Setting:Cloudburst/Techpriesthood

Among the stars of Cloudburst, there is no institution older than the Adeptus Mechanicus is. Their growing Forge Worlds of Cognomen and Solstice hang in the darkness of the spacious Sector, aglow with the fires of industry. The expanding Sector has an unquenchable need for resources, ships, and machines, and the Techpriests are there to meet it.

History

The aftermath of the Horus Heresy left total anarchy on Mars. The Red Planet was all but destroyed by the bitter in-fighting. Collapses and fires started in the Librarius Omnis destroyed what few databanks had survived five thousand years of stagnation and decay. Exabytes of data survived the scrapcode, the war, the ecological exposure, the actual and electronic daemons, and the radiation of the Schism of Mars, but they had destroyed hundreds of yottabytes the Librarius once held. The surviving Techpriests united in their fiery hatred of the Hereteks, the Chaos-worshippers, for the affronts they had levelled against the Machine God.

However, even the Loyalists were divided. After the war ended and the next began, that of the Great Scouring, the surviving leaders of the Martian priesthood were dissatisfied with their vengeance against the Heretics. They were losing autonomy, thanks to the reforms of Guilliman, and though the Treaty of Mars was still intact, the dogmatic trend the newly rebranded Adeptus Mechanicus was showing indicated to the schismatics that their preferences would not be allowed forever.

The schismatic sect of Techpriests believed that the human body was as sacrosanct as the Emperor said, and so were machines. To fuse them when it was not necessary was an insult to the human form and the machine function, they claimed.

Technically, this was not a violation of Mechanicus doctrine. Techpriests in the personal employ of the Lord Commander Guilliman himself had preached that exact doctrine; a force of Techpriests who practiced it, also, freed Calth. The Mechanicus’ numbers had not been so lightly damaged that they could afford to be picky on points of non-Heretek doctrine. Still, the movement against human-replica augmetics was growing and forceful.

Both for the good of the Mechanicus and for their own sake, the schismatic faction agreed to separate from Mars. Somewhat surprised by this, the new Fabricator General allowed it, under the strict commandment that the schismatics not create a Titan Legion unless Mars gave them permission. Disgruntled, but able to smell the changing of the wind, the schismatics agreed.

Taking to ship, the schismatics flew as far as they could from the Red Planet without leaving the Astronomican’s light. The massive Ark Mechanicus they had chosen as their vessel was a true monster of the Basilikon Astra. Named the Archetype, a relic from before the Age of Strife had so fully damaged the archives of the Librarius Omnis that much of the knowledge of mega-engineering was gone, the twenty-kilometer Ark had more than enough space and defenses to protect the schismatics, and ferry them to their new home.

Of course, finding one would prove challenging. The sheer volume of space beyond the reach of the Imperium ensured that the schismatics would find themselves lost more than once. As the pre-made human-form augmetics they had brought with them ran out, the schismatics were forced to compromise with the naked steel ones they opposed on general principal. They traveled on, finding world after world that was lost to heresy, destroyed by the Eldar, scorched by the Warp, polluted by Orks, or else under Imperial control. After nearly twenty years of nonstop flight, the Archetype finally found the savanna world, covered in recognizably Diaspora-descended plants. The vast ship discharged its passengers and cargo, and they began the work of settling their new world.

For two hundred years, the schismatics worked around the clock. Temples, factories, farms, mines, gantries, docks, laboratories, and far more rose from the rock and dirt like metal trees. Though the new colonists had to be careful to preserve as much of the planet’s ecosystem as possible at first, thanks to their lack of Agri-worlds to feed themselves, the world still became an unpleasant place to visit before long. Regular psychic and courier communication with Mars established in the Red Planet’s minds that their breakaway cousins were still intact (and still loyal, more importantly).

After two centuries of hard work, Cognomen was declared a Forge World by Mars, and the planet settled in. Though the original rejection of non-flesh-form augmetics had slackened somewhat by necessity, they remained more popular than the naked steel sort did, and the planet’s people were determined to maintain their adherence to Mechanicus doctrine in all respects, lest Mars think their colony was going rogue.

Isolation treated Cognomen well. Though they had no satraps or vassals, the world grew regardless, and their sizeable defenses proved to be enough to drive off the occasional opportunistic Ork or pirate who thought to loot the world. Infrequent interactions with other Imperial worlds allowed for a small-scale trade economy, mostly with worlds in the Hapster Subsector and the Drumnos Sector to the galactic south. The presence of the massive radioactive clouds present all around the world, and the asteroid clusters and black holes to the trailing direction, meant that Cognomen sponsored little Exploratory and colonization effort in the time between their founding and MacDonald’s excursions.

Their isolation worsened with the catastrophic loss of Archmagos Dominus Velcra Osterman and the Archetype in a joint military exercise with their brethren from Naxos, when the exercise was suddenly assaulted by a vast fleet of Ork Freebooters. Though Osterman fought with ruthless courage, the Orks were too many. He was forced to detonate the antimatter/plasmic hybrid power core of his ship in order to prevent the greenskins from stealing it, and the resultant explosion destroyed much of the Ork fleet. Though the Basilikon Astra was able to mop up the Orks and salvage the materials of all the destroyed ships, the loss of their ancestral home, their war leader, and their best ship led Cognomen to seal themselves off further from the rest of the Imperium.

However, time was not on their side. The sudden discoveries of their brilliant Magos Explorator Justin MacDonald of several shirtsleeves-habitable worlds within a non-Navigated flight from their homeworld – well within their telescope range – led to an uproar on the Forge World. How, the people of Cognomen asked angrily, had they managed to miss prizes so obvious? They could have built their own network of satraps and vassals, if they had only known about those systems. Their stars were easily visible from Cognomen’s orbit, also, which only raised further questions.

The leadership of Cognomen’s Techpriesthood, sheepish at the depth of their error, publicly admitted to nothing. However, even the most militantly isolationist Magos of the Cognomen senior leadership could smell the changing of the wind again. In fewer than ten years, over two hundred Explorators, Rogue Traders, and Departmento Cartigraphicae convoys had departed from nearby Drumnos and Naxos. By far the most came from the glorious shipbuilding hub Fabique, a Subsector battlefleet anchorage and vast Forge World in the neighboring Naxos Sector. Systems, shipwrecks, bizarre astral phenomena, a Warp Storm, and far more appeared on maps and charts of the Oldlight Proximate Circuit. Cognomen’s isolation was ending.

MacDonald, of course, was obligated to share the discoveries he was making with the greater Imperium. If Cognomen wanted their strident objections to claims of Heretek and subversion to be heeded at all, they couldn’t simply keep their discoveries for themselves. Therefore, when Hapster Subsector Master of the Administratum, Subsector Lord Fisher, contacted Cognomen with a proposal to add Cognomen to the expanding Subsector, the Techpriests listened patiently, considered the offer, and told Fisher to stuff himself. If the Forge World were going to become part of the larger Imperium, they would do so on the terms of the Mechanicus, not the Administratum.

The High Fabricator contacted Mars himself, using a courier boat. Aboard the boat, he included all manner of information about the sector, including all of MacDonald’s discoveries, what little they had managed to map before he had gone on his journeys, and lists of known threats. When the courier boat was lost with all hands in a pirate raid, the Fabricator tried again, and this time, his message got through.

One year later, an Astropathic message returned from Mars, with basic information about what the Senate had decided about the region. Cognomen learned that the region was to become a new sector, with the capital to be decided, and Cognomen was to become its infrastructural lynchpin.

This was not the idea solution, from Cognomen’s perspective. The world certainly could expand its facilities enough to allow for such a boost of industrial and military production, but not without destroying its agricultural and mining capacity. Furthermore, that sort of expansion would necessitate the creation of far larger defenses and offensive projection capacity, simply to defend its off-world resource base. That would all but demand creation of a Titan Legion, which Mars had specifically outlawed. When this was tactfully pointed out to Mars by a series of Astropathic messages, Mars replied that the stricture against Titan construction was lifted. Cognomen was left stunned. They were free to build their own War God-machines? Further, the next message imparted, Cognomen would benefit from an entire army of Skitarii, and the right to manufacture all hulls of Imperial vessels and most armored vehicles. Six Titans were dispatched to serve as the core of the new Legion, led by the Ded Morozko, a Warlord, under Chief Princeps Leminkova. After their loss, enough wreckage was returned to begin the reassembly of one Reaver. Things began happening very quickly. While the leadership of the planet sent requests for clarification to Mars, asking if the stricture against Knights was also lifted, Cognomen sent out a dizzying array of vessels, to begin the creation of Agri-worlds for themselves, and scout vessels to identify proper sites for satrap Forges. When the wave of colony ships began flying all around them after MacDonald’s successes in the Oldlight Exo-zone, Cognomen was ready.

Activities

Dozens of worlds began feeding tithes to Cognomen’s vast forges. Orbital cradles, manufactorae, synth-presses, STC-series constructors, and assembly lines rose from what used to be grassland, and girdled the slowly dying world with industry. Temples to the Omnissiah and Arbites precinct-houses took their place alongside ancient warehouses and server farms. Hundreds of thousands of vast apartment towers for the rapidly rising population of the world and over fifty military bases sprouted from the ground. After several further attempts to gain clarity on their permission to build Knights, Cognomen gave up, and decided to build them anyway, though they edged away from building Cybernetica robots just yet. One forested world set aside for agriculture was quietly earmarked for use as a Knight World, and that fact conveniently forgotten when it came time for Cognomen to next report to Mars.

The fleets of the Cognomen and Solstice Basilikon Astra and Explorator ply every route between every cluster in the young Sector. Rogue Traders and Inquisitors who comb the Cloudburst Circuit for secrets and wealth often welcome Explorators flying the proud banner of MacDonald’s Finest, knowing that the Explorators of Cognomen have a desperate need to prove themselves, to Terra and Mars.

The Explorators of the Cloudburst Sector, regardless of their Forge World allegiance, seek archaeotech caches and habitable worlds for the Imperium. The fact that Cognomen was sitting in the middle of a habitable star cluster and never noticed for many thousands of years is a huge embarrassment to them. The other fact that their glorious predecessor, Archmagos Explorator Justin MacDonald, was able to find over a dozen habitable systems in under a decade of searching, is a point of pride to them, and the third fact that he found them within visible distance is a huge shame to them. Now, driven by the need to make up for past laxity, for the extra scrutiny of Mars, and the need to find fresh resources to take the fight to the Glasians and Orks, the Explorators of Cloudburst scramble across the Circuit to hunt down the vaguest hints of treasure and technology. Unlike in some other Segmentum Ultima border zones, Rogue Traders and Explorators in Cloudburst work together readily and voluntarily. Fleets of them, working in tandem, have dragged Space Hulks to Cognomen or Grand Anchor to be ripped apart, seen off alien invasions before the Administratum even learned about them, and discovered whole networks of lost human colonies to loot and plunder.

Fleet

The Basilikon Astra of Solstice and Cognomen is both less numerous and far better equipped than the Imperial Navy. Their warships patrol the Warp routes between Cognomen and Septiim, and Cognomen and its satrap worlds, with ceaseless vigilance and the best weapons money can buy. Although their ancient flagship, the Archetype, is long gone, the fleets of Cognomen are still formidable. The Cognomen yards are enormous and growing, and although it will be another thousand years before they catch up to the current size of the great Fabique Forge Yards, they are already large enough to manufacture every model of common Imperial ship.

As is usually the case, the Mechanicus reserves its best ships for itself. The cruisers that form the backbone of its flotillas are the most heavily armed for their tonnage in the Sector. Its heavier warships, including the fourteen kilometer long Ark Mechanicus Comprehension, are the toughest ships in their weight class in the entire Sector by far. Its Basilikon Astra has better relations with Rogue Traders than its Council of Magos does, and sometimes works alongside them, the Navy, or the Daggers on complex missions, or projects of technotheological consequence.

Ground and Air Forces

Among the military forces of the Sector, however, the mightiest is the Legio Congelatio. Although the Frostbite Army is minuscule compared to some older Legions, its short and bloody history has earned it infamy among other Imperial institutions.

The battle in which the destruction of the Legio occurred was a savage affair, with the Legio Congelatio squaring off against a Traitor Guard force of far greater size during the War for the Corumbino Nebula. The war engines of the Legio were able to drive off the scout and forward armor elements of the Traitor force without too much trouble, but the pressure applied by the Chaos force was relentless. The Corpus Secutarii forces protecting the Titans encountered rough terrain as the Titans advanced, and the Titan crews were left with a choice: abandon their escorts, or allow themselves to be slowed. The Legio chose the latter, and endured a punishing Manticore barrage from the Traitors. The final problem was that of a Chaos Titan force that accompanied the Traitors, from a Legio that remains unidentified. The Titan force consisted of four engines, accompanied by a pair of Chaos Shadowswords. As soon as they came within range, the Congelatio Titans engaged with the super-long range energy weapons that were the hallmark of the Legio, and managed to destroy a Ravager before it could return fire. However, just as the Chaos force and the Loyalist force entered direct battle with each other, a third party entered the fray.

A wing of eighty-five Dark Eldar aircraft armed with Void Lances appeared at the edge of the engagement. Raking the assembled Titans with their dark energy beams, the Titans withered under the unimaginable technosorcery of the evil xenos. Chaos and Imperial Titans alike fell, destroyed or crippled, as the Chaos artillery kept up its savage barrage. When the Black Winter Warlord Titan of Cognomen’s force detonated from a lucky reactor kill, the chain reaction that ensued destroyed all of the Titans left in the fight, which had been forced together by the bad terrain.

The stunned Chaotic and Imperial forces outside the blast radius fell back. The loss of their Titan cover meant that the Chaos artillery could no longer operate so far from their caches, and they turned tail and ran. The Imperium noticed this and pursued, eventually driving the Chaos force off-world.

Since that time, Cognomen has been hastily expanding their Titan force. Although only one Reaver engine could be salvaged from the disaster that destroyed the Legion, Cognomen has since built ten Battle Titans and fifteen Scout Titans. A Warlord never leaves Cognomen, to ensure that the disaster of Corumbino never recurs. Another Warlord was lost in the duel with the Ork Supa-Gargant Bloodcrunch in M41.962, leaving the effective strength of the Legion at two dozen Engines. That is pathetic compared to Anvilus, Mars, Voss, or even the Lathes, but it is more than enough to have driven off the Third Glasian Migration unaided when the aliens foolishly attempted to conquer the Forge World in M41.600. When the Legion’s numbers rise to reach a new maniple number, or a number divisible by five, the new engines bud off from their existing maniple to form their own, and begin housing the next engines until their number reaches ten, then the maniple splits, and the newer one hosts the next few engines, and so on.

Contemporarily, Cognomen has begun to further expand its Titan Legion and its Corpus Secutarii. The Secutarii of all Titan Legions, of course, answer to the leadership of the Legion itself, not its attendant priests or Skitarii. However, the savage beatings the Legio Congelatio has endured over the years have hammered a sense of fatalistic and even remorseful pride into the Secutarii of Cognomen. The prevailing belief among the Titanshields – as the local Secutarii dub themselves – is that the world is not at fault for any of the troubles that have befallen the Legion. Rather, the very sector itself, the untamed wilderness of Imperial space beyond, or even the nature of the galaxy are siding against them. Secutarii of the Corpus Congelatio paint their armor black with green highlights, and are the most enthusiastic wielders of phosphor and irrad weapons in the Sector. Though this is understandably a huge liability in the largely defensive wars of the Sector, the Titanshields demand the right to wield the ancient hate of Mars.

Naturally, this is why the Titanshields are so often rebuked by other Imperial Commanders who do not share their passion for uninhabitable wastelands. The Titanshields therefore, often reluctantly, field Arc Weapons, Hellguns, and Galvanic weapons when they are fighting on Imperial worlds. The Axiarchs of the Titanshields are also sometimes seen adorning their armor with pieces of the destroyed six engines that started the Legio, as a mark of their shame and their determination to prevent it from happening again. This is a devotional effort, as no living Axiarch was present for the Corumbino campaign.

Legio Congelatio Composition

Legio Congelatio Composition (circa M41.999)

1. ([Command Variant] Warlord) Gold Blood
2. (Warlord) Punitive Spirits
3. (Warlord) Victrix Mechanicus
4. (Warlord) All Sights of the Machine
5. (Reaver) Scoured Alloys
6. (Warlord) Steed of Gods
7. (Reaver) Glory of Doom
8. (Reaver) Predator of Mars
9. (Reaver) Free Radical
10. (Warhound) Speeding Victory Along
11. (Warhound) Holy Motor
12. (Warhound) Speak Ye Faithful
13. (Warhound) Hound of Knowledge
14. (Warhound) Bulwark Mechanicus
15. (Warhound) Foe of the Faithless
16. (Warhound) Pack Leader
17. (Reaver) Ion Storms
18. (Warlord) Battlewrought
19. (Warhound) Cognomen Victorious
20. (Warhound) Crushing Blow
21. (Warhound) Canis Argentum
22. (Warhound) Unsubtle Arrival
23. (Warhound) Data Shielded
24. (Reaver) Oil of Conquest
25. (Warlord) Omnissiah’s Servant