Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Hapster (section)

===Hapster Description===
Hapster holds the distinction of being the oldest continually Imperial world in the entire Cloudburst Sector, by virtue of having not started in the Cloudburst Sector.  This is an ancient world, one of the very first settled in the Long March Colony Fleet’s efforts in the region over twenty thousand years before.  Once, it was a coniferous forest world of evergreen trees and abundant, house-sized fern clusters.  Vast herbivores slowly trawled the planet’s endless tropical forests, while darting lizards chased each other around its few open clearings.  The great volcano chains in the seas produced new, barren islands, fresh for vegetation to sprout up and take root on its black soil, while the frigid polar ice caps sheltered huge predatory shark analogues that hunted pseudo-cetaceans the size of aircraft carriers.

A few millennia of peaceful inhabitation by Terran Federation citizens didn’t damage the world overmuch, but during its time of Old Night, Hapster went through rapid-fire cataclysms that destroyed whole ecosystems and depopulated the cities.  First came the robots, then the onslaught of psykers, then a massive civil war that left the world vulnerable to alien enslavers.  By the time the Emperor’s Legions – the 18th, specifically – finally found the world, its population was begging to integrate into a stable, safe government once more.  A savage battle erupted between the Dragon Warriors and the unnamed aliens that had occupied Hapster.  By the time the battle was over, five cities lay in ruins, beyond the ones that had already been unpeopled by the occupiers, but the aliens had been driven off, never to return.

Joining the Imperium was an afterthought for the Hapsterites after that.  The world sided resolutely with the Imperium during the Heresy and Scouring, but contributed little to the war effort thanks to its crippled and rebuilding infrastructure.  By the time that Hapster was up to a mere shade of its former power, the Heresy and Scouring were over, and the Reconstruction had begun.  Hapster became the capital world of its own Subsector of nearby Agri-worlds and outposts, and the leaders of the planet’s Administratum knew they could hope for little more.  There was no way past the radioactive clouds of gas that separated the Naxos Sector from the Oldlight Proximate Circuit.

No way, of course, until the arrival of Magos Explorator Justin MacDonald.  His legendary excursions into the Oldlight Proximate Circuit produced safe Warp routes to worlds that Hapster and Cognomen had never known about, and brought two enormous gold rushes of exploration and colonization to the region.  Hapster’s Imperial Governor petitioned for his world to become the seat of government in the new Sector-to-be, but the Segmentum Command office overruled him, and Cloudburst was chosen instead.  Ultimately, Hapster was not as affected by the creation of a new Sector as they had hoped.  It retained control of its own Subsector, but aside from a slight uptick in sales of its goods to its new neighbors and a more powerful fleet to defend it, Hapster continued to exist as it always had.

Unfortunately, the way it had existed was deeply flawed.  For reasons that the Administratum has been unable to define, and seem to shift and trace back through history as far as the Great Reformation, the Adeptus Arbites presence on Hapster has been profoundly troubled.  No matter how many Judges and Marshals the Adeptus cycles through, no matter how many reforms and riots the people have had to endure, the interactions between the Arbites and the Menials of Hapster has always been contentious, hostile, and violent.

Fixing a date on the beginning of this strife is impossible.  The historical records that exist from that long-gone era contain hints of the simmering resentment between the people of Hapster and their legal guardians as far back as detailed notes are kept.  Arbites records show hostile interactions between Hapsterites and Arbites over things as petty as littering and library book overdue fees.  Odder yet, those Arbites that have transferred to other Cloudburst worlds after one too many incidents rarely continue such behavior on other worlds.

Although Imperial history barely records the roots, there is no doubt that the bulk of the conflict between Hapster and its Arbites manifests in the extra-legal conduct of the population.  Hapster has a higher incidence rate of Arbites falling to corruption and graft than any other Cloudburst world by a factor of two, and entire Precincts have fallen to internal conflict in the past.  No other Cloudburst world can claim a fault with their Arbites to such an extent.  Lord Marshal Oolan has extended multiple inquests to the world’s leadership, attempting to find a cause for this.
He is not alone in his desire to know more.  The Ordo Hereticus has launched no fewer than five investigations of the poor behavior and interactions of the Hapster Arbites in the past six thousand years, and none of them have turned up anything concrete.  At times, it seems to stem from an indolent and lackadaisical populace that is unconcerned with law.  Other times, the Arbites are found to be at fault, having fallen from the path of righteousness despite their Chaplains’ best work.

Ultimately, there is no common thread connecting these thousands of incidents of distrust and violence.  While Arbites on Hapster seem to be perfectly capable of interacting with nobles and the upper classes without undue violence, interactions between Arbites and the middle to lower classes seem to end in violence far more often than needed.  Local Marshal C. Lumina Copperlain is at a loss to explain this phenomenon.  The Ordo Hereticus would surely have found something if the world were truly corrupted by Chaos or aliens, she insists, so the problem must be with the worlds from which Hapster draws its Arbites.

In reality, Oolan and Copperlain are in denial over the root of the problem.  The fact is that Hapster’s culture and economy are intricate, nuanced, and fragile, despite or because of their age and power.  The brutality and arbitrary judgments of the Arbites simply do not mesh well with Hapster’s complex lifestyles, climate, and culture.  Unfortunately, despite the answer being so clear, Copperlain will almost certainly never see it.  Copperlain, and most of her predecessors, sees the pressing need for the Arbites on Hapster as being the same as constant need for activity on Hapster, and behaves accordingly.  Hapster does have a history of small-scale brush wars, Tithe tardiness, and occasional misbehavior by the Subsector Overlord and their family.

Hapster’s culture orbits around a complex hierarchy of families, work, art, and piety, and the blanket approach of the Arbites to problem-solving produces great resentment among the people.  Hapster Bronze Legions rarely experience these problems thanks to the grim reality and pragmatism of war, and so the image of their culture rarely travels off world.  Arbites are expected to be as distant and unconcerned by the locales in which they ply the law as possible, to prevent playing favorites, or the worse crime of vigilantism.  However, even if the Arbites were to finally learn of the true source of their common acrimony with the local population, little would change.  The Lex Imperialis is unflinching, and so are its wardens.  If the Hapsterites have a culture that doesn’t mesh well with the Imperial Book of Judgment, then the fault lies with the Hapsterites, not the Book, after all.

Hapster’s unique social structure has allowed it to develop its own culture, distinct from both the Naxos and Cloudburst norm.  The planet has rigid castes and no social movement to speak of, but because they are only peripherally tied to family and not at all to locale, racial or political lines do not fracture the populace.  Instead, its residents compete vigorously in athletics, or more specifically, turn out by the hundreds of thousands to watch athletes picked by lottery compete in tournaments for their entertainment.  Archery is the classic field, but scrumball and hockey are almost as popular.  Fans of specific teams may drive for ten hours to watch the team drawn from their caste compete with the same caste from another city, or watch players from noble families clash in their state-of-the-art arenas.  The worst sports riots in Cloudburst history have all happened on Hapster, sometimes with a violence and spread that would leave an Ork impressed.

Of course, the Arbites are not responsible for enforcing planetary laws.  The Arbites are supposed to constrain their enforcement activities specifically to enforcing the Common Imperial, the Lex Imperialis, the Book of Judgment.  Some worlds have domestic laws that infringe on the Book of Judgment more than others, of course, and if that were the case in Hapster, that would be an easy matter to fix.  A few Senioris Judges could simply sit down with the local jurists and put them on a more compliant path.  It’s Hapster’s culture itself that conflicts with the Imperial perception of law and propriety, not a specific precedent or stricture.

Hapster’s culture and its economy are closely tied, and vulnerable to disruption.  Among the civilians of the world, social rank stems from birth and education, but mostly from the initial prospects of the civilian’s career.  After basic education, citizens are expected to report to one of several employment centers around the planet.  Each graduate undertakes various examinations to best determine their course in life, following arcane criteria on a listing as old as the planet.  Some of the criteria refer to cities or technologies that no longer exist, people covet others to the extent that bribing the examiners is expected and encouraged.  Regardless, the system does allow a semblance of order and productivity in the Hapster economy.

Hapster needs this direly, because the reliance on Dark Age technology in its economy crippled it for its absence.  Hapster was a world of manufacturing, experimentation, and testing.  After the initial human colonization, the planet served as a test bed for all manner of automated technologies, integrating with the world’s supply of Iron Men and other, simpler machines.  The loss of that technology forced the populace of Hapster to support itself in many ways, and it was far too small to do so efficiently.  The subsequent double blow of its psychic population going insane and the loss of its trading partners on Levitna crippled what was left.  The regimented survival protocols of the world’s shrinking government forced the population into its strict patterns for their own sake, and for better or worse.  When the aliens came, it was the last straw.  The planet collapsed into near-anarchy.  The alien occupiers co-opted Haspter’s venerable Civil Service tests as a means of controlling and brainwashing its citizens into compliance.  After the Dragon Warriors freed the world and welcomed it into the Imperium, the Administratum reincorporated the tests and put them back to work.  After ten thousand years of administrative ossification, the world’s economy has stratified into its current rigor, with no relief in sight.

The planet’s failing ecology is not helping matters.  Industrial pollution, atmospheric rebalancing, extensive ruins covering much of the planet, and even a few lingering contaminants from the Iron Men uprising have rendered whole regions of the planet functionally uninhabitable.  Ironically, the out-of-control plant life in many of these areas acts as a sponge for some of the pollution produced in the few, overcrowded cities that remain.  The world has carefully balanced agricultural zones that alleviate most of its food requirements, but any substantial disruptions to the planet’s workforce or ecobalance will cripple Hapster.

Complicating things is the world’s proximity to several Feudal and Feral Worlds in need of Missionaries and workers.  Hapster’s Administratum generally does not rely on Hapster to meet the Cloudburst Sector’s need for such people when Jodhclan and Thimble are available, but the Ecclesiarchy pays less heed to such concerns, and in two incidents in the past have abducted whole populations for impressment or service.

The planet called Hapster is the fourth planet in the system, and there are plans to terraform the third planet to Hapster’s own ecology, though the Glasian Migrations have stalled those out.  The plan to terraform Cloithe, the almost Terra-sized moon of the brown dwarf Hapster 6, is proceeding slowly.

The Subsector Overlord, Astrid Oskoldr, prefers to rule from her own home, which she bought with some of her family’s colossal wealth.  It is a walled, guarded compound in the high mountains of the equatorial island range.  Thanks to Hapster’s extreme axial tilt, the planet’s equatorial mountains have as close as the world can have to truly static climate.  Astrid’s estate is tucked into a cliffside and the plateau above it, with its own VTOL pads, a local void shield, and several fixed defense turrets.  It also has its own sensor suite and extensive vegetable gardens for produce.  In addition to the estate itself, which can easily house over a hundred people with its supplies, the compound has a few outlying hunting lodges in which Astrid can house visitors she wishes to woo or intimidate into aligning with her.

The world has another, far more recent problem that has all but paralyzed it.  The Glasians hit Hapster in both the Fifth and Sixth Migrations, and will hit it in the Seventh.  The Fifth and Sixth were barely dealt with by the Blue Daggers and Navy, as well as local PDF, but the Cloudburst forces are stretched to their very limit by the Oglith and Foraldshold problems this time (and the growing need to destroy the FCC).  The local Guard and PDF centers are desperately raising every soldier they can, regardless of criminal conduct, sex, or even age in some truly desperate regions.  This is already slowing the world’s economy, and if its ability to pay the tithe follows suit, the Arbites may step in, worsening the already precarious Hapster situation.  Hapster survived the Migrations, but they left even more of its surface uninhabitable.  Off-world teams of Mechanicus Biologis workers have begun restoring some of these areas after years of pleading by Hapster’s Overlord, but the work is slow and arduous at best.  Desperate reconstruction and defensive efforts have repaired the damage to Haspter’s infrastructure and provided fixed guns for the defense of several large cities, but there is a chance it won’t be enough to preserve Hapster’s fragile economic and ecologic systems in the face of overwhelming attack.


{{CloudburstSystemFull
|worldtype=           Civilized Moon: Cloithe
|troposphericcomposition=      Cloithe has Nitrogen 80%, Oxygen 18%, Various Noble Gasses .5%, Water .5%, Carbon Dioxide 1%
|religion=      Imperial Cult
|governmenttype=     Adeptus Terra
|planetarygovernor=   No
|adeptpresence=   Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Ministorum, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Mechanicus
|climate=  Boiling hot hair except in domes, exterior very slowly cooling
|geography=       Cloithe is a moon of the gas giant Hapster 6, and has no tectonics; it has a monoclimate of boiling hot, still air, with no liquid water yet, roughly .88 Terra’s volume
|gravity= Cloithe has .82 Terran gravity
|daylength=    879 Terran Hours
|economy=      Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
|principalexports=    None yet
|principalimports= Food, Soldiers, Climate Control Machines, Soil Deacidifiers
|countriesandcontinents=   Cloithe has no countries or continents
|military=       Hapster Shields
|contactwithothersystems=         Frequent
|tithegrade=   Aptus Non
|population=   400,000
}}