Setting:Cloudburst/Forender

System
Galactic Position	Cloudburst Sector, Cognomen Subsector
System Overlord	Magos Lector Alexei
Worlds in the system	Four, three inhabitable
World Type, Name	Agri-worlds: Forender (a,b,c)
Tropospheric Composition	The three Forenders have different atmospheric compositions, but all range close to pre-Industrial Terran
Religion	Imperial Cult, Machine Cult
Government type	Adeptus Mechanicus
Planetary Governor	No
Adept Presence	Adeptus Mechanicus, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Administratum, Adeptus Arbites, Adeptus Astra Telepathica, Adeptus Ministorum
Climate	All three Forenders have different climates, each suited to growing a different food type
Geography	Forender planets –a and –b are rocky worlds with fertile valleys and oceans, while Forender-c is a planet with intense heat and sand dunes at the equator with jungle conditions most other latitudes.
Gravity	Forender-a has 1.03 Terran gravity; Forender-b has .89 Terran gravity, Forender-c has .96 Terran gravity
Day Length	29 Terran Hours
Economy	Gelt Thrones and Silver Thrones
Principal Exports	Food, Salt, Spices, Dye, Raw Textiles, Ore
Principal Imports	Agricultural Machines, Mining Machines, Industrial Machines, Soldiers, Fuel, Climate Control Devices
Countries and Continents	Forender-a has eleven continents, Forender-b has no continents, and Forender-c has four continents; none have national divisions
Military	Skitarii, Forender Incursion Force (medium quality PDF), Basilikon Astra
Contact with other Systems	Intermittent
Tithe Grade	Aptus Non
Population	783,592,000

Description

The great triple Agri-world of Forender is the reason Cognomen is as powerful as it is today. Without the immense resource income of Forender, it would be impossible for the Cognomen networks of worlds to grow as quickly as they do. Soon, Forender will feed Cognomen by itself, and the world can devote its little remaining agricultural land to industry, as a Forge World should.

Forender is another sign of the embarrassing lack of attention paid to the region during the history of the Oldlight Proximate Circuit. The star Forender was visible from Cognomen since the first day of the Martian colony, but the fact that it had three planets that could be terraformed with minimal effort was a complete surprise. To the Mechanicus’ relief, they reached the planet first, and were able to stake a claim before the Fabique Magi and the Departmento Astrocartigraphicae. The system had no native life, but elementary terraforming could easily turn its three rocky planets into productive Terra-likes.

In Administratum parlance, Forender is a Pasture Gate system, thanks to having three shirtsleeves-habitable worlds, like Septiim. Unlike Septiim, it is further subcategorized as an Artificial Pasture Gate, thanks to all three worlds being shirtsleeves-habitable solely thanks to extensive terraforming. This is not a slight against the worlds, but rather an acknowledgement of how long it will take to make the system as agriculturally productive as Septiim or other natural systems.

In M40.038, the terraformation process on Forender-a had progressed enough that preliminary biosphere development began. Mechanicus Magi Biologis imported thousands of artificially grown plants and animals to the planet, along with the rich soup of interdependent bacteria needed to process nutrients in the fresh soil. Great climate and mining machines extracted and introduced the chemicals and water needed to turn the three worlds to breadbaskets.

From the very first day of the project, the Mechanicus knew what the Forender system had to be. The Cognomen colony had not previously been an industry-focused world beyond the essentials. Above all else, Cognomen had been a place of religious contemplation, voluntary isolation, and reverence for the Machine. Now, it had to be a place of massive industrial growth, and that meant expanding its great Factory-Forges. That, in turn, meant more metal and food for the new worker populations needed to run the Factory-Forges, and that meant new economies were needed.

Forender’s terraforming was not solitary. All three worlds had the abundant water ice and oxygen-silicate crystals needed to create oceans, and the wispy nitrogen gasses in the atmosphere of Forender 4 could easily provide a base for the three terrestrial atmospheres. The vast gas giant had enough hydrocarbons in its own atmosphere to coat each rocky Forender with its own global oil slick. Even after the Mechanicus had siphoned enough gas from Forender 4 to create the atmospheres of the other three planets, the pumping stations lingered, to provide fuel for Cognomen freighters and terraformation barges.

If a resident of Forender today were to view how their world looked two thousand years in the past, they would see three fiery balls of rust and storms. The zones under Terra-like ecological conditions were tiny, barely a few kilometers across, and had not one plant or animal. By the turn of M41, however, Forenders –a and –b were done with their initial stabilization. The Mechanicus had sunk billions of gallons of water into the deep places of all three worlds, most of it harvested from their own rock formations. With the beginnings of true oceans and air, and genetically modified animals and plants on Forender-a, agriculture could finally begin. One century later, Forender-a was producing simple grains and dyes for export, thanks to the population of several hundreds of thousands of pioneer colonists from Cognomen and Hapster.

By the year M41.923, all three worlds had farms that spanned nearly their entire surface areas. Extensive oceanic harvest operations collected animals and plants from the seas, while billions of laborers harvested fields of grain, vegetables, and textiles that stretched from pole to pole on Forender-a. Forender-b had rockier surface topography, and had directed its efforts more towards the growing of vine plants and livestock. Forender-C was the slowest to develop thanks to the toxic metal traces in its sandy crust, but eventually, its non-equatorial regions developed enough to permit the growth of artificial jungles. This climate allows for abundant growth of medicinal plants and chocolate, as well as a variety of exotic dyes.

Altogether, even though their terraformation is technically not concluded, the worlds of Forender produce more food than some far older Agri-worlds, and their output shall only climb. Though reaching the lofty heights of Combine is something that will probably never happen, the Magos Biologis in charge of Forender’s output is determined to try.

Magos Alexei takes it personally that the farms and fisheries have produced as little as they have. Though the food output of his system is high enough to feed fifteen billion mouths, the slow progress of the farm expansion has him driving the collectors harder and harder.

When his staff, many of whom have the same seminary and educational background as he does, point out that the planets’ ecosystems are fragile and small, and that overharvesting will destroy his worlds’ ability to accomplish anything, he retreats to his private shrine to fume. He has done this even more since the discovery by the Inquisition that the Glasians have targeted Forender for invasion in the Seventh Migration.

Culturally, the worlds of Forender are both homogenous and precariously balanced. The Mechanicus has done their best to ensure that the planets’ populaces are not in competition with each other, both because that would be inefficient and because of its history. The planet’s population pilots were not all Cognomen lay-folk. Much of the worlds’ population and most of its initial agricultural expertise came instead from the population of Hapster, which is devoutly religious in the same way that the Mechanicus is, just to a different religion. Much of the populace of the worlds and orbitals of the system are public adherents to the Machine God or the God-Emperor, with no middle ground to speak of. If the population of one worship rose statistically above the other, the Mechanicus and Ministorum both suspect that the productivity or loyalty of the worlds could suffer. As such, while the populace of the three Agri-worlds goes about their business more or less peacefully, the Mechanicus and Ecclesiarchy warily eye each other from their compounds, distrusting but unmoving.

Beyond religious rivalries, life on the Forender worlds has some quirks that a traveler would find surprising. Because of the fragility of their ecosystems, visitors to the Forenders are forced to undergo invasive searches of persons, garments, and cargo upon arrival, to prevent the spread of vermin. One pregnant mouse could destroy a whole farm. On the surface itself, most forms of expression and art are strictly forbidden by one or the other of the two religious authorities who rule the worlds, with the Administrators who actually govern the planet relegated to background duties at best. Public displays of piety and adherence to one creed or another are as close as most Forender residents can enjoy to delight. The religious figures make up for this with lavish parades and festivals paid for by their tithes, so at least the peasants aren’t driven to distraction by the stultifying nature of life on a world undergoing terraformation.

Life in Forender would no doubt have continued, ever so slightly improving here and there, had not a great heresy begun in the bored minds of the Forender-b paltry upper classes. Only a few years before the outbreak of the 13th Black Crusade, a cabal of progressive heretics managed to convince the world’s Bishop of the inherent equality and capacity for self-determination of all humans. The idea that non-Imperial humans are equal to Imperial humans is not by itself terribly out of line with Ecclesiarchal teachings, else there would be no point to converting them to Emperor-worship. The idea that humans are all socially equal, however, directly threatened the hierarchy of the Imperium, wherein the Highborn preside and the Lowborn labor.

The Bishop, a young and vigorous preacher by the name of Cladder, preached this heretical doctrine for nearly a year before a visiting Order Famulous sister noticed. She made one attempt to show him the error of his ways, and when he refused, she notified Lord Inquisitor Havermann of the Ordo Hereticus.

Havermann wasted no time in burning Cladder and his cabal at the stake, but the damage had been done. The Mechanicus leadership of the Forenders had had quite enough of the Ecclesiarchal interference. They almost certainly would have acted on this, had the Tarot not bespoke something an order of magnitude worse than a single Heretic. Havermann, a potent psyker, foretold the Glasians assaulting Forender in seven years. Havermann sounded the alarm at once, and forced the Mechanicus to put aside its righteous indignation and Ecclesiarchy its defensiveness. A system was at stake.

Havermann was not of the Ordos that traditionally dealt with the Glasians, but he was no fool. He understood that only a system united in its own defense would withstand the horrible aliens that were about to descend on it. He sent for help from the Blue Daggers and the Astra Militarum before departing. Havermann vowed to increase his pursuit of the Heretic and the Witch across the Subsector, such that there would be no distractions in the face of the coming onslaught.

However, the passing of time has been cruel to Forender. In the seven years since the death of Cladder and his cabal, Forender’s interdepartmental trust has been slow to regenerate, and the extensive defensive preparations needed to shield the world from the coming onslaught have nearly bankrupted the farm worlds. The Basilikon Astra has brought many ships to defend the planet, as well as a contingent of Skitarii to protect the farms, but the planets’ ecobalance is still fragile enough to necessitate caution. The destructive weaponry of the Skitarii will damage the ecobalance of the planets enough that much of it, like Radium weapons and Transuranic weapons, can’t be used unless defeat is the alternative.

Moreover, the planetary populations are low enough that they cannot muster a large PDF in their own defense. Although their equipment and training are adequate for small-scale defense of their homes and farms, the Incursion Force is simply not large enough to pick up the slack in defense of the cities against Glasian hovertanks.

However, the Forender populace does have one massive advantage. The Celestial Knights Chapter of the Space Marines has sent over a full Battle Company to help the Daggers and other Cloudburst forces in protecting the region from the Glasians. The Mechanicus has accepted their help gladly, despite the Chapter’s odd beliefs. The Captain who leads them, Irlain Ironhand of the Seventh, has directed his forces to serve as spaceborne relief for the worlds in the system.

Unlike Septiim, where having to defend three planets at once is a massive problem for the Daggers, the Forenders benefit from their dispersal. This is because of the difference in transportation capacity between them. The number of troops needed to protect each Septiim rocky planet is large enough to preclude transporting them en masse, but Forender’s population is small enough that moving its PDF and Skitarii contingent around is possible. The aid of the Strike Cruiser Citadel of Stone will no doubt be invaluable in this. Ironhand has been in the system for a year now, and lines of coordination between his own forces, the Mechanicus, and the PDF are settling in.

However, the other resource drains on the Cloudburst Sector have made defending Forender more difficult. The assault of the Orks on Foraldshold, which is similarly underdefended, and Oglith, which has consumed most of the Sector’s free assets, mean that there is likely no more reinforcement coming to protect Forender until either the Glasians or the Orks have been driven off. The Blue Daggers have committed to helping Forender if they can muster the troops, and so far, have sent four squads on a Strike Cruiser to shore up the defenses. These squads have brought a proportionate allotment of their motor pool with them, including two Whirlwinds and a Razorback, plus a Land Raider Helios.