, tho I presume the Cell has changed much since my departure. I have secured several fire-starters and local disguises as well as IDents, enough to avoid suspicion. I can be found wearing a blue shawl with my eyes bound by a white cloth at the western gate to Bastion. I would recommend that the Cell inserts clandestinely - going through immigration would only raise questions and suspicion among the Deputies. The Flats arealmost entirely unpatrolled by law enforcement, and there are many canyons and mesas in which to hide. Just be aware of Dusters - raiders and bandits who live in the Flats. A show of force will cause most to backdown for they are cowards at heart, but often they will stalk their targets and surround them before attacking when the sun is low.
++Ave Imperator
++Name: Port Aquila
++Designation: Trade Port/Station
++Satellites: Innumerable and impossible to account for
++Government: Greater Askellon Trade Combine under the command of Trademaster-General Zadori Whelk, and Commander Severine Cantrella aboard the Pride of Askellon Ramilles-class Star Fort
++Populace: No accurate census data exists
++Environment: A collection equally connected and disconnect void stations, satellites, and asteroids
++Tithe: Exactus Extremis
++Capital: The Pride of Askellon and the Atticus Compound
++Overview: Located in the Diomedea Stella system along the far edge of the Cyclopia Sub-Sector, Port Aquila is one of the major hubs for trade in Askellon and acts as a launching point for goods entering from the coreward and spinward systems. Getting there is not, however, a journey for those without skill or courage. The passages to Port Aquila are treacherous, due less to the lashing tendrils of the Pandaemonium than to the shadow cast from it. For those who make it through, however, opportunity abounds. Diomedea Stella is a blue supergiant surrounded by a huge asteroid field, the size and scope of which far surpasses any known logical parameters. It forms an almost perfect ribbon, with narrow bands of denser formations in different areas that cannot yet be explained, making this a source of inquiry for the Askellian Mechanicum. Individual asteroids also seem to relocate, causing havoc as the belt seems different every time it is mapped—to this day no one has a complete or accurate map of the field. The term “port” is a misnomer, as there is no single centralised location in the field. It is home to numerous bases, refuelling posts, and strongholds of all kinds. From the Greater Askellon Trade Combine’s huge Atticus Compound to the hidden caverns used by the Pale League and other smugglers, deals happen everywhere. It is also a major anchorage for ships arriving from the neighbouring Ixaniad Sector. For centuries, pirates and traders have also made it their home, but more and more recidivists and heretics have also found a haven in its dark corners. It has always had activity, but its past was far less pleasant or peaceful.
++History: Much of the history of the first settlers has been lost. What is known is that the asteroid field provided some measure of protection in the early days of lawlessness in Askellon, and many a smuggler and pirate built self-contained homes among the rocks orbiting Diomedea Stella. As the recidivists dug deeper into the field they came across vast resources locked within the once-thought barren rocks, and with profit followed greed. Battle-lines were drawn up and in short order the field was at war with one another. For centuries the system remained locked in a violent resources struggle between the pirates of Askellon, until the Greenskins came. Banding together for the first time in their history, the system put up a brave defence against the marauding raiders. Alas, it would have been to no avail were it not for the arrival of the D'Amirtris trade fleet. A merchant family on the verge of collapse, the D'Amirtris were fleeing the Ixaniad Sector with the last of their fleet, hoping to find wealth in the newly re-discovered Askellon. Instead they found war, but instead of turning tail and fleeing, they quickly took command of the available forces and quickly brought an end to the Greenskin threat. Unifying all factions under their banner, the Greater Askellon Trade Combine was born.
++The Combine: The Combine is still the trading force that it has been since its origins, but with the D’Amitri family largely out of the command structure, there is less talk of the past and more talk of the future. The head of the Combine is now Zadori Whelk, a former smuggler captain who “saw the error of her ways” after being caught and has renewed efforts to eliminate the criminal contingent in the system. Following her reformation, she undertook a purge of smuggler hideouts located near Combine facilities. Those who would not convert to more honest work were jettisoned into space, their safe houses destroyed. Since her inauguration as Trademaster-General, she has opened up dialogues with the Prospectors’ Guild and begun working more closely with the Imperial Navy to balance out the influence of House Surena. These negotiations strengthen her position as a law-abiding businesswoman, while moving towards greater and greater shares of Askellian commerce. Whelk has also instituted a policy of open enrollment for captains. Those who sign with the Combine come and go as they please, so long as they adhere to its simple but strict Principles. The result has been a constant stream of new talent trying to make their fortunes and an increased stability in the region, as the Combine has refused to hire anyone wanted by the Imperium. With independent trade very much on the wane, it is smart business sense to not run afoul of the law—the enforcement of which the Combine largely handles.
++Principles of the Combine:
- The Combine Approves all Contracts
- Do not Violate Imperial Law
- Fulfill your Obligations of the Contract
- No Work is Allowed Outside of the Combine. Ever.
++Imperium Within the Port: In most Imperial systems, there is a centralised location for the functionaries of the Adeptus Terra to set their camp and branch outward. The inherent difficulty in finding a safe singular location to do that in Port Aquila limits the ability of the Imperium to do its work. As a result, the presence of Terra mirrors the reach of the Astronomican to Diomedea Stella: relatively weak and tenuous at best. Stationed in the Pride of Askellon, a Ramillies-class station outside the asteroid field on the edge of the system, the small Naval garrison and the other Adeptus representatives sit and let the inhabitants live their lives, largely left alone. Unbeknownst to most, Port Aquila has a military governor who is, at least on paper, in charge of the system. The current one is Severine Cantrella, once a bold ship commander, but now seldom ever seen outside her offices and living space on the station. Her arrival to the station brought with it a sense of hope and renewed purpose for those who yearned to take Aquila by the reins and tether it to Imperial Law. The previous sixteen governors had lasted a total of only 28 years in service, the longest for 19 months, the shortest for five hours. All sixteen of them had died while in office and on active duty in the system. To a person, unexplained events were the cause of death. From a spontaneous explosion of an asteroid under one governor’s landing party to having a malfunctioning thruster launch another governor toward Diomedea Stella, strange things have happened to those who tried to strictly enforce Imperial Law. Severine apparently read the accounts, and made a different plan. She courted the Combine’s favour and allowed them to act as the eyes, ears, and hands of the Imperium. The result has been a marked decrease in the amount of violent crime, and Governor Cantrella has been in office for more than eight years. She has had her share of close calls, however, likely a reason for her staying aboard the station. She gives most of her orders through communiqués, and only emerges from her offices to walk among the troops once a year.
++Name: Terminus
++Designation: Civilised/War/Paradise
++Satellites: Dozens of moons and stations orbit the system worlds.
++Government: Terminus Collective under the authority of the Rubicon Sub-Sector Praefactor.
++Populace: Terminus Secundus - approximately 27 million soldiers are engaged in warfare, with 3 times that number in reserves and support personnel. Terminus Prime - 11 million, mostly mercantile houses and their staff. Terminus Exo - unknown, mostly abandoned when the houses could no longer support their lavish lifestyles and holiday manses.
++Environment: Temperate/Tropical
++Tithe: Exactus Tertiary [reduced from Exactus Extremis circa. M41.720]
++Capital: Terminus Prime
++Overview: Terminus is often the first developed system a vessel travelling to Askellon encounters, and was once a prosperous centre of trade. The system is host to half a dozen settled worlds, ranging from Terminus Prime, a densely-settled planet home to numerous mercantile concerns, to Terminus Exo, a paradisiacal world given over to the leisure of the most privileged scions of those same trading houses. These worlds are protected by a sizeable system defence fleet, as well as superbly trained and equipped planetary armies, all paid for by the combined profits of the great houses.
The numerous factions of Terminus, from Rogue Trader dynasties to Navigator Clans, had all gained their staggering wealth by investing in a range of trade and exploitation endeavours, both within the sector and without. For countless centuries they had dominated the internal markets, in particular those relating to the supply of produce from the sector’s agri-worlds to its hive worlds. When Warp conditions have allowed it, these great houses invested heavily in trans-sector shipping, holding significant interests in many Chartist Captains’ fleets plying these lonely routes. At other times, the great houses backed Rogue Traders seeking to penetrate the largely uncharted voids beyond the sector’s trailing borders, though these endeavours have become increasingly scarce in recent decades.
Terminus Prime was once a world of gleaming oceans and low, rolling grasslands, many of the latter turned over to the production of an amasec varietal popular amongst the sector’s aristocracy. Its population was spread out between several hundred cities and countless smaller settlements, each the exclusive preserve of one of the great houses. In times long past, it is said that the cities made war upon one another, but did so in a highly ritualised manner according to a massive canon of law. In recent centuries, however, the cities’ rulers fight according to no law but their own, for the golden age of prosperity is long gone, never to return. When open warfare became inevitable at the outset of the Vaxi Seccession, the powerful houses fled to the world of Terminus Secundus, content to let their private armies carry out a proxy-war on the once-pristine Terminus Prime while they continued to expand their wealth and influence. A century of near-endless conflict has resulted in almost all the once venturing traders to eschew the Terminus System, fearing the instability of a system engulfed in war. Terminus Prime was quietly renamed Secundus, and the mercantile houses did their best the corrupt and ammend existing histories of the system, but to no avail.
With so much of the system's wealth seeped away, a great many of its cities have slid into stately dilapidation. Delicate bridges have collapsed into once pristine canals, and the copper domes of the great palaces are now tarnished and weathered. Even on the newly crowned Terminus Prime the houses have begun turning on each other, none risking outright war but eagerly sponsoring poisonings, assassinations, and other less violent means to control what little they can. Many of the gilded cities are ruled over not by the head of a great house, but by whatever lesser relation is left alive after the latest attack.
++Name: Gregorn
++Designation: Feral World
++Satellites: Four moons; no permanent Imperial Satellites or Stations
++Government: Gregorn holds to a traditional and archaic system of militaristic oligarchies with severe social and economic disparity
++Populace: Unknown; no formal census exists for Gregorn
++Environment: Mostly tropical; extreme tectonic activity prevents large man-made structures from forming; extensive rain-forests and jungles cover most of the habitable land
++Tithe: Exactus Tertius; to date no sub-sector commander has seen fit to allocate resources to claiming the tithe
++Capital: The Iron Keep is as close to a capital that Gregon has, being the largest and most populated settlement on the northern continent.
++Overview: Gregorn is a savage, feral planet, a world replete with steaming jungles, colossal beasts, and volcanic activity on a vast scale. Its proud, peculiarly mannered, and primitive human population clings grimly to the planet’s ever-shifting tectonic plates like fleas embedded in the hide of a raging beast, beset on all sides by warlike rival tribes, bizarre megafauna, and the depredations of brutal and cunning xenos mercenaries.
The world swings pugnaciously through a tight orbit around its middle aged yellow star, in a manner resembling an apex predator pacing tirelessly within a cage. It is one of the lesser known worlds of the Cyclopia Sub-Sector, a primitive and little regarded outcast in a region which seeks to portray itself as a mercantile and manufacturing hub in Askellon. While the planet has a formal tithe rating based upon the theoretical export of timber and foodstuffs, it has no actual planetary governor or Adeptus Administratum presence. No sub-sector commander has seen fit to allocate resources to collect its tithe for millennia; this is largely due to adverse local Warp conditions which impede reliable shipping. As such, Gregorn sees little interaction with the rest of Askellon. Indeed, it is suspected to be one of a number of potential bases for rampaging xenos pirates in recent decades, though the Askellian Navy has notably failed to bring these miscreants to battle.
Gregon’s landmass sprawls messily across the surface of the world in a handful of continents that grind and crash against each other like hastily anchored boats upon a stormy sea. Where the land masses meet, gigantic mountain ranges are thrown up, each range a nursery for dozens of ever-erupting volcanoes, magma flows, and collapsing calderas. The constant tectonic upheaval stirs up rich and fertile minerals from kilometres beneath the planet’s surface; at the edge of each lava field, dense rain forests loom hungrily, awaiting the inevitable cooling of the soil like vultures clustering around a dying traveller, voraciously poised for their opportunity to strike.
The world is warm, with tiny polar ice caps. Most of the continents exist in the tropical band of the northern hemisphere, with the world resembling a blue-green orb dotted with black volcanic regions and flickering orange rivers of fire visible even from orbit. The skies are heavy with silicate dust, but these are regularly cleared away by great storms, with their black rain eagerly devoured by the steaming forests. These fecund jungles fill virtually all available land on the planet and smother the ground in a green blanket hundreds of metres deep. Freakish behemoths lumber within these verdant depths; herbivorous saurids and pachyderms the size of heavy landers mutely chew the cud alongside colossal armoured ungulates and hirsute multi-tonne beasts which nibble delicately at leaves a dozen meters from the forest floor. Deadly predators of great size and ferocity lurk there too, living engines of destruction taking a variety of forms. There are great carnidons, scaled bipedal beasts with teeth the length of a human forearm and who mass nearly that of a superheavy tank, yet move through the forests without disturbing a single twig. There are mora, towering flightless avians five times the height of a man, with cruel, hooked beaks that can scissor a hunter apart in a heartbeat. These beasts battle hideous gulas, abhorrent predatory pack animals who scour all life from their path and scavenge the dead where they lie. Gregorn’s feral human inhabitants war with these great beasts and others on a constant basis, precariously maintaining dominance and survival.
A single enormous crater almost sixty kilometres wide mars the landscape. For leagues around, barren deserts are littered with the debris from this impact site; nickel-iron ore, rusted, pitted metal, and a thick coating of radioactive dust and black glass. The natives avoid this blasted landscape; though they are primitive, a combination of tribal superstitions and natural caution correctly trains each generation that the area is both cursed and lethal.
++The Green Menace:
Within the ruined realm abutting the great crater lies a ramshackle collection of low shanties, which belch and steam noxious effluent. These shacks surround a succession of rough orbital landing strips, pits, rough circular dirt tracks, foundries, and scrapyards. Within this battered selection of dwellings resides a portion of one of the many small but highly mobile Ork mercenary clans. These aliens have had a presence here for as long as any human alive on the world can recall. The details of their arrival are lost to time, but ancient legends among the native Gregornians is that the Orks descended to the world in fire and smoke, bringing misery and death to all.
Ork numbers on Gregorn can vary substantially. At any one time there are always a few hundred, but this changes rapidly as new warbands visit the world, travelling via a variety of vessels, tellyportas, and unreliable bubblefield-shielded Roks or asteroids. Currently, the greenskin population is dominated by the infamous Blood Axe clan, whose militaristic members plague Gregorn and its surrounding stars, raiding and killing across the sub-sector as the mood takes them. Under the leadership of the quixotic and unpredictable warlord Kaptin Gen’ral Kakkbad the ‘Eadbita, this portion of the wider Blood Axe clan has gone from strength to strength, absorbing and assimilating smaller Orkish settlements and tribes under its banner.
++Gnshal Oblitia:
Being a world purely dedicated to the craft of warfare, the Dragoons of the Gnshal Oblitia Imperial Army take every opportunity to hone their skills against whichever foe dares rears their head. As such they regularly send forth sorties and expeditionary forces to Gregorn, either engaging with native feral tribesmen, or waging war against the barbarous Orks who frequent the world. Currently the Ambition-Class Cruiser the Iron Drake sits at high-anchor above Gregorn, her Dragoons employed in operations on the carpeted-green world.