Since all my week is evaporating like paint thinner in the summer breeze… I figure this will give me leeway to have fantasy and sci-fantasy terrain and make up some Mordheim-style rules to go with the Necromunda-style territory acquisition thing I like. More an academic exercise, although I managed to include my Imperium troops and give myself a reason to get a squad of Tau, Eldar, Squats, and Kroot, and maybe even some Dark Eldar (I really gave myself some wiggle room!)
On the fringes of the Segmentum Pacificus, far from modernizing influences, lies the Orvisto system. The fourth planet from that star orbits just far enough from it to receive sufficient heat and light to keep the human inhabitants uncomfortably chilly, but there is little in the way of free water on the surface to make snow or frost. It receives most of its food from the nearby Catellaste VII, which is an abundant producer of synthoy and vitamin pills.
In its heyday, Orvisto IV was a librarium planet, and a minor factorum of real books and holodata displays. It even served as a repository for manuscripts and prints from all over several systems during the last Flood of Fire in which Imperial and Tau worlds were ravaged by Khornate Marauders. The nobles of nine different industrialized Human planets, including their Tau and Eldar allies, all placed sacred books, histories, and accounting ledgers onto slow barges to safeguard them from the torch, and promptly forgot them when those planets were razed and ravaged. The end result being that mountains of rotting books and stacks of discs tip over into the sparsely-inhabited byways of the hive cities. Most of the sensible folk have fled the system for better pickings, leaving millions of foolhardy souls to pick over heaps of worm-ridden and mouldy paper, looking for clues to riches buried underneath in the lower levels of the hives.
The inhabitants are at a late medieval level of subsistence, offer worship to The Emperor of Man, and most know of and work with several minor alien races. Some are semi-literate and few are even very well-read, although to proclaim such is dangerous. These sorts of infractions are overlooked owing to the delicate and valuable nature of the treasures the planet holds, especially since the regulation and oversight of the process is placed specifically in the hands of a Dark Angels successor chapter, The Guardians of The Covenant. Who or what ‘the Covenant’ was is unknown to the common inhabitants of Orvisto IV, but it is assumed that it involves the safe-keeping of mostly worthless words and ink and bytes, to secure some of it (possibly very valuable) against loss.
Thus the Battle Brothers of Orvisto IV, Guardians of the Covenant, in some sense rule the hapless planet. There is an Imperial Governor, Hew-Watt by name. He is a wizened cyborg, charged with administering to a machine in which men and women are cogs. The human population of the planet is mostly devoted to uncovering, sorting, moving, and (rarely) translating texts, and piling newly received ones in a way so as not to disturb lower layers. This slow accretion of words and paper and silicon has dangerous consequences, in that paper can catch fire, can house molds and insects, and every so often men and women are buried beneath avalanches of old magazines and encyclopedia. The Guardians of The Covenant enjoy good relations with nearby Mechanicum enclaves and send recovered specifications and rumors Mars-ward whenever possible, and the great Librarium Fortress of Spire Contina has regiments of text-scanning and –processing servitors that are maintained in good repair. Much of the technology in use is thousands of years old and well-maintained although prone to machine-spirit indolence.
There is a contingent of Adeptus Sororites as well, the Grey Ladies, charged with maintaining the spiritual purity of the populace. It happens that the digger gangs and reading-and-calligraphy guilds (the so called Copy Clans) will rarely find great caches of questionable reading material from some far-away (now destroyed!) planet and although they often have no idea what the texts say, they sometimes are responsible for the spread of objectionable ideas and heresies which the Grey Ladies are happy to suppress. They are especially watchful for Dark Eldar insurgencies, since that race is drawn here to raid for docile servants and pliant torture-victims.
The Planetary Defense Force is garbed in grey of an antique sort, with crudely burnished helms and armor after the fashion of their respected benefactors. They have access to old and sometimes dangerous technologies, by virtue of long-covered store rooms and occasional archaeotech hoards. They prefer to use autoguns and bolters rather than laser-weapons to minimize risk of Stack Conflagrations. But some squads put flamers and explosives to good use in quick destruction of suspect information.
The local Arbites forces wear similar grey carapace armor and sometimes put down synthsoy riots and patrol The Stacks for xenos scum.
There are the usual percentages of abhumans – many Copy Clans employ ratlings for seeking out texts and tech in tight places, and Ogryn for heavy lifting.
In addition, there are very small groups of xenos that are permitted to exist on Orvisto IV, mainly the Tau-allied species and even some actual Tau agents (prohibited from proselytizing on pain of death), as well as licensed Eldar traders and their associated races. Kroot are known to track down high-value knowledge in the mid-level warehouses, if they are given sufficient clues and tattered maps. The Battle Brothers and grey Ladies overlook these influences and take care to present a kindly and beneficent face to the standard citizen, but commoners who know too much or mix too closely with xenos without dispensation are prone to disappearing in the night, never to be heard from again. Nobles and clan-leaders who employ alien agents do so with the cool gaze of the Guardians, and are monitored closely by several low-level Inquisition agents. This includes a handful of irascible and generally bored Ordo Hereticus and Ordo Xenos workers , as well as a lone Ordo Sepulturum Inquisitor – Valkrim Hax – who ensures no more outbreaks of Neuronal Plague. The world has not had a visit from an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in several centuries…
The whole of the planet is divided into giant arcologies, the top levels housing Imperial administrators and the more illustrious production clans, and (as on other hive worlds), the bottoms of the arcologies are steaming, festering masses of human and non-human filth. Unlike Necromunda, for example, the spaces outside the giant arcology-hives are divided into clan-owned and –managed pulp forests, canal-farms in which ink-squids are raised for ink and isinglass, and mills for making paper and book-boards. Towering spires of Calligraphy Guilds teeter and sway in the wind.
Most of the non-spire inhabitants subsist on birds, game, squid and fish, as well as crude black bread from off-world and their own hydroponically-produced vegetables. The sight of the off-world bakery ships in the sky is cause for great rejoicing, usually given a feast-day! Inside the stone and steel arcology spires, digger clans in the midlevels trade synthsoy crackers of various colors, vita-drinks, and whatever meager food stuffs work their way in from the dense forests outside. The lowest sump-level inhabitants are not averse to cannibalism, but luckily they can survive on giant book-worm larvae, helminths, and dire rats. Power in the spire-vaults is a tricky business, and sometimes water and steam access is questionable, also. Beneath the arcologies’ production and habitation levels, they are joined together by massive stone storage vaults, oubliette-networks, and tunnel-webs that interlock the planet – these are generally just above the sump levels and none still know the ways the dozens of spires still interconnect. Indeed, whole clans of Digger-Mapper Squats live and die without ever seeing the Orvistan sunlight and may even go mad if they spend too much time in the open air.
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