Editing Setting:Cloudburst/Goldlight (section)

===Modernity===

Thousands of years later, Cassie’s World remembers their Rogue Trader mapper with a single small monument in their chief starport.  The planet’s booming trade economy was, for centuries, based solely about its production of grains, vegetables, fish, swimming mammals for meat and pets, and other life forms.  Only in M41.890 was it discovered that whole mountain chains in the world’s rocky single supercontinent are full to bursting with rare ores and precious gems.  A mining industry employing over ten million human laborers and four times that many servitors now chip away at Cassie’s massive mountains, grinding hundreds of millions of Thrones’ worth of gems and gold from the rock.  Land Trains, based on ancient military designs, chug and rumble down elevated steel tracks to mountain base camps, where separating machines tumble rocks and gems free through huge filters.

The world’s capital, the city of Magno City, is a teeming hub of humanity, and far from what the average hiver or noble would consider ‘Agri-World.’  It is a true Imperial city, like any other on bigger worlds, with massive administration and law enforcement offices, a large starport, Mechanicus and Ministorum shrines, a Defense Laser, multiple PDF bases, sprawling Gubernatorial Mansions, and intrigue in its courts of bored nobles and spoiled scions.  Eight million humans and half a million servitors toil in its factories, bottling plants, refineries, and shipping yards.

====Geography====

The unusual geography of Cassie’s World plays a role in this centralization.  The planet is essentially split down the middle.  From pole to pole, the planet is half water and half land.  It is not a perfect split, and all signs point to it being natural, but the sight from the world’s orbit is stark in its contrast.  The world looks like a marble, half dark blue with spots of white and brown, half green with spots of white and brown.  The massive, deep ocean serves as a natural heatsink and reservoir for the colony there.  Fishing fleets scatter on the currents, harvesting kilotons of fish and mammals for sale or consumption.  Deep rivers feed more water into the ocean, and cut lines through the limestone mountains that dot the landmass.

Magno City takes shelter from the naturally-resulting hypercanes of a world-spanning ocean with ingenious technology and architecture.  It is the largest population center in the Sector to have no underground tunnel networks at all, they boast (not accurately, but they disregard that).  Instead, each major block of buildings, no matter how large or old, brackets itself from its neighbors with wedges of trees.  These wedges of trees, bred by Magos Biologis priests and maintained with careful scrutiny by the Ecclesiarchy and Administratum, have root systems over ten times their vertical height, and hold the soil in place beneath them as if it were stuck in a stasis field.  Furthermore, the rooftops of nearly all buildings curl upwards in bowl shapes, and their drains lead to purification tanks in the buildings’ basements, where the water is cleaned and added to the local firefighting system’s water reserves or the city reservoirs.  Floods still happen, of course, and are dealt with when they occur.

The mountain spikes and ranges that pierce the crust of the planet are a source of great wealth to the world, one it was not expecting.  It was a party of hikers, of all people, who found the resource deposits there.  The group was inspecting a hiking trail that had just been buried by an avalanche, when one of them noticed the distinct yellow sheen of some of the fallen rocks.  Testing in the city established that it was mercury-gold and not pyrite.

Within days, a gold rush of speculators and prospectors fled the cities and latifundae, catching the administrators off-guard.  The miners hurried up to the mountains, but met Arbites and local Enforcers.  The lawmen explained that the mountains were all property of the planetary rulership, the High Prince.

The Prince was roused from his carnal diversions long enough to give the Administratum permission to sell the mountains for exorbitant prices.  However, the Administratum, after only a few weeks’ examination, revealed that the plots of land the miners craved were so heavily valued, there was no way for any individual or even collective of miners to buy them.

In swooped the Cloudburst Mercantile Houses.  The rich strike of valuables had attracted the attention of the great merchant and corporate clans, and they saw an opportunity.  They appealed to the miners directly, promising all sorts of well-paying jobs and benefits for those workers and prospectors who agreed to enter the employ of the Mercantile Houses.  Many did so, and now the banners of the Mercantile Houses of Cloudburst fly high beside Mechanicus Cogwheels and the High Prince Emblem in the mining camps and cities.